Culture Currents (Vernaculars Speak)
Exploring Our Common and Uncommon Culture — with Kevernacular
Tag Archives: Donny McCaslin
Maria Schneider strives to slay data dragons and earns two Grammies
Posted on March 15, 2021 by Kevin Lynch
Composer-arranger-bandleader Maria Schneider won two Grammy Awards for her album "Data Lords." Courtesy the artsdesk.com
All praise Maria Schneider and her larger-than-life, intrepid orchestra! She just won two Grammy Awards for best instrumental composition ("Sputnik") and best large ensemble recording, for Data Lords. Like a goddess sprouting heavy new wings, Schneider brilliantly ventured far beyond her comfort zone of nature-inspired jazz impressionism, in the Gil Evans tradition: Schneider Grammy announcement
Despite her clear and proud roots, Data Lords affirms her genius as a true original and her prominent place in jazz history. I never actually reviewed this album partly because I've given her so much blog and newspaper play over the years and I reviewed in-depth a live concert she performed while unveiling some of Data Lords material, before the album's release.
Data Lords album cover
I chose Data Lords as my No. 2 album of the year in the NPR jazz critics poll largely because, to me, my top choice, Gregg August's Dialogues on Race, was too urgently relevant in light of last year's world-wide racial-justice protests. August's large ensemble album also carried massive musical weight on its own.
But Schneider's every statement now virtually demands critical attention, not unlike John Coltrane and Miles Davis, avatars of the post-bop era. Data Lords revealed the fire, indignation and backbone of the music's leading composer-arranger, fully wielding her past mastery of scoring for jazz orchestra, like a woman warrior leading troops. And, yes, Delacroix's famous romantic painting "Liberty Leading the People," comes to mind. And no album had more great music in 2020 than hers. As an artist who records on a self-created label (ArtistShare) and distributes independently, 1 she's not only a self-made artist but extremely attuned to the role of "data lords," the gigantic online media companies (Google, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) that play a grossly outsize role in how we pursue and receive information on the Internet, and spend our money on cultural products or activity. In other words, Schneider asserts that they virtually lord over our lives because so many of us are now dominated by our involvement in online media.
The Grammy-winning composition "Sputnik" is part of the "protest" side of this two-CD recording, yet it retains the depth of textured and spiritual beauty that trademark her best work, while evoking a profound sense of angst and desolation. By nominally invoking a famous space travel vehicle, it suggests that we may need to travel to new realms far from "home" to regain truth, self-determination, sanity, freedom and societal-coherence – not overseen by the data lords. Here too, an allusion to the Underground Railroad and slavery hovers in the stratosphere. I suggest this not to equate the two, but to honor the cultural pervasiveness of that darkest chapter in this nation's history.
Such elevated praise might indicate that this is The Maria Schneider Show with musician munchkins. But she chooses her world-class players with Ellingtonian acumen (here, among others, Donny McCaslin, Rich Perry, Steve Wilson, Scott Robinson, Ryan Keberle, Gary Versace, Ben Monder, and the late Frank Kimbrough) and gives them many extended spotlights, which helps expand this to two discs, and there's hardly a moment of seeming filler.
And Schneider rewards listeners for the facing the sometimes-dissonant challenges of the first CD, "The Digital World," by reminding us of what she is fighting for, in "Our Natural World," the gloriously beautiful second disc. Another implication, in these juxtaposed titles, is that data lords' dominance affects our overall priorities and collective consciousness, perhaps to the detriment of addressing climate change, and the perils to the natural world.
Great art like Schneider's does its extraordinary work on its own terms, while reaching out to us, to some degree. The cultural covenant is completed when we respond as we will, which that art itself is not responsible for, and yet which reflects its sometimes-uncanny powers of evocation, provocation, and communication.
Thanks to Ann Braithwaite and her staff, of Braithwaite & Katz Communications for their superb, dedicated promotion of Schneider, and many other independent artists and labels over many years.
Posted in Culture Currents (Vernaculars Speak)	| Tagged Data Lords, Delacroix, Dialogues on Race, Donny McCaslin, Frank Kimbrough, Gary Versace, Gil Evans, Grammy Awards, Gregg August, John Coltrane, Maria Schneider, Miles Davis	| Leave a reply
Live Jazz in MKE: Peter Bernstein Organ Trio with Larry Goldings and The Avishai Cohen Quartet with Jason Lindner
Posted on April 25, 2016 by Kevin Lynch
Larry Goldings, Bill Stewart and Peter Bernstein have played together as a trio for over 20 years.
Apologies to readers: CC's headline was misleading regarding The Peter Bernstein Trio date. The trio played on April 19th, but not this week, as my previous headline suggested.
Guitarist Peter Bernstein's Organ Trio with Larry Goldings, organ and Bill Stewart on drums will perform Tuesday , Tuesday April 19, 8 p.m. at Shank Hall 1434 N. Farwell Ave ($20).
This hot, smart, very modern organ trio keeps a great jazz tradition cooking in the present. Golding burns, and stretches the organ as well as anybody today. Among Goldings' many credits is a monumental 2006 ECM recording called Saudade, with Trio Beyond, which included guitarist John Scofield and drummer Jack DeJohnette. The album and short-lived "supergroup" reinterpreted the music of the jazz fusion-pioneering Tony Williams Lifetime, which included John McLaughlin on guitar and Larry Young on organ, and ex-Miles Davis Quintet drummer Tony Williams.
