Brooklyn Jazz Underground

BJU Launch Festival at Small's, 1/13/07

2007-08-11T03:40:00.000-04:00

BJU Launch Festival at Smalls, 1/14/07

2007-08-11T03:39:00.000-04:00

Fat Cat is back

2007-05-18T12:12:00.000-04:00

I heard Fat Cat is back, slightly altered...
They tore down the wall to the billiard room, and more or less all of th previous room is now the stage. Anyone who has checked it out yet?

Anne Mette

Smalls: A new era for a great jazz spot in NYC

2007-04-01T19:01:00.000-04:00

It has come to our attention that the management of the great jazz club Smalls, located in Greenwich Village, has changed... for good!
Musicians Spike Wilner and Lee Kostrinsky have partnered with Mitch Borden (the club's original manager) with the goal of restoring Smalls back to its original freewheeling and bohemian vibe. The club has been beautifully renovated and a full bar is now in service. The comfort and feeling of the club is amenable to after-hours hangs and the music again goes all night. Music begins at 7:00 with happy hour piano. Main shows are at 8:30 and 10:30 PM. The after-hours band plays at 12:00 AM and 1:30 AM.

They have a really nice new website

We will all be hanging out there frequently, so hope to meet you at Smalls.

BJU

On My First Post

2007-03-17T03:53:00.000-04:00

This much I've figured out:

I suppose that when one goes about writing their first blog post, there are two main ways to go about it: One can A) Decide to be short, in the way that he or she can get through with the experience a quickly as possible, and reflect on it for various reasons later (or be done with it), or B) Launch into an epic diatribe about something, getting something (or many things) off their chest, posting and catharsis to ensue.

As may be a surprise to my fellow BJUers and friends, I've chosen A.

That much I've figured out.

Dan

Billyburg Gentrification

2007-02-22T09:48:00.000-05:00

Here's an interesting story in the Washington Post about the rapid gentrification that has occurred in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It's the classic story of artists moving into the area, making it hip, and Wall Streeters following closely behind, driving rents up and squeezing out those artists.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022001912.html?referrer=emailarticle

Living in Red Hook

2007-02-08T23:43:00.000-05:00

I moved to Red Hook this past summer and I love it.
Having lived in some of the busiest parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn for 8 years, I had considered moving outside of New York, as I was longing to live in a calmer and more spacious place. But instead I moved to Red Hook, and now I almost feel like I live in a small village in the middle of New York, - and it's great.
Like a friend said: If you want to move to Europe but don't want to leave New York; move to Red Hook. There's some truth to that. Down here there's a sense of community, stronger than your usual neighborhood-feeling. Down here the tempo is slower, if and when you want it to be slower, and down here we are close to the water, the air is fresher and there is a lot of sky to look at. Often times I go to the park, a couple of blocks away, to see the sunset.
There are also more practical advantages.
Parking is as easy as you can get it without owning a garage or a paid parking-spot. You can bike around easily for your daily needs, and of course we have Fairway which is just down the street. At the moment I even enjoy taking the bus to get to the subway. It is a short ride on the buses and it somehow helps putting a distance between the stressful and too busy vibe that people in New York can have and express.
So....that's all. Come down and visit. In the summer season especially there are great things happening. And we do have a couple of great restaurants, cafe's and a fantastic wine store. And then there are the ball fields.....that's for another time/another blog!
Anne Mette

American Icons: Kind of Blue

2007-02-04T20:16:00.000-05:00

My wife Ave Carrillo, who is a great radio producer, just finished this radio piece on Miles' Kind Of Blue for the show Studio 360. It's worth a listen:
http://studio360.org/americanicons/episodes/2007/02/02

Alexis Cuadrado

AAJ article by Alexis Cuadrado

2007-01-30T11:01:00.000-05:00

I wrote this article about the BJU for the January issue of the Allaboutjazz magazine. Hope you find it interesting.

