This guy is in high school.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
713 to 212
January 16, 2011
Houston’s Jazz Stars, Celebrated in TriBeCa
By BEN RATLIFF
In music circles, around the turn of the new century, the phrase “from Houston” started to mean something by consensus. Not just in hip-hop and R&B — that was the time of Swishahouse Records, DJ Screw, UGK and Destiny’s Child — but, strangely enough, in jazz.
Beginning at that time Jason Moran, the pianist from Houston’s Third Ward who’d moved to New York in 1993, was getting around all kinds of normative ideas about jazz style and repertory, but he didn’t isolate himself from the jazz tradition. He swiped inspiration from all over the place — visual art, film, the music of spoken conversation in foreign languages — but also played with Greg Osby and Sam Rivers and Charles Lloyd and Wayne Shorter. He was having it both ways. If asked what formed him, he’d talk about his teachers, and that would lead him to talk about Houston and the school he attended for three years there: the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
Then, in a steady rollout, you noticed other young musicians from that same school, most of whom had studied with the same teacher, Robert Morgan. The drummers Eric Harland, Kendrick Scott, Chris Dave and Jamire Williams. The trombonist Corey King. The guitarist Mike Moreno. The pianists Robert Glasper and Helen Sung. The trumpeters Leron Thomas and Brandon Lee. The bassists Burniss Earl Travis and Mark Kelley and Marcos Varela. If you looked a little beyond jazz, you saw Josh Mease and Alan Hampton, putting crazy chord sequences into something like folk-pop, and Bryan-Michael Cox, who was writing and producing for R&B stars.
All but one of them came to the 92nd Street Y’s TriBeCa branch on Friday and Saturday nights for an event organized by Mr. Moran called “713 to 212: Houstonians in NYC.” (The exception was Mr. Cox, scheduled to participate but unable to make it out of Atlanta in time.) Dr. Morgan, affable and energetic, was there too, talking in a preconcert panel discussion on Saturday. So were some Houston players of older generations: the tenor saxophonist Billy Harper, the trombonist Ku-umba Frank Lacy, the drummer Michael Carvin, the trumpeter Tex Allen, the guitarist Melvin Sparks.
Night 1 revolved around singer-songwriters, backed by Houston rhythm sections, and Night 2 around jazz, both existing bands and throw-togethers. Every set worked in a cover of a song by a Houston artist, and so Mr. Williams’s band played “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” by the Geto Boys. Mr. Thomas’s played Johnny Guitar Watson’s “Superman Lover.” Mr. Scott’s played Archie Bell and the Drells’ “Tighten Up.” Mr. Hampton’s reimagined ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man” as a pained and beautiful meditation with a lot of extra chords inside it. You get the idea: imagination at work, genre no object.
They were sophisticated and totally joyous concerts, for a bunch of reasons. Mr. Moran — who won a MacArthur Fellowship last year — thinks across cultural lines without fussing or explaining overmuch, and he didn’t turn the concerts into a celebration of himself. Civic pride suffused the room. People kept shouting, “Third Ward!” The crowd was completely mixed, in age as well as race and sex and taste. It was a reunion, which brings its own momentum. And because the common denominator was not just a city or a school but also one specific teacher, you sensed respect. Nobody acted jaded. Nobody acted glib. No one’s ego ran rampant. This wasn’t just another gig.
Some very good music went down. On Night 1 Mr. Thomas — trumpeter, singer, composer and almost comedian — sang wordy, needling songs about sex and insecurities and character flaws, yelling out private jokes wherever possible. Intermittently hilarious, his set fishtailed through jazz and rock and funk; he hasn’t found his cult just yet, but with more songs like “Roll Play,” he might. And Mr. Mease, who seems to love the intimacy and chord changes in Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson’s work, made his case with music that kept alternately settling you and waking up your ear through harmony.
The second night ran longer, its overall sound more focused by working bands. The older musicians held down the first hour, with loud, dramatic solos by Mr. Lacy and Mr. Carvin jumping out in relief. Later, in two separate sets, the drummers and bandleaders Mr. Scott and Mr. Williams brought different views of jazz.
Mr. Scott is plugged into New York jazz’s high-level mainstream, and his band, Oracle, sounds sturdy and ready for the big leagues. It pulls toward two far-apart energies, between Mr. Glasper’s jabs and murmurs and Mr. Moreno’s steady, Pat Metheny-like tone and calm phrasing; Mr. Scott’s attention and cool balance hold it together. Mr. Williams’s group, Erimaj — which includes the singer Chris Turner — starts from a more fractured and funk-oriented place: in it you can clearly hear the desire to replicate, in real time and through improvisation, a producer’s sampled repetitions, a D.J.’s abrupt crossfades and the wounded or ecstatic falsettos of gospel and R&B.
Toward the end of Saturday night, pushing past 1 o’clock, with listeners and musicians all a little dizzy, the most intense and mysterious music rose up. Mr. Moran and Mr. Glasper faced each other across the stage, switching between acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes electric piano; accompanying them were Mr. Hampton on bass and Mr. Dave and Mr. Harland on side-by-side drum kits. For about 40 minutes they played nonstop, drums and bass making a thick braid of clicking, limping, swinging, lurching rhythm, the pianists passing back and forth kernels of melody. It was shattering and fascinating, emotional without any words, and the kind of thing that could be made only by people whose lives had been crisscrossing for a long time.
Houston’s Jazz Stars, Celebrated in TriBeCa
By BEN RATLIFF
In music circles, around the turn of the new century, the phrase “from Houston” started to mean something by consensus. Not just in hip-hop and R&B — that was the time of Swishahouse Records, DJ Screw, UGK and Destiny’s Child — but, strangely enough, in jazz.
