Bassist Ron Carter on Piano Jazz with Maria McPartland

Ron Carter first appeared on the national scene as a member of Miles Davis' second great quintet, which coalesced around the recording of Davis' album Seven Steps to Heaven. 

Carter has also worked with an unbelievable range of giants from inside and outside the world of jazz: from Coleman Hawkins, Chet Baker and Eric Dolphy to Aretha Franklin, Antonio Carlos Jobim and A Tribe Called Quest.

The session gets underway with a duet on "Blues in the Closet," written by bassist Oscar Pettiford. Carter holds down a steady bass line while Marian McPartland swings brightly through a solo; she then comps his bouncing solo with stabbing chords.

"His tunes are fun to play," McPartland says of Pettiford. "They've got a sort of cheerful vibe."

"It's a bass player writing for the instrument," Carter replies. "And anyone can play the tune and have a comfortable experience."

Carter and McPartland continue with a duet on "Stardust." Carter, who started out on cello in the Detroit public schools, brings a unique touch by leading the tune on bass as McPartland accompanies on the piano.

"It didn't sound rushed, and yet you played the whole verse and the whole chorus," McPartland says. "It sounded very romantic.

 

The session continues with a duet on another Oscar Pettiford tune, "Bohemia After Dark." McPartland follows with her solo rendition of Hoagy Carmichael's "New Orleans," which naturally leads in to another duet on the seminal New Orleans tune "Basin Street Blues."
"People put that tune in a certain category," McPartland says. "But it's nice the way you did that — you led me into doing things."
"One of the fun things about being a bass player is you can make those kinds of things happen," Carter says.
Next, McPartland plays another Piano Jazz signature — her solo musical portrait of the program's guest. The portrait she plays for Carter is both lyrical and playful, and evokes the understated beauty of the bass part in jazz.
"When one hears a musical portrait of oneself played so clearly and wonderfully as that you just played — it's a really humbling sound," Carter says. "Thank you very much."
They close with a duet on Miles Davis' iconic "So What," playing at a tempo somewhere between the steady original from the Kind of Blue sessions for Columbia and the breakneck pace of Davis' early-'60s quintet. 


McPartland sums up the tune and this session: "I bet Miles liked it."
Originally recorded June 20, 2006. Originally broadcast in 2007.

Set List

"Blues in the Closet" (Pettiford)

 "Stardust" (Carmichael, Parish)

"Bohemia After Dark" (Pettiford) 

 "New Orleans" (Carmichael) 

"Basin Street Blues" (Spenser) 

"Portrait of Ron Carter" (McPartland) 

"So What" (Davis)

Jack DeJohnette : One of Jazz Music's Greatest Drummers

Jack DeJohnette 

Bernard Ley Photography

Jack DeJohnette Site & Biography

Portrait Jack DeJohnette  Doc Pdf

The 2012 NEA Jazz Masters Awards Ceremony & Concert Webcast

Keith Jarrett by Henry Leutwyler & Bonus Tracks with Charlie Haden

Henry Leutwyler Photographer says:

"Keith Jarrett played a half hour private concert I photographed him in Pennsylvania 2010 I love my job."

After three decades without a collaboration, jazz legends Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden have teamed up for a new album called Jasmine. The piano-and-bass duo recorded Jasmine in Jarrett's studio in his New Jersey home — no bells, no whistles, just crystal-clear sound.

Haden and Jarrett seamlessly trade melodies back and forth in a sort of musical conversation, but Jarrett says it's much deeper than that.

"We're trying to find the dynamic — not exactly blend, but add the right color at the right moment based on what the other player is playing," he says.

On Jasmine, Jarrett plays an old, beat-up Steinway. He says that even though he has another piano to play, he always sits down at his practice instrument.

"I have a connection with it," he says. "It has its problems as far as evenness across the keyboard. It has some strange noises and inequities, but it's close to me."

During their recording sessions, Haden says, he heard the subtleties of the music in a way he'd never heard them before — the piano mallets striking the strings, and even his fingertips brushing upon his bass' strings.