Bernstein and Stewart are right there in the jazz pantheon, as players and leaders, deep in the pocket, swinging, but fearless. Bernstein has played extensively with Diana Krall, Dr. Lonnie Smith, and the late, great Milwaukee organist Melvin Rhyne.
Best of all, the Bernstein-Goldings-Stewart trio has played together for over 20 years.
Then, The Avishai Cohen Quartet with pianist-keyboardist Jason Lindner will play at Collectivo Back Room, 2211 North Prospect Ave., at 8:30 Saturday Apr. 30 on Prospect Ave. ($25)
I saw trumpeter Cohen in San Francisco with the SFJAZZ Collective in 2014, and he plays beautifully, at times like a wizard. The highly multi-cultural Israeli bandleader has played often with the Mingus Big Band and Mingus Dynasty, and also with the remarkable family band, The 3 Cohens Sextet with his sister, acclaimed clarinetist-saxophonist Anat Cohen, and brother, saxophonist Yuval Cohen.
Keyboardist Jason Lindner, a very inventive sonic experimenter, records with emerging sax giant Donny McCaslin, both of whom played on the late David Bowie's last album Blackstar, one of the hot topics in the recording industry these days.
Lindner is a repeat Down Beat Rising Star award poll winner, and in 2014, he topped the Electronics Player Of The Year category in The Jazz Journalists Association's annual poll. The Avishai Cohen Quartet includes Tal Maschiach on bass and Justin Brown on drums.
Kudos to East Side venues Shank Hall and Collectivo for picking up the slack for touring jazz artists, while The Jazz Estate on Murray Ave. is renovated for its re-opening in October, under new ownership.
For more information, and links to tickets for both concerts visit Milwaukee Jazz Vision.
If you scroll down briefly there, you will find full information on Avishai Cohen and his concert.
Peter Bernstein Organ Trio photo courtesy northcountrypublicradio.org.
Avishai Cohen photo courtesy jazzItalia.net
Posted in Culture Currents (Vernaculars Speak)	| Tagged : organ trio, Avishai Cohen, Bill Stewart, Collectivo Back Room, David Bowie, Donny McCaslin, Jason Lindner, Larry Goldings, Peter Bernstein Trio, SFJAZZ Collective, Shank Hall, Tony Williams Lifetime, Trio Beyond	| Leave a reply
Here's the results of an International Critics Music Poll, with Kevernacular's contribution
Never dove into "Moby-Dick?" Or contemplate a revisit? The annual New Year's marathon reading will quench the thirst
With your blogger's Hornet as "local color," "The Blues Brothers" is named to the Library of Congress National Film Registry
Happy new year to all CC readers in 2021, with a huge assist from Mike Neumeyer, one of my favorite musicians of the year
Artist Rockwell Kent followed Moby Dick to the ends of the earth
Kevin Lynch on Inside a real wild animal sanctuary
Kevin Lynch on Climber-skiier-banojist Bill Briggs redux and a correction
Kevin Lynch on Edward S. Curtis preserved America's Vanishing Race for Posterity
Caryn McaMcAndr on Edward S. Curtis preserved America's Vanishing Race for Posterity
Kevin Lynch on Talkin' 'bout The Who's generation?
With your blogger's Hornet as "local color," "The Blues Brothers" is named to the Library of Congress National Film Registry
Musing about Michael (Bloomfield), gone too soon, like so many
The late Cecil Taylor reconsidered and revisited: An interview from 1986
Add Jack Wepfer to the short list of sports writers who offer a historical cultural perspective
The Day the United States Hanged a Woman -- Mary Surratt
The late Nanci Griffith leaves a tender hole in American roots music
I remember "Dirty" Jack Covert, a man who could sell you any record and you'd almost always be thankful
Toni Morrison on Melville and the Language of Denial
A remarkable Mother's Day story of an unforgettable "Lady" and her gifted son, Arshile Gorky
"Milwaukee Rock and Roll" is a time machine, Part 2
keve2109
Kevernacular (Kevin Lynch) is a veteran, award-winning arts journalist, educator and visual artist. He is the author of "Voices in the River: The Jazz Message to Democracy." He won The Milwaukee Press Club's 2017 gold award for "Best Critical Review of the Arts" for the Culture Currents blog "Adolph Rosenblatt: A Great Eye, Gifted Hands, and a Huge Heart," an art retrospective exhibit at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee. He also won the gold award for the 2013 Culture Currents review, "Edward Curtis Preserved America's Vanishing Race for Posterity." Lynch was a long-time staff arts writer for The Capital Times in Madison and The Milwaukee Journal, where he was lead writer of a Pulitzer-nominated Newspapers in Education project called "That's Jazz," which was used in Milwaukee Public Schools and The Milwaukee Jazz Experience. Among other publications, he's written for Down Beat, No Depression Quarterly of Roots Music, and NoDepression.com, The Village Voice, The Chicago Tribune, New Art Examiner, Rain Taxi, American Record Guide, CODA (The Canadian jazz magazine), Wisconsin Natural Resources Magazine, Graven Images: A Journal of Culture, Law and the Sacred; The Shepherd Express, OnMilwaukee.com. Lynch has taught cultural journalism, English rhetoric and composition (while earning half of the credits for a PhD. in American Literature), and film studies. He's been a music program host for WLUM-FM and WMSE-FM in Milwaukee. Lynch is working on a novel about Herman Melville. He's also a visual artist and studied jazz piano and theory at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. He lives in Milwaukee.
Categories Select Category Culture Currents (Vernaculars Speak) (469)