Shola Emmanuel - Paris Recording Session

I awoke in the middle of the night to a rooster call from my fancy new hand phone, a call from an excited Shola Emmanuel announcing that he had just returned from a recording session in Paris. In the fog of sleep I couldn't catch too much detail, but in the morning I found a link to a professionally-produced YouTube video in my email. Here it is, kind of a chamber-jazz thing with a French rhythm section. I am promised that there is more to come; a new album is being mixed.

The musicians in the video are:

Shola Emmanuel : Alto Saxophone

Matteo Pastorino : Clarinet

Jean-Baptiste Pinet : Drums

Rafael Paseiro : Double Bass

Recorded at Bopcity Jazz-Studio, Paris, June 2014.
Other tunes were recorded at the same session with additional musicians and instruments:

Bertrand Beruard - Double Bass
Femi Paul - Alto Sax
Michèle-Anna Artiste - Vocals

Michael Williams - Drums

Johan Blanc - Trombone

Ruairidh - Bagpipe

Shola also played tenor sax, baritone sax, clarinet, trumpet, and piano.

In this day and age where every music school student has more recordings under his belt than some of the historic saxophone legends, I truly hope that Shola's European adventure gets  him some international exposure and leads to some gigs outside of Nigeria. He is one of the only contemporary Nigerian saxophonists playing original improvised music as well as music in the tradition of the Parker-Coltrane axis, swimming against the tide of crappy hip-hop and African MTV big-sunglass videos. I've known Shola for more than six years now and he was already introduced to me as "the best saxophonist in Abuja" on day one. I will update with more video and sound files as I get them.

Lee Konitz, Conversations on the Improviser’s Art

Just finished reading Andy Hamilton’s excellent book of interviews with and about 85-year-old alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, one of the few remaining survivors of Bird’s generation, who continues to create masterfully until this day. It is a good read all the way through and I heartily recommend it. Rather than review the book, since I am sure you can find reviews elsewhere on the net, I decided to post some of my favorite quotes from Lee. His prologue is a strong start: 

“I'm writing this after a trip to Vienna, and while I was there I had the opportunity to hear an Austrian tenor player, fifteen years old, who really played the instrument very well, and wowed the audience with his expertise. And a few days ago I heard an Italian alto player of the same age who was really unbelievably accomplished, instrumentally and musically – and he really got the audience shouting approval. When I was fifteen years old I was playing, but no one had really inspired me like these two guys have obviously been inspired. These two people were not aware, as of yet, of a true musical statement, without the sensationalism – something they will learn, we hope. 

…I never wowed an audience in my whole life like these young players did, so I can’t help but feel I've missed something. But in a more modest way I've been able to continue playing, in private and in public, with occasional comments from people after a concert telling me they like the way I played through the years.” 

On Charlie Parker: (Hamilton) At his peak, for a few years in the late 1940’s, Parker was probably the most phenomenal improviser jazz has ever seen. (Konitz) “Red Rodney was quoted as saying that he didn't think Bird knew the changes all that well! So I wonder. He certainly knew elementary harmony…” 

On Anthony Braxton: “Well, it’s the worst solo I've ever heard in my life, I think. I don’t know what his real intention is in doing this…I can’t stand his sound. I think it’s awful.” 

On practicing: “I haven’t read music for years. I don’t enjoy doing that too much.” 

On the sound of the saxophone: “Our sound has to do with our whole anatomy…We are the sound. When Charlie Parker borrowed my horn for a set at Birdland, to my complete astonishment, it no longer sounded familiar to me. It’s a most flexible instrument.” 

On perfect pitch: “No, I have imperfect pitch! Sometimes when things are right I can hear pretty accurately. But waking up in the morning and hitting a concert A or whatever, I have to think about that for a minute…Absolutely unsure – after all these years. That’s amazing!” 

Great stuff – go get the book and read more (yes, I know it is old school but some people still read books these days). Better yet, get out some Lee Konitz records and listen for a while.

Tribute to the Late Nigerian Saxophonist Dare Peter

Nigerian Saxophonist Dare Peter

Saxophonist Shola Emmanuel came down from Abuja to visit and we jammed for a quick hour before heading off to the New Africa Shrine to hear Femi Kuti. Shola and I hadn't seen each other in four years but it didn't seem to matter, either musically or in friendship. I was taking the opportunity to catch up on hap'nin's of some of our other musician mates in Abuja when I learned some shocking news: in Shola's words, Dare is no more.

Bandleader and saxophonist Dare Peter passed away last month after struggling with a long illness. I don't know Dare's exact age but he couldn't have yet reached 40. He came across as kind of a hard-nosed Rasta type with his dreadlocks and Rastaman hat, but that hard exterior was far from the full reality as Dare proved himself to be a musician of heart and integrity in the time I knew him.

