Jazz Festivals

Tuesday 1/7/2019 Show: Winter Jazz Fest/James Blood Ulmer

Photo:  James Blood Ulmer at the 19th Annual Vision Festival | Credit: Joyce Jones/Sugabowl Photography.

Program note: We’re back on air for our final show on WBAI Radio!

The next show will air on Tuesday January 7, 2019 from 10:00 PM – 12 Midnight Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast will feature a 2016 rebroadcast of an interview with composer, guitarist and Harmolodic Blues man James Blood Ulmer, who is one of the artists lined up to be featured during the 2020 Winter Jazz Festival on January 11 along with the super ensemble Harriet Tubman. This will be our FINAL Suga’ broadcast over WBAI-FM.

James “Blood” Ulmer is one of the few exceptions — an outside guitarist who has forged a style based largely on the traditions of African-American vernacular music. Ulmer is an adherent of saxophonist/composer Ornette Coleman’s vaguely defined Harmolodic theory, which essentially subverts jazz’s harmonic component in favor of freely improvised, non-tonal, or quasi-modal counterpoint. Ulmer plays with a stuttering, vocalic attack; his lines are frequently texturally and chordally based, inflected with the accent of a soul-jazz tenor saxophonist. That’s not to say his sound is untouched by the rock tradition — the influence of Jimi Hendrix on Ulmer is strong — but it’s mixed with blues, funk, and free jazz elements. The resultant music is an expressive, hard-edged, loudly amplified hybrid that is, at its best, on a level with the finest of the Harmolodic school.

Ulmer began his career playing in funk bands, first in Pittsburgh (1959-1964) and later around Columbus, OH (1964-1967). Ulmer spent four years in Detroit before moving to New York in 1971. He landed a nine-month gig at the famed birthplace of bop, Minton’s Playhouse, and played very briefly with Art Blakey. In 1973, he recorded with the ex-John Coltrane drummer Rashied Ali and his Quintet on the Survival label. That same year, he hooked up with Ornette Coleman, whose concept affected Ulmer’s music thereafter. The guitarist’s recordings from the late ’70s and early ’80s exhibit a unique take on his mentor’s aesthetic. His blues and rock-tinged art was, if anything, more raw and aggressive than Coleman’s free jazz and funk-derived music (a reflection, no doubt, of Ulmer’s chosen instrument), but no less compelling from either an intellectual or an emotional standpoint. In 1981, Ulmer led the first of three record dates for Columbia, which helped to expose his music to a wider public. Around this time Ulmer began an association with tenor saxophonist David Murray, bassist Amin Ali, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. As the Music Revelation Ensemble, this intermittent assemblage (with various other members added and subtracted) would produce a number of intense, free-blowing albums over a span of almost two decades.

Ulmer’s work has varied in quality over the years. In 1987, with the cooperative group Phalanx (George Adams, tenor sax; Sirone, bass; and Rashied Ali, drums), Ulmer drew successfully on the free jazz expressionism that made his name. His ’90s recordings with the Music Revelation Ensemble showed him still capable of playing convincingly in that vein.

Blood dug deeply into an investigation of the blues as the century turned. First he recorded Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions with guitarist Veron Reid both performing and producing. The album also starred veteran Ulmer sideman Charles Burnham on violin. In 2003, Ulmer issued No Escape From the Blues, recorded at Electric Lady studio. A thoroughly psychedlic funky take on the genre, Reid and Burnham were present in the same roles once more, and old friend Olu Dara stopped in to contribute as well. In 2005, Blood released Birthright, on Joel Dorn’s Hyena label. It is easily his most intimate recording. Completely solo in the studio (Reid once again produced), it contains ten orignals and two covers of classic reportoire and takes Blood’s blues journey to an entirely new level.

(Bio adapted from Allmusic.)

James Blood Ulmer will take the stage at the Winter Jazz Festival on Saturday, January 11, with doors opening at 7:00 p.m. at the Sultan Room, 234 Starr Street, Brooklyn. Follow our blog for a preview and additional Winter Jazz Fest coverage.

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Web Extra:

Watch Ulmer in this 2019 live performance with bassist Bill Laswell!

Tuesday 7/2/2019 Show: Alphonse Mouzon

Photo: Alphone Mouzon | © Guido Nardi/ Flickr.

