The Friday Riff

From The New York Times:
Andrew Hill, a pianist and composer of highly original and sometimes opaquely inner-dwelling jazz whose work only recently found a wide audience, died yesterday at his home in Jersey City. He was 75.
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Jack Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos, 2006

Andrew Hill

The cause was lung cancer, said his wife, Joanne Robinson Hill.

It took almost 40 years for Mr. Hill’s work to be absorbed into jazz’s mainstream. From the first significant album in his discography (“Black Fire,” 1963) to the last (“Time Lines,” 2006), his work is an eloquent example of how jazz can combine traditional and original elements, notation and pure improvisation, playing both outside and inside strict time and harmony.

Mr. Hill was born in Chicago in 1931 — not Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as his early biographical information read, and not in 1937, as he often stated. He started playing music at 7, by learning the accordion; beginning at 10, he said, he taught himself how to play piano.

He eventually played be-bop with local musicians in Chicago, and worked on the road with Dinah Washington, Johnny Hartman and Dakota Staton. He got a chance to play with Charlie Parker at the Greystone Ballroom in Detroit in 1954. A job with Roland Kirk (later Rahsaan Roland Kirk) brought him to New York in the early 1960s.

In those years Mr. Hill was perceived as a kind of extension of Thelonious Monk, 20 years after Monk’s emergence. Both were brilliant composers, and played in a style suited to their own writing. And both careers benefited from the enthusiasm of Alfred Lion, from Blue Note Records, who was so enthusiastic about Mr. Hill that he recorded five albums’ worth of material in eight months.

Those five albums were “Black Fire,” “Smokestack,” “Judgment,” “Point of Departure” and “Andrew!!!,” and much of Mr. Hill’s reputation rests on them. With some of the best musicians at the time — Joe Henderson, Kenny Dorham, Roy Haynes and others — the records occupied an area between hard bop and abstract jazz. Some of the music was structured strangely, yet there was a strange emotional resonance in the writing, a cloudy romanticism.

Mr. Hill was unsuccessful in finding much of an audience for his work after the mid-1960s, and found it hard to maintain bands or work in clubs. But he was also committed to the idea that the jazz bandleader could live as a composer, not just a nightclub entertainer. He sought arts grants and worked increasingly as a solo performer on the college circuit.

He lived in upstate New York during the early 1970s, and then in California; in the 1980s, he recorded for the Soul Note label in Milan.

In 1989 he was signed again to Blue Note, which had been recently resurrected by EMI, making the albums “Eternal Spirit” and “But Not Farewell,” and beginning a renewal of interest in his early work. That same year, after the death of his wife Laverne, he moved to Oregon to teach at Portland State University until 1996, when he returned to the New York City area, and re-entered the map of jazz. His wife Joanne Robinson Hill survives him.

In his remarkable final decade, Mr. Hill led several bands, including a sextet, a big band and a quartet including the trumpeter Charles Tolliver. He made three new albums, all well received. In 2003 he received the Danish JazzPar Award, the biggest international honor in jazz.

Finally he was signed for the third time to Blue Note, recording “Time Lines.” Much of his early recorded work came out on CD, including 11 albums recorded for Blue Note during the 1960s that had never been released. At last, his challenging music was being performed or adapted by other musicians.

Mr. Hill’s last performance was at Trinity Church in Manhattan on March 29. On May 12 he is to receive an honorary doctorate posthumously from Berklee College of Music.

This week we celebrate Earth Day (created in reaction to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill) a few days early, with jazz made for and by the EARTH. We’ll sample Paul Winter’s original “earth jazz” from the Common Ground and Canyon albums, and hear some philosophical takes on nature in the form of Eden Ahbez’s “Nature Boy”, Ornette Coleman’s “The Jungle is a Skyscraper”– and more! Listen on your Earthpods!

Another potpourri jazz mix: but since it’s Friday the 13th, the “evil” Rob and Bryan take over and discuss the “myths” of global warming, the reasons for the Don Imus firing, and other issues they shouldn’t be discussing. Tune in next week for the return of the “good” Rob and Bryan. Featured music includes tracks by Kieren Hebden and Steve Reid, Rachel Eckroth, Nate Birkey, and more!

Clarinetist Tony Scott, who played a wide variety of musical styles on an instrument once viewed as a prisoner of the swing era, died last Wednesday due to cancer-related illness. He was 85. Mr. Scott was a pioneer of both jazz clarinet and “world music,” and his career spanned the bebop era to the present day. We’ll listen to some of his music and pay respects to his legacy.