Alexis

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=24297

BJU in the WSJ

2007-01-17T22:01:00.000-05:00

BJU member Alan Ferber was featured in today's Wall Street Journal in Martin Johnson's article on the new Brooklyn jazz scene. An excerpt:

There is so much above-ground jazz activity in Brooklyn now -- the Park Slope scene has emerging parallels in Williamsburg, Fort Greene and Beford Stuyvesant -- that a new collective has dubbed itself the Brooklyn Jazz Underground. The organization comprises 10 bands, led by on-the-rise players, who have pooled their resources for promotion and used outlets like myspace.com to gain exposure for their music.

The Brooklyn Jazz Undergound had its launch last week at Smalls in Manhattan, but the spirit of the organization is firmly rooted in Brooklyn. All of the members reside there, and they wanted to give a nod to the vitality of the scene.

"Brooklyn represents an aesthetic that we all embrace in our own music -- that of fearless experimentation and open-mindedness," wrote Alan Ferber in an email. "Whenever I walk into a Brooklyn jazz club, I know that I have to check my preconceptions at the door and enter expecting to hear anything. It's very exciting and consistently inspiring.

BJU in DownBeat

2007-01-17T21:40:00.000-05:00

BJU members Sunny Jain and Tanya Kalmanovitch are featured in Dan Ouellette's column "The Question" in the February 2007 issue of DownBeat. The question in question is this: "What album from the last decade is a must-listen for jazz elders?" Here's what they said:

Sunny Jain: Rez Abassi, Bazaar (Zoho). Rez was born in Pakistan, raised in Los Angeles, lives in New York now and is part of the thriving South Asian jazz scene that's exploring the natural marriage of Indian music and jazz, given each style's deep appreciation of improvisation. Indian music has been a part of jazz for a long time, but Rez is bringing a different slant and new dimension to it, having grown up in the U.S. He's bringing his culture fully into his music instead of just inserting his cultural heritage. He's got tabla and mridangam players and an Indian vocalist, and his guitar playing is a hybrid of rhythmic concepts steeped in the South Indian tradition. Listening to what Rez is doing opens a window on a global subculture of music.

Tanya Kalmanovitch: Benoît Delbecq Unit, Phonetics (Songlines). Benoît is a French pianist who studied with Muhal Richard Abrams. He's special in the way he synthesizes so many elements in his music - modern jazz, world jazz, classical - and structures improvisation and straddles the gulf between that and the notes on a page. Benoît represents a progression in jazz. He has a distinctive and idiosyncratic approach, such as intuitively playing free chromatic melodies that float over hip polyrhythmic, odd-metre grooves. Plus, in his band he has [saxophonist] Mark Turner, who brings his own contemporary sound to the mix. I've subbed on viola in Benoît's group. I come from a classical background, so we share a common vocabulary, but the way he thinks about jazz allows for so many voices. Playing with him helped me find my voice.

Podcast #2 is up.

2007-01-09T18:18:00.000-05:00

Podcast #2 is up, as this post's title imaginatively suggests. Bassist/composer Anne Mette Iversen is interviewed by drummer and grapefruit connoisseur Ted Poor. Check it out right now by clicking here or download it very soon on iTunes!

Ted Poor: A quick note of eating half a grapefruit

2007-01-01T21:51:00.000-05:00

I live in the northern hemisphere and therefor when I eat half a grapefruit, I eat it in a clockwise direction. My suggestion is after loosening each segment with a sharp knife, choose your favorite segment (largest or most enticing) and begin eating one segment to the left of your prized segment (readers in the souther hemisphere should begin to the right of their segment and eat in a counter-clockwise direction). This technique will leave you with the most cherished segment for last. Common knowledge? For some, yes; but vital, all the same.

Alan Ferber: Fat Cat closed...but not for good, hopefully!

2007-01-01T15:05:00.000-05:00

Fat Cat is closed, but does anybody out there know why? I've been told that it has to do with a problem with their gaming license, which obviously has nothing to do with the music (so not to worry, jazz didn't kill this club). I don't have any details beyond this, other than that it's apparantly supposed to re-open when they get there gaming license straightened out. Please chime in if you have more details.

Anne Mette Iversen: Some philosophocal thoughts for the new year!