Program note: we’re in a new weekly Tuesday night slot from 10-12 midnight!

The next show will air on Tuesday July 2, 2019 from 10:00 PM – 12 Midnight Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of the program will memorialize Chairman/CEO of Tenacious Records, composer, arranger, producer, drummer, multi-instrumentalist and actor Alphonse Mouzon.

Alphonse Mouzon (who was an African American mixed with French and Blackfoot Indian) was born on November 21st in Charleston, South Carolina. He attended Bonds-Wilson High School where he received his early musical training under the direction of saxophonist high school music teacher Lonnie Hamilton III, and took some drum lessons from Charles Garner before playing gigs with the Lonnie Hamilton Band. Following graduation from high school, he moved to New York to study music and drama at New York City College and medicine at Manhattan Medical School. Mouzon took drum lessons from jazz pianist Billy Taylor’s drummer Bobby Thomas. While attending college, Alphonse played in the pit band of the Broadway show “PROMISES, PROMISES” after being recommended by Bobby Thomas. MOUZON also worked as a medical technologist at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital after graduating from Manhattan Medical School. However his medical career was short lived.

Alphonse Mouzon’s musical associations read like a veritable Who’s Who of Modern Jazz and Pop Music. His talents cover a broad range of musical disciplines and philosophies. He was the rhythmic foundation for the far reaching musical explorations of pianist McCoy Tyner. He was a charter member along with keyboardist Joe Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, of the group Weather Report. Along with guitarist Larry Coryell, MOUZON was co-founder of The Eleventh House, the seminal fusion band of the seventies. Mouzon and Coryell continued to tour together in a trio and with the Eleventh House.

Alphonse Mouzon’s name can be found in just about every Jazz Encyclopedia/ Dictionary, and is listed the 2nd edition of Marquis Who’s Who In Entertainment and Who’s Who In The World. MOUZON was voted the #2 BEST MULTI-INSTRUMENTALIST in the 1995 Jazziz Magazine Annual Readers Poll.

As it was stated at his website: “Alphonse is a Christian and always has been a believer in Christ and the Almighty, Omnipotent God! Mouzon was a Prostate Cancer survivor who recommends that every man over 35 years old have a PSA blood test done to make sure cancer is not present. Early detection is a lifesaver!”

Alphonse Mouzon left the Earth on December 25, 2016.

(Bio excerpted and adapted from All About Jazz.)

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Web Extras:

Watch Mouzon and the legendary bassist Jaco Pastorious in this live clip.

Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman College in the City University of New York system.

Tuesday 6/18/2019 Show: Andrew Cyrille, Part 2

Photo: Andrew Cyrille | © Joyce Jones/ Suga Bowl Photography. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons CC-NC-BY-ND. Used with Permission.

Program note: we’re in a new weekly Tuesday night slot from 10-12 midnight!

The next show will air on Tuesday June 18, 2019 from 10:00 PM – 12 Midnight Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. As promised, we offer part two of an interview with composer, drummer/percussionist and this year’s Vision Festival Lifetime of Achievement honoree Andrew Cyrille. Part two of this conversation will pick up on Mr. Cyrille’s career after working with Cecil Taylor.

Andrew Cyrille, born in Brooklyn on November 10, 1939, studied with Philly Joe Jones in 1958 and then spent the first half of the 1960s studying in New York at Juilliard and the Hartnett School of Music. At the same time, he was performing with jazz artists ranging from Mary Lou Williams, Coleman Hawkins, and Illinois Jacquet to Kenny Dorham, Freddie Hubbard, Walt Dickerson, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, among others. He also played with Nigerian drummer Babtunde Olatunji and worked with dancers. In 1964 he formed what would prove to be an eleven-year association with Cecil Taylor, a gig that brought him new acclaim and established him in the vanguard of jazz drumming.

Starting in 1969, Cyrille played in a number of percussion groups with notable drummers including Kenny Clarke, Milford Graves, Don Moye, Rashied Ali, Daniel Ponce, Michael Carvin, and Vladimir Tarasov. Cyrille formed his group Maono (“feelings”) in 1975, with its fluid membership dictated by the forces his compositions called for rather than vice versa. Since leaving Taylor’s group, he has also worked with such top-flight peers as David Murray, Muhal Richard Abrams, Mal Waldron, Horace Tapscott, James Newton, and Oliver Lake, was the drummer on Billy Bang’s A Tribute to Stuff Smith (Soul Note 121216), notable for being the last studio session of Sun Ra.

