The Gil Evans Centennial Project

A partir de hoy, el Jazz Standard de Nueva York acoge el estreno del Gil Evans Centennial Project liderado por Ryan Truesdell. Truesdell, que ha visitado Barcelona a menudo como asistente de la Maria Schneider Orchestra, acaba de publicar en ArtistShare el disco fruto de su apasionante trabajo con el archivo de Evans, donde incluso descubrió música inédita del compositor y arreglista canadiense (1912-1988), conocido entre el gran público por sus colaboraciones con Miles Davis, en especial Porgy and Bess y Sketches of Spain.

En el Standard, al frente de una banda de ensueño, Evans propone cuatro programas. He aquí la nota de prensa firmada por el propio Truesdell que anuncia este póquer de conciertos indispensables.

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By Ryan Truesdell

The time is finally here!  The CDs are just about ready to be mailed out to everyone!  I can't wait for you to hear this great music of Gil's, and I look forward to hearing everyone's reaction to this music!  Thank you to everyone for making this album possible, and for Gil's long-lost music to be heard again!

Ryan Truesdell, en el estudio grabando la música de Gil Evans (foto: Todd Chalfant). 

For those of you in or around the NYC area (or for those die-hard Gil fans that are willing to make the journey), next week, Thursday through Sunday, May 17th - 20th we will celebrating Gil Evans' 100th birthday and the release of our new CD, CENTENNIAL: Newly Discovered Works of Gil Evans, at the Jazz Standard in NYC. Each night will feature different music from Gil Evans' six-decade-long career: some pieces we know and love, some which are recorded for the first time on the new CD, and some which have never before been recorded or performed. It will be a rare opportunity to hear this historic music performed live, by the wonderful musicians listed below. I hope you'll join us for as many nights as you can.

RESERVATIONS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED! www.jazzstandard.net -- (212) 576-2232

Gig Details:
Thursday, May 17th, sets at 7:30 and 9:30pm ($25 per set -- no food/drink minimum)
Featuring music Evans wrote and arranged for the Claude Thornhill Orchestra in the 1940s/1950s

Friday, May 18th, sets at 7:30, 9:30, and 11:30pm ($30 per set -- no food/drink minimum)
Featuring Evans' music for his albums New Bottle Old Wine and Great Jazz Standards, and unrecorded re-orchestrations done for a concert at the Apollo Theater in 1959 

Saturday, May 19th, sets at 7:30, 9:30, and 11:30pm ($30 per set -- no food/drink minimum)
Featuring music from The Individualism of Gil Evans, including "Punjab," recorded for the first time on CENTENNIAL

Sunday, May 20th, sets at 7:30 and 9:30pm ($25 per set -- no food/drink minimum) 
Featuring Evans' beautiful arrangements written for vocalists such as Astrud Gilberto, Lucy Reed, and Helen Merrill, performed by Kate McGarry 

COLLECTIVE PERSONNEL:
Conductor -- Ryan Truesdell

Woodwinds - Steve Wilson, Dave Pietro, Donny McCaslin, Scott Robinson, Brian Landrus, Charles Pillow, Michael Rabinowitz, Alden Banta, Jesse Han, Christopher Matthews, Steve Kenyon

Brass - Adam Unsworth, Dave Peel (French horns); Augie Haas, Greg Gisbert, Laurie Frink (trumpets); Ryan Keberle, Marshall Gilkes, George Flynn (trombones); Marcus Rojas (tuba)

Rhythm/Etc. - James Chirillo, Romero Lubambo (guitar); Frank Kimbrough (piano), Rufus Reid (bass), Lewis Nash (drums), Dan Weiss (tabla), Mike Truesdell (percussion), Aristedes Rivas (tenor violin), Kate McGarry, Wendy Gilles (voice).

George Wein and Newport Festivals Foundation, Inc.™ Announce Formation of Newport Jazz Festival® Advisory Committee

George Wein in Barcelona, May 2010.

To enhance dialogue and share knowledge about the ever-evolving art form of jazz, George Wein and the Newport Festivals Foundation, Inc.™ today announced the creation of the Newport Jazz Festival® Advisory Committee, made up of some of the leading jazz festival producers from around the world.

"The members of the committee are the true source of knowledge about what is happening in jazz. Collectively, they listen to everything that is being produced and their awareness of the extraordinary musicians in their countries is invaluable," said Wein, Newport Jazz Festival Producer and Chairman of the Newport Festivals Foundation. "Since jazz is becoming more of a global music each year, having formal access to this outstanding group of international producers will help ensure that the Newport Jazz Festival, as well as other festivals, remain significant and influential institutions for years to come."