Beginning at that time Jason Moran, the pianist from Houston’s Third Ward who’d moved to New York in 1993, was getting around all kinds of normative ideas about jazz style and repertory, but he didn’t isolate himself from the jazz tradition. He swiped inspiration from all over the place — visual art, film, the music of spoken conversation in foreign languages — but also played with Greg Osby and Sam Rivers and Charles Lloyd and Wayne Shorter. He was having it both ways. If asked what formed him, he’d talk about his teachers, and that would lead him to talk about Houston and the school he attended for three years there: the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
Then, in a steady rollout, you noticed other young musicians from that same school, most of whom had studied with the same teacher, Robert Morgan. The drummers Eric Harland, Kendrick Scott, Chris Dave and Jamire Williams. The trombonist Corey King. The guitarist Mike Moreno. The pianists Robert Glasper and Helen Sung. The trumpeters Leron Thomas and Brandon Lee. The bassists Burniss Earl Travis and Mark Kelley and Marcos Varela. If you looked a little beyond jazz, you saw Josh Mease and Alan Hampton, putting crazy chord sequences into something like folk-pop, and Bryan-Michael Cox, who was writing and producing for R&B stars.
All but one of them came to the 92nd Street Y’s TriBeCa branch on Friday and Saturday nights for an event organized by Mr. Moran called “713 to 212: Houstonians in NYC.” (The exception was Mr. Cox, scheduled to participate but unable to make it out of Atlanta in time.) Dr. Morgan, affable and energetic, was there too, talking in a preconcert panel discussion on Saturday. So were some Houston players of older generations: the tenor saxophonist Billy Harper, the trombonist Ku-umba Frank Lacy, the drummer Michael Carvin, the trumpeter Tex Allen, the guitarist Melvin Sparks.
Night 1 revolved around singer-songwriters, backed by Houston rhythm sections, and Night 2 around jazz, both existing bands and throw-togethers. Every set worked in a cover of a song by a Houston artist, and so Mr. Williams’s band played “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” by the Geto Boys. Mr. Thomas’s played Johnny Guitar Watson’s “Superman Lover.” Mr. Scott’s played Archie Bell and the Drells’ “Tighten Up.” Mr. Hampton’s reimagined ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man” as a pained and beautiful meditation with a lot of extra chords inside it. You get the idea: imagination at work, genre no object.
They were sophisticated and totally joyous concerts, for a bunch of reasons. Mr. Moran — who won a MacArthur Fellowship last year — thinks across cultural lines without fussing or explaining overmuch, and he didn’t turn the concerts into a celebration of himself. Civic pride suffused the room. People kept shouting, “Third Ward!” The crowd was completely mixed, in age as well as race and sex and taste. It was a reunion, which brings its own momentum. And because the common denominator was not just a city or a school but also one specific teacher, you sensed respect. Nobody acted jaded. Nobody acted glib. No one’s ego ran rampant. This wasn’t just another gig.
Some very good music went down. On Night 1 Mr. Thomas — trumpeter, singer, composer and almost comedian — sang wordy, needling songs about sex and insecurities and character flaws, yelling out private jokes wherever possible. Intermittently hilarious, his set fishtailed through jazz and rock and funk; he hasn’t found his cult just yet, but with more songs like “Roll Play,” he might. And Mr. Mease, who seems to love the intimacy and chord changes in Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson’s work, made his case with music that kept alternately settling you and waking up your ear through harmony.
The second night ran longer, its overall sound more focused by working bands. The older musicians held down the first hour, with loud, dramatic solos by Mr. Lacy and Mr. Carvin jumping out in relief. Later, in two separate sets, the drummers and bandleaders Mr. Scott and Mr. Williams brought different views of jazz.
Mr. Scott is plugged into New York jazz’s high-level mainstream, and his band, Oracle, sounds sturdy and ready for the big leagues. It pulls toward two far-apart energies, between Mr. Glasper’s jabs and murmurs and Mr. Moreno’s steady, Pat Metheny-like tone and calm phrasing; Mr. Scott’s attention and cool balance hold it together. Mr. Williams’s group, Erimaj — which includes the singer Chris Turner — starts from a more fractured and funk-oriented place: in it you can clearly hear the desire to replicate, in real time and through improvisation, a producer’s sampled repetitions, a D.J.’s abrupt crossfades and the wounded or ecstatic falsettos of gospel and R&B.
Toward the end of Saturday night, pushing past 1 o’clock, with listeners and musicians all a little dizzy, the most intense and mysterious music rose up. Mr. Moran and Mr. Glasper faced each other across the stage, switching between acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes electric piano; accompanying them were Mr. Hampton on bass and Mr. Dave and Mr. Harland on side-by-side drum kits. For about 40 minutes they played nonstop, drums and bass making a thick braid of clicking, limping, swinging, lurching rhythm, the pianists passing back and forth kernels of melody. It was shattering and fascinating, emotional without any words, and the kind of thing that could be made only by people whose lives had been crisscrossing for a long time.
Golden Globes
The score from The Social Network won the golden globe over the score from Inception. The Inception score is way better (in my opinion) and can make every movie better... even Toy Story 3!
On another note, another classic comes from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. At first you won't recognize it, but skip to the 3:44 mark and you will know EXACTLY what I am talking about!
As for my theory about high body count/bullets = no oscar, I was wrong. See The Departed (2006) and Crash (2005)
On another note, another classic comes from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. At first you won't recognize it, but skip to the 3:44 mark and you will know EXACTLY what I am talking about!
As for my theory about high body count/bullets = no oscar, I was wrong. See The Departed (2006) and Crash (2005)
Saturday, January 15, 2011
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