2007-01-01T13:51:00.000-05:00

I was lucky to receive a grant to a free stay at an Art & Science Residence, the old convent, San Cataldo, located a few miles from Amalfi, in the mountains, on the Amalfi Coast of Italy. The residency was for 4 weeks (month of November) and provided an outstanding chance of being semi-isolated and having every minute of the day free to compose; to study and write new music.

Apart from myself, 10 other people had received stays there; interesting, exiting and very nice people who work in various fields such as literature, history, art-history, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, writing (authors), business and law. We were all working on specific projects and enjoyed exchanging experiences and learning about each others fields.
In fact it was of equal inspiration to me; the beauty of the surroundings, the aesthetics, the landscape, the quite and undisturbed settings and our little community, i.e. to learn about subjects that does not have an immediate presence in my daily jazz-life.

In other words, it was a very stimulating experience to discover that my personal inspiration with regard to composing came from new and unexpected sources. That I can draw from a much broader spectrum of life when searching for inspiration. In many ways this makes my life feel richer. Does one really have to stay a "jazz-nerd" and fulfill a stereotype of what a jazz-musicians interests are, to be a great musician?
I don't think so.

Modern life is specialized, but it seems as if that time is over where you can do well by just being great at one specific thing. Throughout history there are numerous examples of great artists who have studied and build significant knowledge in fields that were not immidiate related to their art. Leonardo Da Vinci was one, and many of the ancient Greeks.
And I learned that many of my fellow residency-guests have an extremely wide and broad knowledge about many a subject, and that it only reinforces their expertise in their own field.

Why should we musicians not be able to do the same? It is only a matter of training and habits, - our brain has the capability.

It is my personal goal for 2007 to look closer towards other branches of interests, maybe particularly in the field of humanities, and then let us see if that will make the new year any different.

- Anne Mette

Tanya Kalmanovitch: The evolutionary function of music.

2006-12-31T12:07:00.000-05:00

From today's New York Times. Clive Thompson's article on Daniel Levitin, a former pop producer turned neuropsychologist, who offers among other things, an argument for the evolutionary function of music:

"Not all of Dr. Levitin’s idea have been easily accepted. He argues, for example, that music is an evolutionary adaptation: something that men developed as a way to demonstrate reproductive fitness. (Before you laugh, consider the sex lives of today’s male rock stars.) Music also helped social groups cohere. “Music has got to be useful for survival, or we would have gotten rid of it years ago,” he said."

Read the whole article here.

Alan Ferber: Quick route to JFK, and other random stuff...

2006-12-31T01:55:00.000-05:00

I'm writing this from the Phoenix airport where my flight back to NY has been delayed. This is helping to divert my attention away from the extremely large man across from me snoring REALLY loud. It's cutting through my Bose noise-cancelling headphones like a freshly-sharpened sword. Anyway, for all you musicians who make lots of trips to JFK and are tired of spending your previous night's salary from the 55 Bar on a car service, listen up! I took the Q train to Atlantic Ave (where a zillion other trains stop as well) and hopped on the LIRR to Jamaica. From Jamaica, I got the Airtrain which took me right to my terminal. The trip from my apartment to Atlantic took 10 minutes, from Atlantic to Jamaica took 20 minutes, and Airtrain to terminal took 10-15 minutes. The whole thing cost $12 ($2 subway + $5 LIRR + $5 Airtrain) and was a total breeze. I made it to the airport in an hour, all told, and had enough money left over to buy a $15 slice of pizza. Another perk: there was a jazz quartet playing at the Jetblue terminal and I was able to sit in on "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise" before running off to catch my flight. I don't really like that tune, but it definitely beat sitting in on a "jazzy" version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

Tanya Kalmanovitch's iTunes Party Shuffle

2006-12-30T20:46:00.000-05:00

Here are the first 10 tracks that come up in iTunes when I hit "Party Shuffle". A quick-and-dirty snapshot of my listening world...