Advisory Committee members are: Iñaki Añúa, Festival de Jazz de Vitoria-Gasteizn Ant; Joan A. Cararach, Voll-Damm Festival Internacional de Jazz de Barcelona; John Cumming, London Jazz Festival; Quint Davis, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival; Bertrand Flamang, Gent Jazz Festival; Tim Jackson, Monterey Jazz Festival; Jan Willem Luyken, North Sea Jazz Rotterdam; Miguel Martín, San Sebastian Jazz Festival; André Ménard and Alain Simard, Festival International de Jazz de Montreal; Carlo Pagnotta, Umbria Jazz Festival; Ken Pickering, Vancouver International Jazz Festival; Fritz Thom, Jazz Fest Wien; and Penny Tyler, Ravinia Jazz Festival.

Wein and some of the Newport Jazz Festival Advisory Committee are members of the International Jazz Festival Organization (IJFO), an umbrella association to currently 17 leading jazz festivals worldwide. The members do not compete territorially and their events are held at times that allow potential touring of common projects.

In addition, the Newport Festivals Foundation also created an Advisory Board in 2011 for its Newport Folk Festival. While that group is made up of artists Colin Meloy of The Decemberists, Gillian Welch, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Jim James of My Morning Jacket and Ben Knox Miller of The Low Anthem, Wein chose to fill this Committee with fellow jazz festival producers. However, the jazz impresario says he is "open to bringing on artists and other industry professionals who understand the importance and challenges of promoting jazz, presenting and developing emerging performers and keeping the legacy of the Newport Jazz Festival, and jazz in general, alive."

The 2012 Newport Jazz Festival presented by Natixis Global Asset Management, which takes place August 3 - 5, features Pat Metheny Unity Band, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Jack DeJohnette's 70th Birthday Celebration, Dianne Reeves, Dr. John, Kurt Elling, Maria Schneider Orchestra, Jason Moran and The Bandwagon, Ambrose Akinmusire Quintet, Vince Giordano & the Nighthawks, the 3 Cohens, Christian McBride's Inside Straight and more. For tickets and the complete line-up, go to www.newportjazzfest.net. The Newport Festivals Foundation, Inc.* was founded by George Wein in 2010 to build up and continue the legacies of the famed Newport Jazz Festival and Newport Folk Festival. Under the auspices of the Foundation, the Newport Jazz Festival presents performers who respect and honor jazz music traditions, and at the same time reflect the changes in today's musical trends. Through the establishment of partnerships with local high schools and colleges/universities, the Foundation will present programs to educate young people about jazz music as presented at the annual festival. For more information, please visit www.newportfestivalsfoundation.org.

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The Newport Jazz Festival® and Newport Folk Festival® are productions of Newport Festivals Foundation, Inc.™, a 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation, under license from Festival Productions, Inc. and George Wein; all rights reserved.

Chano Domínguez at the 'Wall Street Journal'

Chano Domínguez at the Jazz Standard (photo courtesy of Zak Shelby-Szyszko).

Today at the Wall Street Journal. By Will Friedwald

«This is the best possible kind of a "tribute," in which the music is so good and so original that it hardly requires the hook of the concept. Rather than, say, a trumpeter re-creating Miles Davis's distinctive vocalized tone with a metal mute, Spanish pianist Chano Domínguez's new release, "Flamenco Sketches," is about repaying a debt. In 1959, Davis was inspired by Spanish music to create "Flamenco Sketches," the closing number on "Kind of Blue." Now, Señor Domínguez is taking that debt and paying it forward by recasting all five numbers on that seminal album in his distinctive keyboard style, which is in itself a perfect blend of flamenco and jazz traditions. Even apart from the Iberian angle, the gentleman from Cádiz is playing these melodies with more beauty and imagination than virtually anyone since Davis and Bill Evans first conceived them.

»Mr. Domínguez, who has already been a key participant in several high-profile crossovers of jazz and Spanish music, makes it nearly impossible to tell where the flamenco ends and the jazz begins in this performance. Apart from the geographically mandated musical disciplines interacting on "Flamenco Sketches," he has at least three different harmonic systems in play: standard Western harmony, as used in most bebop (Davis's background); the modal system of jazz that Davis pioneered on "Kind of Blue" (in which melodies are improvised on scales rather than chords); and the pentatonic scale prevalent in most of the world, including the Iberian peninsula. The latter was represented by Blas "El Kejio" Cordoba, the fourth member of Mr. Domínguez's trio, who, at Jazz Standard, sat to the right of bassist Omer Avital and drummer Dafnis Prieto. Mostly, Mr. Cordoba offered "manual percussion" (clapping his hands), but occasionally he would break forward with wild cantorial cries, which, at first, to most of our North American ears, sounded terribly out of tune—until we realized he was singing pentatonically.

