Friday, September 8th, 2006 ... 3:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

This was the week that Dewey Redman passed away. For those not familiar, Redman (dad to Joshua Redman), age 75, was a "expansive and poetic tenor saxophonist," as the New York Times put it. Depending on your jazz background, he's best known either for playing with Ornette Coleman circa 1970 or for being part of Keith Jarrett's greatest (IMHO) period, when Jarrett led a quartet including Redman for a string of excellent albums on ABC/Impulse, and the gorgeous, unique "Survivors Suite" on ECM.

Anyway, I was regretting that I wouldn't have the time to devote to a small tribute. My show was being cut off at 4:30 due to sports, and given that I feel some responsibility to play the artists who are in rotation, that wouldn't leave enough time for Dewey.

Turns out sports screwed up the time-zone thing, as they often do, and I ended up with a full show anyway. Discovering this during the course of the show, I scrambled to grab Dewey tracks for airplay -- some of his solo albums, which we've got on vinyl and CD, some Jarrett, and Pat Metheny's 80/81, one of his best albums, showing off Metheny's Ornette Coleman influences. Also grabbed an Ornette album that included Dewey -- thank goodness we had some of that on vinyl! The one thing that didn't occur to me was Old and New Dreams, the Ornette tribute band that included Dewey, Charlie Haden, and other Ornette players.

It all came out well, I'm glad to say, and it felt good to give Dewey a proper sendoff. You'll find a couple of good obituaries here and here.

Format:
ARTIST -- "TRACK TITLE" -- ALBUM TITLE (LABEL, YEAR)

* Achim Kaufman, Michael Moore, Dylan Van der Schyff -- "Kopfspinnennetz" -- Kamosc (Red Toucan, 2006)

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

Long-standing British improv group, here presenting a single 40-minute piece. I played just the opening minutes but will probably make way for the entire piece at some point, as I did with the recent Alex Von Schlippenbach release on Slam.

Piano trio stuff that reminds me a bit of Keith Jarrett. With William Parker on bass; she's likewise appeared on his piano trio disc, Luc's Lantern. Very accessible stuff. This track is at once dark and pretty, with a spare feel that blended well with the slowdown that ended the Mujician excerpt before it. But it's not representative of this album overall, which includes a Cole Porter tune and a nicely rambling jazz figure based on a Japanese folk song.

A mostly local improv group, with Gail Brand (trombone; from the UK), Tim Perkis (electronics), Gino Robair (percussion), John Shiurba (guitar) and the late Matthew Sperry (contrabass). Every track on the CD has the name of a supermodel repeated twice.

Gino Robair started the band when he got intrigued by Brand's playing with improv group Lunge. She visited from the UK, and Gino set up a session with this permutation of folks to see what would happen. The Wire says the session "confirms Robair's standing as an improv giant." Go Gino!

Shimmering, lovely soundscapes -- kind of boring, frankly, but it made for a good segue from Supermodel² into the crankier improv of:

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

An improv that features plenty of Donald Robinson's light, deft drum rolls, a staple of his excellent free-jazz playing style. He's an underrecognized asset to the local scene. More info on the CD here.

Previously noted here. This track shows off composer Andrew Durkin's penchant for mixing styles, as it goes from a cinematic intro to danceable R&B to a slow parody of "Pomp and Circumstance" to fast free-jazz trio stuff.

Noted here.

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

Kicking off the Dewey Redman tribute...

On glorious vinyl, featuring Dewey playing an African reed whose name escapes me. Demonstrating some of the breadth of his recorded material; less conventional tracks like this one would make their way onto the Jarrett albums as well.

As Metheny was becoming famous for his new age/fusion style, he was also trying to show off some of his free-jazz interests, particularly Ornette Coleman's music. That would culminate in the classic Song X album with Ornette, but before that, Metheny did 80/81, which featured a couple of Ornette compositions and some clearly Ornette-influenced tracks like this one. Dewey Redman and Michael Brecker shared sax duties on the album, duetting on a couple of pieces. This is the album's only track that features Dewey by himself.

The album title, by the way, has nothing to do with the release year. It's from the same source as the Yes album 90125.

A quiet, slow song that I picked because it includes Dewey reciting some poetry. This track closed out the first Dewey set and made for a really nice tribute.

On vinyl. Coleman and Redman each take a solo, and it's pretty easy to tell which is which. Must have been awesome to see them together.

Previously noted here. Yes, by total coincidence, Dewey's son's record was in rotation this week. So, I had to trot this one out -- it's a great track (as noted in the link) and brings things full circle, or more like fully-tangled-figure-8-shape, by having Joshua cover an Ornette tune. Jazz is like that; you get these nexuses (nexi?) of interrelated parts, like in the Martin Scorcese film After Hours.

This Jarrett quartet (with Charlie Haden, bass, and Paul Motian, drums) did some crisp modern-bop work on a series of terrific albums around this time. But each album also includes a weird experimental track like this one, which has some odd nasal reed instruments and strange percussion. Like avant-world jazz. It's the kind of stuff that's a great fit with my usual show, actually, so I had to toss in one of those tracks.

Same quartet, in the more conventional bop-derived style that dominated their albums. Great stuff, and IMHO more substantial, more nourishing, than Jarrett's solo piano work.

Appropos nothing, I closed out the show with this heartbreaking traditional folk song done up by the exciting local group Charming Hostess. This CD was recorded circa 1999, when Charming Hostess was a six-piece that included members of what's now Sleepytime Gorilla Museum; leader Jewlia Eisenberg has since rekindled C.H., concentrating on the trio of vocals that was always its core -- see here.

* = Item in KZSU rotation
! = Pop anomaly
? = Item not in KZSU library
# = Dewey Redman tribute

-- Go back to Memory Select playlists.
-- Bay Area free/improv music calendar: http://www.bayimproviser.com.