1. "Kilimanjaro" - Zbigniew Siefert, Kimilanjaro
2. "Impacto Tendremos" - Jimmy Bosch, Salsa Dura
3. "Adonde Vas" - Tipica 73, Charangueando con la Tipica 73
4. "Anthracite" - Myra Melford & Tanya Kalmanovitch, Heart Mountain
5. "Masqualero (Alternate Take)" - Miles Davis, Sorceror
6. "Klezmer Wedding Dance Medley" - Neshoma Orchestra, Mazel Tov!
7. "Stefi's Song" - Enrico Pieranunzi, Gabriele Mirabassi & Marc Johnson, Racconti Mediterranei
8. "Pointe de la Courte Dune" - Benoit Delbecq Unit, Phonetics
9. "Down From Dover" - Dolly Parton, Little Sparrow
10. "Musik Kime Aittir" - Nedim Nalbantoglu, Musik Kime Aittir

Anyone else care to give it a try?

Jerome Sabbagh: music I have been listening to

2006-12-29T07:30:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd let people know about some of the music I have been listening to lately:

-Brahms: First Symphony, Karajan, Berlin, 1963 (Deutsche Grammophon): Apparently, Karajan recorded this at least 4 times. This particular recording sounds absolutely amazing to me and the piece is great.

-Ray Charles and Betty Carter: The whole album is fantastic but the first song, "Everytime We Say Goodbye" always sends shivers down my spine.

-Miles Davis: Live in Stockholm 1960: This is with Coltrane, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb. It's recorded during the last tour that Coltrane did with Miles. His playing, in particular, is unbelievable and clearly goes over the head of some listeners at the time. It's during that same tour that he gets booed at Salle Pleyel in Paris during "Bye Bye Blackbird". I especially like Trane on " On Green Dolphin Street" (the way he alludes to his composition "Like Sonny" for a whole chorus before launching into sheets of sound). But throughout the recording, the whole band sounds exceptional. The rhythm section plays some of the most swinging music I have ever heard.

That's it for now. More soon from myself or other BJU members.

Tanya Kalmanovitch: What I like about BJU.

2006-11-24T14:21:00.000-05:00

Alexis' recent post reminded me that it's been a year since Alan and Alexis called the first meeting of the Brooklyn Jazz Underground. We've accomplished a lot since then: our website, booked a four-day festival (at Small's in New York City, January 11-14 2007), convened a panel discussion on the role of artists' collectives in the NYC scene at the upcoming IAJE conference, and released a CD representing a selection of our recent work as bandleaders, and launched a publicity campaign to get the word out about our work. But most importantly, we've created a formal structure and public face for the informal community that sustains our artistic efforts.

It's a cliche to say that New York is a cold, hard city. And as it is with all cliches, there's more than a kernel of truth in it. But I always come away from the BJU meetings with a warm feeling of community and possibility.

I like the heart and humour everyone brings to the meetings. I value the personal and professional relationships the group is fostering. And I admire how the BJU reflects the increasingly diverse, and ever-international character of jazz. Half of us were born outside the US (Germany, France, Spain, Canada and Denmark), and have chosen to build lives in New York for the creative opportunities the city affords us. Many of us lead bands from rather unconventional chairs (among us, a trombonist, two bassists, two drummers and a violist). There are two female bandleaders among us, which at the very least sets up something of a counter-example to the gendered nature of jazz culture.

As a collective, we have worked on group actions that help us to accomplish our individual goals. It's a mirror of what goes on constantly in the improvised arts. In my brighter philosophical moments, I think that the concept of the collective reaches its highest, best expression in music. I can't think of a better example of collective action functioning so purely to empower the individual's voice, while at the same time creating something greater than the sum of its parts. I hope that as an organization the Brooklyn Jazz Underground can mirror what music does so well, and serve as another example of what music can teach us all, if we know how to listen.

-Tanya Kalmanovitch

The Brooklyn Jazz Underground surfaces!

2006-11-24T09:55:00.000-05:00

For Immediate Release (Brooklyn, NY) – January 2007 will see the birth of The Brooklyn Jazz Underground, a new collective conceived in the spirit of a new, do-it-yourself music industry, and the emergence of myriad independent artists and record labels, spawning a creative boom which counts Brooklyn as one of its bastions of innovation and artistry. The Brooklyn Jazz Underground is a shining example of a vibrant, thriving, creative group that keeps jazz and improvised music perpetually evolving. Individually and collectively, they serve an important role in our culture and society by providing a bustle of composing, playing and teaching that enriches, delights, provokes, inspires and educates. By pooling their resources, and through cooperative effort, the members hope to create a greater awareness of their work.