An artist-in-residence and teacher at Antioch College (Yellow Springs, Ohio) from 1971 to 1973, Cyrille has also taught at the Graham Windham Home for Children in New York and is currently a faculty member at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

(Bio excerpted and adapted from Drummer World.)

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Web Extras:

Watch Cyrille with Kidd Jordan and William Parker at the 2003 Vision Festival.

Watch Cyrille with Haitian Fascination at the 2017 NYC Winter Jazz Festival.

Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman College in the City University of New York system.

Tuesday 6/4/2019 Show: Vision 24 with Andrew Cyrille

Photo: Andrew Cyrille | © Joyce Jones/ Suga Bowl Photography. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons CC-NC-BY-ND. Used with Permission.

Program note: we’re in a new weekly Tuesday night slot from 10-12 midnight! We’re back to our regular schedule following WBAI’s Spring Fund Drive.

The next show will air on Tuesday June 4, 2019 from 10:00 PM – 12 Midnight Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast will kick off our coverage of Vision 24 with part one of an interview with composer and drummer/percussionist Andrew Cyrille. This is the first part of two conversations. This conversation will focus on Mr. Cyrille’s career up to his time with Cecil Taylor.

Andrew Cyrille, born in Brooklyn on November 10, 1939, studied with Philly Joe Jones in 1958 and then spent the first half of the 1960s studying in New York at Juilliard and the Hartnett School of Music. At the same time, he was performing with jazz artists ranging from Mary Lou Williams, Coleman Hawkins, and Illinois Jacquet to Kenny Dorham, Freddie Hubbard, Walt Dickerson, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, among others. He also played with Nigerian drummer Babtunde Olatunji and worked with dancers. In 1964 he formed what would prove to be an eleven-year association with Cecil Taylor, a gig that brought him new acclaim and established him in the vanguard of jazz drumming.

Starting in 1969, Cyrille played in a number of percussion groups with notable drummers including Kenny Clarke, Milford Graves, Don Moye, Rashied Ali, Daniel Ponce, Michael Carvin, and Vladimir Tarasov. Cyrille formed his group Maono (“feelings”) in 1975, with its fluid membership dictated by the forces his compositions called for rather than vice versa. Since leaving Taylor’s group, he has also worked with such top-flight peers as David Murray, Muhal Richard Abrams, Mal Waldron, Horace Tapscott, James Newton, and Oliver Lake, was the drummer on Billy Bang’s A Tribute to Stuff Smith (Soul Note 121216), notable for being the last studio session of Sun Ra.

An artist-in-residence and teacher at Antioch College (Yellow Springs, Ohio) from 1971 to 1973, Cyrille has also taught at the Graham Windham Home for Children in New York and is currently a faculty member at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

(Bio excerpted and adapted from Drummer World.)

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Andrew Cyrille is getting a lifetime achievement award at the opening night of the week-long 2019 Vision Festival on June 11 at Roulette in downtown Brooklyn and will be part of eight—yes, eight—different ensembles that night. Vision starts with  film screenings on June 9 at Anthology Film Archives then moves to Roulette for nightly sets from June 11-16. See the full schedule at their website.

Web Extras:

Watch Cyrille with Kidd Jordan and William Parker at the 2003 Vision Festival.

Watch Cyrille with Haitian Fascination at the 2017 NYC Winter Jazz Festival.

Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman College in the City University of New York system.

Sunday 1/7/2018 Show: Winter Jazz Fest / Fay Victor

Photo: Fay Victor @ Vision Festival 21, 6/10/16 | © Joyce Jones/ Suga Bowl Photography. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons CC-NC-BY-ND. Used with Permission.

The next show will air on Sunday, January 7, 2018 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast is our third (and last) 2018 Winter Jazz Festival preview program and focuses on improvising vocalist, composer, lyricist and educator Fay Victor.