This week, in anticipation of April Fool’s Day, Bryan and Rob ask the question that Frank Zappa asked many years ago: “Is there humor in music?” Join us for laughs, hi-jinks, and
. . . oh, yeah, jazz.

“Third Stream” is author, composer and conductor Gunther Schuller‘s term for post-WWII music that fused jazz and classical elements together into a hybrid of compositional and improvisational techniques. On today’s show we will investigate the early connections between jazz and Western “art” music, and anticipations of “Third Stream” music. Our special guest, UCSB Musicology Professor Derek Katz, will give us a tour of music from the 1920s and 1930s where jazz and Western “art” music blended, clashed, or at least attempted to be friends. We’ll hear music from the “Bad Boy” of music, George Antheil, along with pieces by Gunther Schuller and others.

Professor Katz is a violist and a scholar of Czech music, including the jazz influence on modern Czech composers. He has also published articles on opera, and on music, modernism, and nationalism.

This week we pay tribute to one of the most influential bands in the Western Hemisphere: The Skatalites. Through the influence of American jazz and R&B, the Skatalites created the Jamaican style of music known as ska, which was, as Prince Buster says, “The Godfather of Reggae.” We’ll listen to samples of Jamaican music influenced by jazz and jazz music influenced by Jamaica music. Special guest “selecter” and UCSB ethnomusicology Ph.D. candidate, Gibb Schreffler, aka The Bootist, aka “Molten” Hulton Clint, aka “Sugar” Kane de Bane, aka the Bruiser from the East, aka Gene Scotte, aka Fat Boy, aka Gabbah Shareef “Bhalwan,” helps put the skavoovee into our Friday Riffings.

A one-time double bassist with a passion for be-bop, Gibb hopped aboard the Train to Skaville as a teenager, after first hearing the Skatalites and their version of Jamaican jazz. From 1993 to 1997, Gibb—under the influence of his idol Charlie Mingus—lead Concrete Gibsons, an avant-garde ska ensemble. In April 1997, Concrete Gibsons joined a symphonic orchestra and cast to perform Gibb’s 90-minute ska-opera, Brewed in Nova Scotia. Gibb now is part of the Santa Barbara Riddim n’ Bruise outfit, The Escalades. Gibb will help us approach the ever-fresh stylings of Jamaican jazzers from a new perspective.

The Skatalites perform live at SoHo this Friday!

In anticipation of the UCSB Jazz Ensemble’s Winter Concert, “Modern Masters of the Large and Small Ensembles,” we listen to unique music springing from the big band tradition, played in bands big and not-so-big. Special guests include director of the UCSB Jazz and Percussion Programs, Prof. Jon Nathan, who we again contact via jazz-o-phone, and UCSB Jazz Ensemble drummer, Ali Warrick. Featured music includes tunes and/or arrangements by Gil Evans, Sun Ra, The Northern Arizona University Jazz Ensemble, and more! Plus: drummer jokes.

For more info about Sunday’s big band concert at Lotte Lehman Hall, Sun. March 11th at 7PM visit: http://www.music.ucsb.edu/faculty/jnathan/jazz/

Rob and Bryan take a break from themed shows and interviews to play some of their favorite jazz tunes. Pharoah Sanders, Dizzy Gillespie, Oliver Lake are all featured, along with typically (un)witty banter from Rob and Bryan.

This week we welcome two wonderful guests: Jazz musician, multi-instrumentalist, painter, composer, performer, educator, and writer Oliver Lake; and UCSB Black Studies/Sociology Professor George Lipsitz. Professor Lipsitz and Mr. Lake will discuss jazz and beyond as part of Mr. Lake’s residency at UCSB’s College of Creative Studies.

Oliver Lake is a long-time member and co-founder of the World Saxophone Quartet, and was also co-founder of St. Louis’ important late 60’s/early 70’s collective B.A.G. (Black Artists’ Group). He has played with a host of musicians and ensembles, won numerous awards, and is an extraordinary performer and educator.

More information on Oliver Lake can be found at http://www.oliverlake.net

George Lipsitz is a prolific author and scholar of American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Sociology, and Music. He has taught and published on a wide range of topics including social movements, urban culture, and inequality. He currently teaches in the departments of Sociology and Black Studies at UCSB.

Don’t miss this show!