billbeuttler.com

January 1, 1970

This past week brought the sad news of the passing of Shirley Horn, who died Thursday of complications from diabetes. She was 71. She was, of course, one of the great jazz vocalists, a favorite of Miles Davis, and an accomplished pianist as well. My wife and I caught one of her last performances in Boston, on June 12, 2004, at Scullers, which I later ranked the best concert I'd seen that year.

I also had a nice phone conversation with her for my column of the previous Friday. I'll never forget her telling me it was a shame I didn't live closer to her home outside Washington, D.C., because otherwise she'd have me "mosey on over" for a meal. She was reputedly as good a cook as she was a singer and pianist (and a good carpenter as well, she told me). After that Scullers set I told her I was planning on making her "Beef and Beer" recipe from the cookbook "Jazz Cooks" by Boston Herald jazz writer Bob Young and Al Stankus. She told me the recipe in the book omitted a secret ingredient. Add some red wine to it, she said, and the dish is even better. I did so, and it was indeed delicious.

You may have missed week's column. It got held until Saturday for lack of space, and then was tucked into the back pages somewhere, trimmed shorter than usual, and unaccompanied by a photo. My editor seemed genuinely aggrieved by this, as she'd already told me she'd been especially happy with my profile of Brian Haas. Of course, it had been her decision to assign a profile of Dave Douglas to the California writer Andrew Gilbert, so she only had herself to blame. Like most newspapers these days, the Globe is going through tough times financially. There wasn't room for two jazz pieces in Friday's paper, and since Douglas was playing that night and Haas not until Saturday, my story was the one to hold.

I've decided to include the longer version of it here, though, to make it up to you. I hope you weren't distressed the way a guy was the last time the column was bumped from a Friday paper, who jokingly e-mailed: "I'm like my five-year-old, I don't like my routine upset. When I open the Arts section on Friday, I expect my Jazz Notes column to be there!"

Other stuff in the newsletter this week: the Calendar preview of Dave Douglas and a review of Dee Dee Bridgewater at Scullers.

Cheers.

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Brian Haas profile (long version)

By Bill Beuttler

Brian Haas can't seem to get enough of playing the piano. Give him a couple of weeks off from touring with his main group, the cutting-edge trio known as Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, and he hits the road with someone else.

A couple of weeks ago it was a brief west coast run with his jazz-funk trio the Dead Kenny Gs. Now it's the tour touting his new solo-piano CD, "The Truth About Hollywood," which will bring him to Zeitgeist Gallery tomorrow and Sunday, joined for the second half of his otherwise solo sets there by Mark Southerland on tenor sax, Jason Fraticelli on bass, Marco Benevento on Hammond organ, and Joe Russo on drums.

The seeds of Haas's obsession were planted early - and unintentionally - when his parents decided he should study classical piano as a means of developing discipline. His mother, says Haas by phone from his home in Tulsa, Okla., during a three-day stopover between his two side tours, was particularly diligent about accomplishing that mission.

"That woman made me practice for an hour a day, from age 5 to 15, every day except Christmas and my birthday," recalls Haas, now 31. "She personally saw to it that it actually went down. If she couldn't be there, I had to practice for an hour on a tape recorder."

What neither parent anticipated was how deeply he would delve into his piano studies. By the time he became a full-ride scholarship student at the University of Tulsa, Haas was woodshedding long hours in hopes of winning major classical piano competitions - and killing off his desire to become a classical pianist in the process.

"I was training for the Van Cliburn," he recalls, "and burned out while I was practicing 12 hours a day. That was really what led me into jazz. I was already playing with the Tulsa Philharmonic and winning regional competitions, and I just noticed that the only kids in the music program that seemed to be having fun were the kids in the jazz program."

Haas had already been improvising on piano practically all his life, even when he wasn't supposed to be. "The only way I really won competitions was by improvising," he confesses. "I would get so nervous that I would forget huge sections. What I would do, I would improvise in the style of Beethoven - I'd improvise in the style of Chopin, Liszt - until I could remember where the heck I was again, and then I'd pick it back up. People who knew the pieces would always protest, and the judges would always give me first place."

One night Haas was wrestling fruitlessly with a Bartok piano concerto when he heard one of the college's jazz guitarists practicing nearby. "I said, 'Hey man, would you come up to the studio that I'm playing at and just show me what the heck you're doing?'" The guitarist, Dove McHargue, agreed, and eventually helped form the first edition of Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey.