»In all of Mr. Domínguez's treatments, the melody is right there in plain sight, waiting to be detected. Cleverest is his revision of Davis's "All Blues," the tune that did more than any other to introduce the waltz to modern jazz, and now in a solid 4/4. Throughout, the pianist pays equal tribute to Davis and Bill Evans, Davis's key collaborator on the 1959 sessions, especially when he hints at Evans's intro to the title track, "Flamenco Sketches," at the same point that Evans himself referenced Leonard Bernstein's "Some Other Time" and his own "Peace Piece." The two composers dictated a course of modes for the improvisor to play through, hence the term "sketches," rather than a specific melody, although most subsequent versions use Davis's solo as if it were the head. Mr. Domínguez's solo is so fully realized that it seems more like a painting than a sketch, even while Mr. Cordoba's moaning and wailing is unmistakably flamenco. As part of the overall package, it's a whole other kind of blue.»

Por el camino de Fazioli

Por Joan Anton Cararach


¿Por qué dedicar su vida a hacer pianos ante una competencia que lleva más de un siglo en el negocio y que tiene unas herramientas de publicidad y marketing consolidadas a fuego? La respuesta, para Paolo Fazioli, no puede dejar de ser más sencilla: "Porque yo, como pianista, no encontraba un piano cuyo sonido me gustara".

Fazioli, que el pasado 19 de octubre estuvo en Barcelona para hablarnos de sus pianos en su distribuidor barcelonés (Pianos Puig, proveedor del Fazioli gran cola que durante un mes fue el piano oficial del 43 Voll-Damm Festival Internacional de Jazz de Barcelona), nos recibe en su fábrica en Sacile, a unos 50 minutos en coche de Venecia. Trabajan en ella 42 personas, y producen 120 pianos al año, de los grandes cola F278 y F308 (con un cuarto pedal añadido) hasta el F183 (media cola) y el más pequeño de todos, el F156, pasando por los pianos especiales, frutos de encargos, como el Marco Polo, color rojo Ferrari (estamos en Italia y el encargo es chino…) y con un cuadro de Canaletto pintado artesanalmente en la tapa.


La aventura empezó en 1978, nos cuenta el ingeniero Fazioli, en un «angolino» de la fábrica de muebles de su familia, con seis personas. Desde entonces, desde la aparición del primer Fazioli (junio de 1980), la marca italiana, como un exquisito David de las 88 teclas, ha ido consiguiendo el reconocimiento que acaso más esperaba, el de los pianistas. Primero clásicos como Angela Hewitt y desde hace años el de un gigante del jazz como Herbie Hancock, que llegó a imponer la presencia de un Fazioli en la ceremonia de entrega de los premios Grammy, al lado del Steinway de Lang Lang.

«Quizá los pianistas de jazz valoran más nuestro trabajo», razona Fazioli. ¿Por qué? «Los clásicos están más preocupados y pendientes por tocar la partitura tal como está escrita, y en cambio, los pianistas de jazz dependen del momento, y el sonido de nuestro piano les suele inspirar». Fazioli argumenta, además, que sus pianos –artesanales 100%– crecen con el tiempo, al contrario que los productos fabricados en serie. Pianos Fazioli que, desde que llega la madera de la Val di Fiemme –la misma que usaba Antonio Stradivari para sus violines–, sufren una transformación que dura dos años hasta que salen de la fábrica, tras controles de calidad exhaustivos, entre ellos el del propio Paolo Fazioli, que, afirma, ha llegado a rechazar algún piano si –«a veces no se sabe por qué»– no reúne las características que él espera de sus instrumentos.

Desde hace tres años, además, la fábrica cuenta con el Fazioli Concert Hall, una sala de cámara en la que organizan conciertos o alquilan –cada vez más– para grabaciones discográficas. Mañana, por ejemplo, Omar Sosa presentará allí, en su segunda visita a Fazioli –«no hay palabras, es de verdad impresionante lo que hacen en ese sitio», sonríe–, su disco Calma, en un concierto organizado por la asociación Controtempo.

En Sacile, sin duda, está el paraíso de los pianos.