Dare Peter and Ron Ashkin in Abuja, 2008

Back in 2008, I walked in to the legendary Elephant Bar in Abuja and heard Dare playing Sonny Rollins' Doxy on alto, supported by a great local rhythm section. He immediately invited me up on stage to join him (here is an audio track of us doing Doxy). That cemented a musical relationship for the rest of the year when I became his second saxophonist, playing tenor, and we played his regular Elephant Bar gig as well as going out to other venues like Silver Spoon and the Arts & Crafts Village. It was at Silver Spoon with Dare's band that I backed up Dede Mabiaku, not knowing at the time that Dede was Fela Kuti's protégé and famous throughout Nigeria. Someone in the audience dashed me a bottle of Champagne that night.

Dare was inclusive and accepting as a bandleader, giving me plenty of chance to stretch out and improvise as the ideas flowed; not competing with me, cutting me off, getting in the way, or making me feel like I was stepping on his toes. There were plenty of times where he gave me the feeling that I was being featured by the band and not just playing a supporting role. He had a repertoire that spanned from jazz to highlife to pop and often a set would progress through all three styles; I'd usually play the jazz opening set and the highlife closer but usually chose to sit out on a lot of the chick singer vocals. Playing with Dare really opened up my desire to perform.

As a musician, Dare had an easy facility on alto sax with a screaming altissimo. His signature tune was Grover Washington's Mr. Magic. Here is a video Dare playing Mr. Magic in 2008:

I've posted this before, but this time it is for posterity (more videos can be found here as well). I understand that Dare married soon after I left Nigeria and leaves behind his wife and young son. Dare Peter, Nigeria's Mr. Magic, rest in peace.

Another Great Has Passed - John Tchicai RIP

I'm almost afraid to read the jazz news this year. Heard yesterday that saxophonist John Tchicai has passed away in France at the age of 76. One more great I will never have the chance to see perform live. Not much in the press yet but here is an obit from the Washington Post. 

He was one of the creators of the so-called "New Thing" in the early 1960s and recorded on John Coltrane's seminal Ascension as well as with Albert Ayler (New York Eye and Ear Control), Archie Shepp (New York Contemporary Five) and Roswell Rudd (New York Art Quartet). Maybe the only European player to record with Trane (the media always noted how he was born in Denmark of a Danish mother and Congolese father). He was one of the few accomplished players who was equally adept on soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones. 

John Tchicai didn't sound like anyone else and there aren't any music schools teaching the John Tchicai style, so we will have to be satisfied with his recorded legacy (which is fairly prolific but all on smaller labels). It is the greatest compliment to say that a musician stayed true to his creative self for his entire career, and that can truthfully be said about John Tchicai. Rest in peace and we will continue to listen to the sounds you created while you were here. The sound is timeless.

Nice Photo from China House

This popped up on Facebook from our February 24 gig (seems like distant history now, all the more reason to record it). It is always nice to see things from another perspective. We do seem to be concentrating.

Adrian Jones, bass; Jackie Ashkin, alto sax; C.Y. Chee, guitar; Ron Ashkin, tenor sax.

Drummer James Peterson is hidden. Featuring the famous Keluar sign.

My Musical Biography, Part 4

A few months before college graduation I acquired a Mark 6 alto for $500 from a Berklee student who quit alto to concentrate on tenor – I didn’t get his name and wonder what famous player he is now? I still have it. My $150 Bundy went to Don Baker. I also acquired two horns from old guys in Terre Haute, the original owners who were big band players in their prime years – an all-original Buescher tenor which I still have right here next to me, and a perfect Selmer padless alto which had a reed in its case marked June 1, 1944. The Selmer owner was on his way out and said he held on to it as long as he could but wanted someone to play it who could appreciate it, so he was happy to sell it to me. That horn was stolen during one of our many wretched moves, which really hit me hard. I played the Buescher for the first time at the American Legion on Wabash Avenue in Terre Haute with Donn Armstrong’s band, Born Too Loose and Land of a Thousand Dances, where a big boxbelly spun her skinny duck’s-arsed tough-guy-shirt-wearin' husband around the dance floor while I honked na-na-na-na-na backed by Rod and Doug on 'bone.

Fast forward about 20 years…younger days jamming with friends (Aneurism Blues and Boxbelly Woman) but then a saxophone hiatus of about 15 years where my horns were in storage and we worked and travelled all around the world. Typical hooey of being too busy with career or whatever, because being a good horn player takes serious work. But I always loved the music and accumulated a massive CD collection…only to have it stolen in yet another wretched move. In that one our entire household disappeared, unbelievable. Come 2004 and working in Kazakhstan where it was deathly boring, I thought and thought about playing again rather than just passively listening. After about a year I eventually got off my duff and bought a clunky communist-era Czech-made Amati tenor from one of the office drivers who had played sax in the Soviet circus. At $350, it was the only horn in town. I took it down into the basement and from the moment I blew it, I wondered why I ever quit playing in the first place, and why I had dithered so long about playing rather than just picking up a horn and doing it. Something clicked and I’ve played pretty much every day since. Just lost 15 years in the process. I've since concentrated on playing tenor as the pitch range fits my hearing best, and it is complicated enough to play one horn relatively well, although lately I have been blowing a bit of alto just so I don’t totally lose it. When I started playing again I just wanted to play a few notes, a few phrases, in the mindspace of Sonny or Pres or any of the giants. After I played for a while that wasn’t enough and I found I could actually play the music, even if at a minor league level.