"It's just incredible, the sounds that come out of the music, that are involved in the music," Haden says. "And it just shows you that it's really not about music. It's about the universe we're living in." Both Jarrett and Haden approach music similarly, with the same musical values, and that's why they say recording this album felt so natural. They channeled the standards in Jasmine, but also put a high premi
um on improvisation. "That's the thing about musicians," Haden says. "The priority is to create something new that's never been before. And you put your life on the line every time that you play."

Charlie Haden Site Link

Simple Regard : Le Pigeon de la Place Jean Moulin

Charles Mingus was a Powerful Bass Player Part I & Part II Biography & History of Jazz

Charles Mingus 1976- Bi Centenial, Lower Tom Marcello Photography Manhattan July 4, 1976

Charles Mingus: 'Fables of Bass,' Part 1

Photography by Hans Kumpf

Charles Mingus: 'Fables of Bass,' Part 2

Vertigineux!


In His Own Words – From "Beneath the Underdog"

 
"In other words I am three. One man stands forever in the middle, unconcerned, unmoved, watching, waiting to be allowed to express what he sees to the other two.
The second man is like a frightened animal that attacks for fear of being attacked.
Then there's an over-loving gentle person who lets people into the uttermost sacred temple of his being and he'll take insults and be trusting and sign contracts without reading them and get talked down to working cheap or for nothing, and when he realizes what's been done to him he feels like killing and destroying everything around him including himself for being so stupid. But he can't - he goes back inside himself.
Which one is real?
They're all real."


Mingus Charles Link "In His Own Words"


WHAT IS A JAZZ COMPOSER

OPEN LETTER TO MILES DAVIS

CHARLES MINGUS CAT TOILET TRAINING PROGRAM

BLINDFOLD TEST – DOWNBEAT MAGAZINE, 1960

MINGUS EXPLAINS SONG TITLES

THE TOWERS

  

Lisa Hannigan : Fraicheur & Esthétisme Irrésistible

Add ukulele to artfully thrown buckets of paint and you get a music video that could brighten anyone's gray day. You may have heard Irish singer-songwriter Lisa Hannigan performing alongside countryman Damien Rice prior to her decision to go solo. Her gorgeous voice can be heard all over her new album Passenger, which comes out Sept. 20. In the new music video for "Knots," Hannigan plays a white ukulele while being repeatedly sprayed, pelted and drizzled with wet, Crayola-colored paint. The result is both cringe-worthy and irresistible.

We asked Hannigan and director Myles O'Reilly to explain the inspiration and process behind the video:

Lisa Hannigan: The idea for this video was that the instruments would be played by paint (the drums are metallic spray cans, the strings are blue and green from above, the horns are orange) and would be flung at me in accordance with their part in the song. Up until the end, when everybody threw paint at me by the pint. We shot our one and only take in a front garden in Dublin, and we used three spray cans, four squeezy bottles, five water pistols and four buckets of poster paint — which, incidentally, tastes like wet chalk.

Director Myles O'Reilly: I was delighted when Lisa asked me to shoot a video for Passenger. I had been documenting performances and rehearsals for little diary clips on her site, and she liked my style, so it was an honor to be asked to shoot a proper promo vid. We both felt that the video had to be lighthearted, simple and loads of fun.

Lisa had the idea for "Knots" to have the band pelt choreographed paint at her. I do regret that I was the only one on set who didn't get that opportunity, my primary duty being to make sure the camera kept rolling! 

Lisa Hannigan in my Zenfolio Video -" Knots " & Favorite Photography by James Minchin

Dublin Valeria Magri Photography 2009

 

James Minchin Photography

Lisa Hannigan by James Minchin Photographer

Svetlana Zakharova Bolchoï Ballet by Henry Leutwyler for the New Yorker Magazine

Kyle Johnson PhotoFashion&VideoOrganisation

My buddy Cameron Rumford just put up his behind the scenes video from my Rowena Sartin shoot down in LA a few months back. Watching it puts a big smile on my face. You can tell how much fun we all had that day. Big thanks to my dear friend Swaan for modeling and for Katrina Thompson for styling.

