Rob Reddy

Rob Reddy: The Fine Line Between Composition and Comfort

Article from www.allaboutjazz.com by Paul Olson

Rob Reddy’s one of the prominent soprano saxophonists working today, but his reputation has been built upon his work as bandleader and, especially, as a composer. He’s been a presence in New York for 20 years now, having studied with soprano player Dave Liebman and reedsman Makanda Ken McIntyre before graduating from the first-ever jazz program at Greenwich Village’s New School.
Reddy played as a sideman with bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson (Jackson encouraging him to pick up the alto saxophone, an instrument he hadn’t played in years) before starting his first group, a trio with Workman and drummer Pheeroan Aklaff. His first recording, Post-War Euphoria (Songlines, 1996) was a sextet set by his group Rob Reddy’s Honor System, and was marked by all the elements that mark his music to this day: tight ensemble playing, fierce improvisation that’s never indifferent to the character of the composition, and the sextet format itself, which—personnel and instrumentation varying—has been the lineup for all but one of Reddy’s recordings. Reddy’s surrounded himself with some of improvisational music’s least generic musicians—players like Aklaff, drummer Guillermo Brown, guitarist Jef Lee Parker, bassist Dom Richards and violinist Charles Burnham—but the group performances on his CDs are, paradoxically, among the most unified and composition-centered in jazz music.
In addition to a healthy and ever-increasing number of commissions coming in for his compositions, Reddy released A Hundred Jumping Devils in late 2006, a release by his group Gift Horse. This is his first CD in five years and the first-ever release on his own Reddy Music imprint. It’s worth the wait. I spoke with Reddy about the new recording, his thoughts on composition and improvisation, the players in Gift Horse, the soprano saxophone, and much more.

Jazz Guide NYC

As I am soon to be going to New York, this jazz guide to NYC seems to have been published just at the right time! Read this review by Jim Santella on www.allaboutjazz.com .

Jazz Guide NYC Steve Dollar Softcover; 176 pages; 2nd edition ISBN: 978-1-892145-43-7 The Little Bookroom 2007

Revealing much more than simply where to go and what to do in New York, Jazz Guide NYC provides detailed and valuable information about the city's current jazz ecology, its artists and events.

Steve Dollar's up-to-the-minute reflections will vividly reveal New York and its jazz scene to readers in other parts of the world, who may never see the city in real life, but will also be of interest to lifelong New Yorkers. Taking the reader on a tour of jazz in the city, Dollar writes about the musicians, past and present, who have done so much to shape the music.

As a dedicated jazz professional himself, Dollar has discussed the state of jazz with many people, and his candid commentaries flow in conversational style. Along with information about clubs, we learn about festivals, institutions, jazz radio stations, museums and more.

Dollar has left nothing out, and the book includes discussions on a range of legacy artists like Duke Ellington, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Louis Armstrong to more contemporary figures such as trumpeter Dave Douglas, pianist Eric Reed, guitarist Bill Frisell and saxophonist Donny McCaslin. Dollar is a writer who is in touch with current trends and knows what time it is.

Billie Holiday Lady Sings the Blues

Having just studied Billie Holiday as part of my post grad course and having watched a documentary about her extraordinary life, I was interested to learn that Billie's autobiography has just been republished. Read this interesting review by Suzanne Lorge on www.allaboutjazz.com .

Lady Sings The Blues: The 50th Anniversary Edition Billie Holiday with William Dufty

In 1956 Billie Holiday sat down with ghostwriter William Dufty and recounted the story of her life. At times during the 224-page narrative Holiday seems compelled to justify the telling of her tale and issues rueful warnings about the dangers of drug use, as if her artistry were not enough to warrant interest in her as a person, as if the public shame of her various addictions nullified her public accomplishments.
While certain facts of Holiday’s personal account of her childhood remain contested—her mother’s age and her biological father’s identity, for instance—there is no contest over Holiday’s contribution to the jazz vocal tradition. What’s curious about her autobiography is how little she talks about the actual craft of singing; every discussion about music segues into an anecdote about one of the many sadists, racists, and opportunists that populate her story.
In telling her story Holiday usually opts for self-effacement over victimization, however. She draws only an indirect line between the wretchedness of her early life and her later self-medication; in between pleas for greater compassion for addicts she blames herself for not being strong enough to resist the poison. Her apologies most often give way to a muted rage at the injustices and abuses she suffered in her segregated, impoverished world; arguably, it was this struggle between her assertion and her passivity that made her music so revolutionary, and that in turn render her words so interesting.
From the unwritten epilogue to Holiday’s autobiography we know, 50 years later, how Holiday turned that muted rage most tragically against herself. Holiday died in 1959—three years after the original publication of her book—of cirrhosis of the liver at age 44. Ultimately the lesson we take away from her story is not the intended “just say no,” but that sometimes, against the odds, beauty grows to magnificent heights with the least bit of sun.
Harlem Moon Classics, a division of Random House, re-released the Holiday autobiography, Lady Sings The Blues, in late July. Expanding on the original, the publisher has added a foreword and a complete listing of Holiday’s discography, both by writer David Ritz. Also accompanying this 50th anniversary edition is a 10-track tribute CD of songs that Holiday either wrote or popularized, now recorded by some of today’s top R&B and jazz artists. Fifty years of social and technological change are evident in the skilled arrangements and slick production of the CD; while the tunes stand on their own merit and the performances are above reproach, absent is Holiday’s insistent, painful howl for release.
There is no fault in this: Perhaps we did learn something after all from Holiday the first time.