From January 11th through the 14th at Smalls in Greenwich Village, NYC the group will present their first annual festival to officially launch The Brooklyn Jazz Underground, featuring all ten members leading their own ensembles in performances of original music. The Underground’s first annual compilation CD will also be issued at this time. Other ambitions of the collective include becoming a charitable organization (plans are in the works to contribute to funds to benefit music programs in public schools), and to present a weekly residency in a NYC club featuring members' bands.

Catch members of The Brooklyn Jazz Underground at The IAJE: Panel: The Artists' Collective in Jazz: Unity and Diversity in the New York Scene, Thursday, January 11, 2007, at 4:00 PM, New York Ballroom West - Sheraton Hotel 3rd Floor. Tanya Kalmanovitch (moderator), Alexis Cuadrado and Alan Ferber will be joined by two founding members of the Jazz Composers' Collective, Ben Allison and Frank Kimbrough, to discuss the benefits of artists collectives, as well as the potential problems, to share information about what works, and what doesn't, and to inspire people to establish similar organizations in their local scenes.

Check out www.brooklynjazz.org for bios, mp3s, podcasts, blogs, photos and much more.

The Brooklyn Jazz Underground Launch Festival @ Smalls, January 11-14:

Smalls is located at 183 West 10th Street, at 7th Avenue South

Thursday, JANUARY 11: 8:00 PM: Benny Lackner Trio, 10:00 PM: Shane Endsley Group, 11:30 PM: Tanya Kalmanovitch Hut Five

Friday, JANUARY 12: 10:00 PM Alexis Cuadrado Sextet, 11:30 PM: Alan Ferber Nonet

Saturday, JANUARY 13: 10:00 PM Sunny Jain Collective, 11:30 PM: Dan Pratt Organ Quartet

Sunday, JANUARY 14: 8:00 PM Anne Mette with strings, 10:00 PM Jerome Sabbagh Quartet, 11:30 PM: Ted Poor Trio

For more information contact: Jason Byrne, Red Cat Publicity. 55 92nd Street, Suite C5, Brooklyn, NY 11209, Tel 347-578-7601, email redcatpublicity@aol.com

Alexis Cuadrado- New Film Soundtrack

2006-11-20T15:55:00.000-05:00

Alexis Cuadrado has just finished his first movie score. The film is a short entitled "Terapia" by Juanjo Martinez, a young up and coming director from Spain that resides in NYC.
Alexis composed, engineered and produced the whole piece at his home studio in Brooklyn. The musicians that participated are:

Víctor Prieto - Accordion
John Ellis - Bass Clarinet
Tanya Kalmanovitch - Violins and Viola
Jody Redhage - Cello
Daniel García - Guitar
Alexis Cuadrado - Double Bass, Keyboards, Drums

You can download a free MP3 and check out this music in the following link:
www.alexiscuadrado.com/mp3files/TerapiaSoundtrack.mp3

Being a member of the BJU

2006-11-20T15:32:00.000-05:00

Hi there, I'm Alexis Cuadrado, one of the members of the BJU.
After one of our regular meetings today we came to the realization that we've been working on this project for almost a year.
It's been a pretty big effort for us to get all this together, but I really believe that working as a group we'll help each other as bandleaders and not only we can also raise much greater awareness of our own work (as our mission statement states) but also of jazz and improvised music in general. It strikes me how many interesting concerts one can see in Brooklyn nowadays...bands with a serious creative energy are emerging nonstop, and everytime I go out there and check some stuff out I get a bi more shocked thinking of how hard it is to make a living an survive here but how people channel all this effort into their creative musical enterprises... Brooklyn is a vibrant place right now, and the BJU is just the "tip of the iceberg"... so I hope we'll open some doors for all of you out there.
Not much more to report for now, just make sure of checking our BJU website, all of our individual sites, our myspaces, mp3s... Well we're hooking you up with a lot of entertainment. Feel free to contact us, respond to our blogs, communicate... and make sure to come back frequently as there are 10 of us putting stuff out there.

Alexis