Called “artistically complete” by the New York Times and “a thrilling improviser” by Downbeat magazine, Fay Victor consistently hones a unique vision of the vocalist’s role in jazz and improvised music. Victor’s eight critically acclaimed recordings as a leader since the late 90’s has seen praise in venerable media outlets such as Downbeat, JazzTimes, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, The Wire, Signal to Noise, Popmatters.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out Chicago, The Chicago Reader, The New York City Jazz Record and JazzWise (UK). Victor’s long standing group, the Fay Victor Ensemble – an expansive and cohesive mix of jazz, rock, blues, new music and free improvisation – released three albums to huge critical acclaim (2009’s The FreeSong Suite made it onto numerous year-end lists including The Village Voice, NPR and Popmatters.com). The experimental blues project The Exposed Blues Duo, with FVE guitarist Anders Nilsson delving deep into a variety of blues forms released Bare in 2010. There is Herbie Nichols SUNG, Victor’s homage to the unsung be-bop pianist incorporating Victor’s lyrics and arrangements in a quintet and trio format. The trio project has been recorded and currently looking for label support for release and 2018 will see Victor release Wet Robots on ESP-DISK, a brand new vehicle for fresh sounds and improvisational approaches in a group called SoundNoiseFUNK.

In addition to Victor’s band-leading vehicles on record, her voice has attracted esteemed ensembles including Other Dimensions in Music (ODIM), the perennial free jazz outfit joined forces with Victor for 2011’s Kaiso Stories on Silkheart Records in 2011, lauded for its impressive fusion of Calypso, the music of Trinidad & Tobago and home to Victor’s cultural roots, with free jazz. The legendary and longstanding Dutch outfit, the Instant Composer’s Pool Orkest (ICP) led by Misha Mengelberg/Han Bennink invited Victor to tour with them in Europe in 2010 and appear during US tours in 2011, 2014 and 2015. Victor is the first vocalist to work consistently with ICP in it’s 50 year history. Victor was one of the vocalists on Trillium E (New Braxton Records 2011) with Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Orchestra and Trillium J during the four-day Braxtonian Festival in 2011. Reedist Ab Baars invited Victor and french horn hero Vincent Chancey to celebrate 20 years with his esteemed trio in 2011 including a 15-concert European tour, the first time Baars had written material for voice and specifically for Victor; that work is contained on The Invisible Blow (Stichting Wig 2014). Victor received a presenting commission from Anthony Braxton himself on behalf of the Tricentric Foundation for Neighborhood Dynamics (co-composed with Jochem van Dijk) that was presented during the TriCentric Festival in a double bill with Anthony Braxton’s Nonet in 2014. Neighborhood Dynamics is a piece about gentrification and the changing demographic landscape of Brooklyn, NY, where Victor calls home. Over the past four years, Victor’s work with esteemed avant-garde trombonist Roswell Rudd has seen a deeper connection appearing on his 2014 Trombone for Lovers(Sunnyside Records 2014) and now appearing on every track of Embrace (RareNoise 2017), a project of re-imagined standards. Victor was part of a voice/percussion/piano duo with MacArthur genius grant recipient, professor and composer/multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey, with appearances at Constellation in Chicago, IL (2016) and Vision Festival XVVI (2014) amongst their performance highlights.

Victor is also out on record as a part of Glorious Ravage, a sprawling song-cycle in honor of Victorian-era female explorers composed by Bay Area bassist/composer Lisa Mezzacappa (New World Records 2017). Mezzacappa and Victor have collaborated frequently since 2011 and the song cycle was originally inspired by Victor’s first trip out West to play with Mezzacappa. Finally, Victor is part of ReDDeer a trio of improvisors that met at MusicOmi in 2010 with a record of live duo/trio recordings in New York & Austria called New York – St. Johann (Evil Rabbit Records 2017) and Victor is a featured guest on Marc Ribot’s Songs of Resistance, due for release in January 2018. Victor was just awarded a residency at Yaddo Corp. for Music Composition, staying there for 6 weeks to complete a large work on the life and death of her mother, in early 2018.