Monks Bones and Ben Riley's Monks Legacy

For my jazz diploma, I wrote a thesis on the life of the incredible pianist and deeply interesting character that was Thelonious Monk. I read the review below on allaboutjazz.com with great interest and thank Francis Lo Kee for having written it.
Here are two CDs that pay homage to the great composer-pianist Thelonious Monk (1917-1982), who passed away 25 years ago this month. Though both share a common composer, the recordings are quite different.

Memories of T contains some excellent music. An overview would include great playing by all the instrumentalists, good choice of tunes (including the somewhat infrequently played “Gallop’s Gallop”, “Brake’s Sake” and “Shuffle Boil”) and excellent arrangements reminiscent of the visionary ones Hall Overton did for a medium-sized band playing Monk in the early ‘60s. This band, led by Ben Riley (one of the world’s most swinging drummers, who played with Monk on a regular basis, perhaps more than any other drummer) is similar to that Overton ensemble, this band sounding bigger than a septet because of the effective arrangements. Also the use of the guitar in place of the piano ironically provides more transparency to the vertical voicings of Monk and is one of the best examples of writing for the guitar in an ensemble since George Russell’s bands (especially with guitarist Barry Galbraith).

Trumpeter Don Sickler wrote these wonderful, inventive and swinging arrangements and he mentions in the liner notes (sometimes in great detail) how he used transcriptions from varied recordings as source material. Some arrangements might use a melodic quote from a recording in 1955 and then piano voicings for a recording done in 1964. Sound confusing? Well, when you listen you will be dancing around the room: perhaps the epitome of great jazz is that its impact is immediate but its depth is revealed over years of continued, joyful listening. “Rhythm-A-Ning” states the melody (with the bass saxophone giving it extra body) and the opening tenor solo uses material from Monk’s Live at the It Club as a counterpoint to the solo. Then the guitar comps for part of the alto solo and then it’s back to It Club material for the next alto part. Then it’s all about the arrangement, but still swinging hard as if a blowing session. Then a Riley drum solo leads back into the out-head. An eight minute swinging take on “I’ve Got Rhythm” unfolds like a symphony or is it a symphony that swings like Beethoven would have, if he knew?

Though the arrangements on Memories of T are quite intricate at times, the vivacious swing feel is never sacrificed and everyone involved - saxophonists Bruce Williams, Jay Branford, Wayne Escoffery and Jimmy Greene, guitarist Freddie Bryant and the aforementioned Sickler and Riley - turns in great solos.

Perhaps Monk’s Bones follows the more common modus operandi of head, solos, head-out, but it is a heartfelt effort. The version of “Ugly-Beauty” is poignant: a gentler dynamic and a slower tempo than the original (from Monk’s Underground). “Monk’s Dream” and “Little Rootie Tootie” exploit the two trombones’ (Roswell Rudd and Max Perkoff) brash tone quality and emphasize it by harmonizing parts of the melodies in dissonant parallel intervals.

Standing apart and far to the left of the other tunes on this CD is the arrangement of “Friday the 13th”. Monk’s original tune is quite unique within his own oeuvre, perhaps his most simple: a repeating four-bar phrase (over a two-bar harmonic rhythm). Here drummer Chuck Bernstein begins alone on the berimbau (a Brazilian percussion instrument that uses a single string as its percussive drone) that sonically and rhythmically breaks away from common jazz orchestration. Eventually he establishes a groove over which Monk’s melody (transposed from the original key of G to E here) enters. The two trombones in particular begin to improvise in counterpoint but soon all musicians are freely improvising to the berimbau groove. The absence of the piano is also striking because it allows the berimbau, bass and two trombones work in the ‘cracks’ of pitch: the frequencies in between a piano’s F and F# for instance. A truly unique performance!

Review from allaboutjazz.com by Francis Lo Kee