Fourteen years later, Jacob Fred ranks among the most exciting young piano trios in jazz. The group's just-released CD, "The Sameness of Difference," is built around something entirely new for them: covers of everyone from the Beatles, Neil Young, and Jimi Hendrix to Charles Mingus and Dave Brubeck, produced by veteran jazz and pop producer Joel Dorn.

It was Dorn's idea to have them do standards, and after some initial reluctance they became excited about making jazz standards out of songs that weren't necessarily jazz. But Dorn didn't like their choices when he heard them at a rehearsal, and suggested shifting gears and making a CD of originals instead.

Jacob Fred used the first of three planned days in the studio to crank out multiple takes 17 songs, both covers and originals. Then Dorn threw them another curveball. They thought they'd struggled through that first day in the studio, but Dorn had been blown away by everything he'd heard - covers included.

"Joel comes in," recalls Haas, "and says, 'Congratulations, babies. I haven't made a record like this since the last Rahsaan Roland Kirk record. We're done. I'm canceling the next two days. You guys have a good night.'"

Haas's solo CD sounds awfully good, too. Jacob Fred's bassist, Reed Mathis, had been nagging him to make it for about seven years, after seeing what Haas did with a piano break one night during a Jacob Fred gig.

"Reed came up to me and was like, 'Yo, you play a lot differently when it's just you than you do when it's everybody else,'" says Haas. "And I was like, 'What are you talking about?' And he said, 'Well, your left hand is like a whole different animal.'"

The piano disc features four tunes by Thelonious Monk, a fact Haas says hearkens back to his introduction to jazz in that University of Tulsa practice room.

"After that first rehearsal," he explains, "Dove was like, 'Okay, now go buy Thelonious Monk.' So 14, almost 15 years ago, the first jazz record I ever bought with my own money was Thelonious Monk, 'Genius of Modern Music, Volume 2.' ... Something clicked when I heard that first Monk record, and I've been addicted ever since."

More Katrina benefits: Rebecca Parris headlines a benefit concert for survivors of Hurricane Katrina at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Lyric Stage Company (140 Clarendon St., Boston). Tickets $20. For more info call 866-639-9410. Displaced New Orleans musicians, among them the Wild Magnolias, Donald Harrison, and some traditional jazz bands, will perform a "Bayou Bash" concert Oct. 30 at MIT's Kresge Auditorium. Tickets $15. Call 617-253-6777.

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A classical start led to a jazz obsession

By Bill Beuttler, Globe Correspondent  |  October 22, 2005

Brian Haas can't seem to get enough of playing the piano. Give him a couple of weeks off from touring with his main group, the cutting-edge trio known as Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, and he hits the road with someone else.

A couple of weeks ago it was a brief West Coast run with his jazz-funk trio the Dead Kenny Gs. Now it's the tour touting his new solo-piano CD, "The Truth About Hollywood," which brings him to the Zeitgeist Gallery tonight and tomorrow, joined for the second half of his otherwise solo sets by Mark Southerland on tenor sax, Jason Fraticelli on bass, Marco Benevento on Hammond organ, and Joe Russo on drums.

The seeds of Haas's obsession were planted early, when his parents decided he should study classical piano as a means of developing discipline. His mother, Haas says, was particularly diligent about accomplishing that mission.

"That woman made me practice for an hour a day, from age 5 to 15, every day except Christmas and my birthday," recalls Haas, now 31. "She personally saw to it that it actually went down. If she couldn't be there, I had to practice for an hour on a tape recorder."

By the time he became a full-ride scholarship student at the University of Tulsa, Haas was woodshedding long hours in hopes of winning major classical piano competitions.

One night Haas was wrestling fruitlessly with a Bartok piano concerto when he heard one of the college's jazz guitarists practicing nearby. "I said, 'Hey, man, would you come up to the studio that I'm playing at and just show me what the heck you're doing?'" The guitarist, Dove McHargue, agreed, and eventually helped form the first edition of Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey.

Fourteen years later, Jacob Fred ranks among the most exciting young piano trios in jazz. The group's just-released CD, "The Sameness of Difference," is built around something new for them: covers of everyone from the Beatles, Neil Young, and Jimi Hendrix to Charles Mingus and Dave Brubeck, produced by veteran jazz and pop producer Joel Dorn.

Haas's solo CD sounds awfully good, too. Jacob Fred's bassist, Reed Mathis, had been nagging him to make it for years, after seeing what Haas did with a piano break one night during a gig.

"Reed came up to me and was like, 'Yo, you play a lot differently when it's just you than you do when it's everybody else,'" says Haas. "And I was like, 'What are you talking about?' And he said, 'Well, your left hand is like a whole different animal.'"