Elite Amanda Schmidt by Kyle Johnson Photographer

Toots Thielemans Mood & Video

Jos Knaepen Photography

The federal government wants everyone to go online. Sputnik produced an internet video and a radio commercial with famous Belgian artist Toots Thielemans to support the action Start 2 Surf.

Toots Thielemans Harmonica Session Npr Piano Jazz

Jos Knaepen Photography Toots Thielemans

On this episode of Piano Jazz, harmonica icon Jean "Toots" Thielemans stops by for a session originally broadcast in 2005. To many ears, Thielemans is the first and last name in jazz harmonica. A virtuoso musician by any standard, his chromatic harmonica playing has appeared as a part of countless albums, films and television scores. Here, Thielemans joins host Marian McPartland for a set of standards, including "Stella By Starlight," "Body and Soul" and his own "Bluesette."
Thielemans was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1922. He began playing the accordion at age 3 and, as a child, often performed for the patrons at his parents' cafe. As a teenager, Thielemans took up the harmonica, and later the guitar.


Harmonica Hohner Mellow Tone&Hard Bopper

Thielemans was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1922. He began playing the accordion at age 3 and, as a child, often performed for the patrons at his parents' cafe. As a teenager, Thielemans took up the harmonica, and later the guitar.
The Thielemans family fled to France following the German occupation of Belgium in WWII, and it was there that Thielemans first heard big-band jazz. After the war, Thielemans returned to Brussels and began playing Django Reinhardt-inspired guitar in local bars with the likes of Edith Piaf and Stephane Grappelli. With the growing popularity of bebop, he returned to the harmonica and began working out the complex patterns he'd heard in the playing of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.
Thielemans got his big break in 1950 when he joined Benny Goodman's band on its European tour. Two years later, he moved to the U.S. and quickly found work alongside groups such as Charlie Parker's All Stars and the George Shearing Quintet. Thielemans worked with Shearing's group for much of the 1950s, while also releasing albums under his own name.


 


Thielemans' biggest hit, "Bluesette," was recorded in 1961. A year later, he recorded "Moon River" for the film Breakfast at Tiffany's, which kicked off a string of successful appearances on film soundtracks such as The Wiz, Funny About Love and Midnight Cowboy. Thielemans' harmonica was also heard in the opening theme song to Sesame Street, and his whistling appeared on a widely recognized Old Spice commercial.
A perennial winner of Downbeat's reader polls and other critics' polls, Thielemans is well regarded by the many diverse musicians with whom he's performed and recorded. He's backed vocalists from Ella Fitzgerald to Natalie Cole to Billy Joel, and has performed with instrumentalists from Bill Evans to Jaco Pastorius to Brazilian guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves. Thielemans also had an unwitting influence on rock 'n' roll: While he was playing a regular gig in Hamburg, Germany, in 1959, John Lennon and George Harrison would often stop by and were taken by Thielemans' use of the short-scale Rickenbacker guitar. Lennon bought one, and its jangly sound became a hallmark of The Beatles' early recordings.
Thielemans was made an NEA Jazz Master in 2009, and that same year he performed at the centennial celebration of the birth of Django Reinhardt. Theilemans continues to record and perform regularly.





Mellow Harmonica Hohner


Link for full discussion&HohnerSound

Set List

• "Stella by Starlight" (Washington, Young)
• "Body and Soul" (Green, Heyman, Sour)
• "Lullaby of Birdland" (Shearing)
• "Georgia" (Carmichael)
• "In the Days of Our Love" (McPartland, Lee)
• "Maybe September" (Evans, Faith, Livingston)
• "Giant Steps" (Coltrane)
• "The Nearness of You" (Carmichael, Washington)
• "Bluesette" (Gimbel, Thielemans)

14 Juillet Cocarde & Joie Bouscataise