The piano disc features four tunes by Thelonious Monk, which Haas says hark back to that University of Tulsa practice room.

"After that first rehearsal," he explains, "Dove was like, 'OK, now go buy Thelonious Monk.' So 14, almost 15 years ago, the first jazz record I ever bought with my own money was Thelonious Monk, 'Genius of Modern Music, Volume 2.' . . . I've been addicted ever since."

Brian Haas performs at 9:30 tonight and tomorrow night at Zeitgeist Gallery. Tickets $12. Call 617-876-6060 or visit www.zeitgeist-gallery.org.
 
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Calendar Jazz Picks

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Fri 10-21

Dave Douglas & Keystone
Regattabar, Charles Hotel, One Bennett St., Cambridge. 617-395-7757. 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. $23. Repeats Saturday.

Dave Douglas (right) is one of the best, most inventive trumpeters and composers in jazz. His album "Strange Liberation," recorded with his primary quintet and guest Bill Frisell, was one of the best discs of 2004, its use of Fender Rhodes electric piano harking back to Miles Davis's groups of the late 1960s. He followed it with "Mountain Passages," which Douglas describes as an evocation of "the myths and the spirit of rural mountain culture." His newest CD is "Keystone," and comes packaged with a DVD featuring the same music as a soundtrack to two short films by silent-film star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Douglas has paid tribute to groundbreaking artists from the past before, but Mary Lou Williams and Herbie Nichols, the subjects of those tributes, were fellow musicians. Arbuckle, whose career was unjustly destroyed by scandal in the 1920s, was an inspired choice for a film score. Who else but Douglas would imagine modern jazz fitting so seamlessly with silent movies? But Douglas's score does, and it holds up well on record as well as in concert. Performing it with him this weekend: Marcus Strickland on saxes, Adam Benjamin on Fender Rhodes, Brad Jones on bass, Gene Lake on drums, and DJ Olive on turntables.

Fri 10-21 The Either/ Orchestra and Mulatu Astatke The Either/ Orchestra and guest Mulatu Astatke, a seminal figure in Ethiopian jazz, celebrate last month's release of their two-CD "Ethiopiques 20: Live in Addis" at a venue not normally associated with jazz. Lizard Lounge, 1667 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge. 617-547-0759. 9:30 p.m. $12 advance, $15 at door.

BILL BEUTTLER

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Bridgewater delights fans with words and deeds

By Bill Beuttler, Globe Correspondent  |  October 18, 2005

When it comes to telling stories, singers can rely on lyrics to get the job done. Dee Dee Bridgewater, at Scullers on Friday, showed she's got even more working for her than that. A Tony Award winner, Bridgewater used acting chops to bolster her musical narratives, much to the audience's delight.

Those narratives, like her musicians, came from all over the globe. Bridgewater has a new CD out, "J'ai Deux Amours," but she didn't overemphasize the French angle. Instead, her set had more of a Latin feel, owing to her tune selection and the backing musicians: Edsel Gomez on piano, Ira Coleman on bass, Antonio Sanchez on drums, and Pernell Saturnino on percussion.

They started with Mongo Santamaria's rhythmically powerful "Afro Blue," with lyrics by Oscar Brown Jr. Bridgewater aggressively belted out the tune's refrain ("Shades of delight, cocoa hue/ Rich as the night, Afro Blue") as she stalked the stage and made eye contact with members of the crowd.

Things quieted initially for the Kurt Weill/ Ogden Nash ballad "Speak Low." Coleman and Gomez each took charming solos, and then Bridgewater let loose with an extended display of her scatting prowess, miming the sliding motions of a trombone through most of it.

The English version of Milton Nascimento's "Empty Faces" came next, and then Bridgewater got to her new CD. Introducing "La Belle Vie" (a.k.a. "The Good Life"), Bridgewater managed to reference Josephine Baker, the smidgen of Chinese ancestry in her family tree, Tony Bennett, and Betty Carter, as well as the tune's composer, Sacha Distel, who she said once tried (and failed) to pick her up on a cruise ship. Bridgewater started off the song in French, Gomez followed with his most impressive solo of the set, and then Bridgewater sang the song through again in English.

The storytelling in "Dansez Sur Moi" ("Girl Talk") came mostly in the song itself, Bridgewater digressing with a riotously raunchy tale — not included on the CD — of how she landed her first husband.

Sanchez and Saturnino got their chance to shine on Pedro Flores's "Obsesion," which was supposed to wrap things up. But when some folks in the audience begged for the new disc's title cut, Bridgewater obliged with an impressively satisfying run-through of a tune that she said her band members, Coleman excepted, didn't know. 

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company