Victor’s performances have included such luminaries as Wadada Leo Smith, Marshall Allen (Sun Ra), NEA Jazz Master Dr. Randy Weston, NEA Jazz Master Archie Shepp, Roswell Rudd, Nicole Mitchell, William Parker, Myra Melford, Lawrence Butch Morris, Gary Lucas, Dave Burrell, Henry Threadgill, Andrew Cyrille, Jason Moran, Sam Newsome, Darius Jones, Anthony Coleman, Aruan Ortiz, Joe Morris, Vijay Iyer, Matana Roberts, Mark Dresser, Steven Bernstein, Marika Hughes, Mazz Swift, Marty Ehrlich, Melvin Gibbs, Henry Butler, Curtis Clark and the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

(Bio adapted from Fay Victor’s website)

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Fay Victor  will be at the 2018 Winter Jazz Festival leading the SoundNoiseFunk ensemble, as part of saxophonist Darius Jones’s LawNOrder, and with Nicole Mitchell’s Maroon Cloud. See the Winter Jazz Fest site for details and check our blog for a full preview.

Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman and Hunter colleges in the City University of New York system.

Sunday 12/24/2017 Show: Winter Jazz Fest & Geri Allen Tribute

Photo: Geri Allen | © Joyce Jones/ Suga Bowl Photography. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons CC-NC-BY-ND. Used with Permission.

The next show will air on Sunday, December 24, 2017 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast is our second 2018 Winter Jazz Festival preview program. The Winter Jazz Festival will present a tribute program on Monday, January 15, 2018 to the late pianist Geri Allen, who made her transition this past June 27. We will hear remembrances from former Suga’ guests: long time Manager and friend Ora Harris, Motema Records President Jana Herzen, Drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, Professor and Author Farah Jasmine Griffin, Pianist Vijay Iyer, Ruth Cameron Haden (widow of bassist Charlie Haden) and Radio Announcer Sheila Elaine Anderson.

Who was Geri Allen? Just an award winning pianist and composer who was also an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan. Professor Allen’s last post was as Director of the Jazz Studies Department at the University of Pittsburgh, where she earned a master’s degree in ethnomusicology.

Geri Allen, pianist/composer, bandleader, educator and Guggenheim Fellow, was the first recipient of the Soul Train, Lady of Soul Award for Jazz. In 2011 Geri Allen, was nominated for an NAACP Award for her Timeline, Tap Quartet Project. Allen was the first woman, and youngest person to receive the Danish Jazz Par Prize. She was a cutting edge performing artist, and continues to concertize internationally.

She was a product of the Detroit Public School System, Howard University and the University of Pittsburgh. Allen moved to NYC in 1982 after she completed her advanced degree in ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh, and for the past thirty years has recorded, performed and collaborated with some of the most important artists of our time including Ornette Coleman, Ravi Coltrane, George Shirley, Dewey Redman, Jimmy Cobb, Sandra Turner-Barnes, Charles Lloyd, Marcus Belgrave, Betty Carter, Jason Moran, Lizz Wright, Marian McPartland, Roy Brooks, Vijay Iyer, Charlie Haden and Paul Motion, Laurie Anderson, Terri Lynn Carrington and Esperanza Spalding, Hal Wilner, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Dianne Reeves, Joe Lovano, Dr. Billy Taylor, Carrie Mae Weems, Angelique Kidjo, Mary Wilson and the Supremes, S. Epatha Merkerson, Farah Jasmin Griffin, Howard University’s Afro-Blue and many others.

Allen a recipient of the Howard University, Pinnacle Award presented by Professor Connaitre Miller and Afro Blue. Ms. Allen has been a faculty member at Howard University, the New England Conservatory, and the University of Michigan where she taught for ten years.

In 2014, Allen was presented with an Honorary Doctorate of Music Degree by Berklee College of Music in Boston. The Honorable Congressman John Conyers Jr. presented the 2014 Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Jazz Legacy Award to Ms. Allen.

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra commissioned Geri Allen in 2013, to compose new works for the 50th Anniversary celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. She composed a piece “Stones & Streams” a work for orchestra, chorus, piano and narrator.

She was the musical director of the Mary Lou Williams Collective, recording and performing the music of the great Mary Lou Williams, including her sacred work, Mass For Peace. Allen collaborated with S. Epatha Merkerson and Farah Jasmin Griffin on two music theatre projects, “Great Apollo Women”, which premiered at the legendary Apollo Theatre, and “A Conversation with Mary Lou”, which premiered at the Harlem Stage, as an educational component for the Harlem Stage collaboration. The featured artist was Carmen Lundy, and Allen’s long time trio members Kenny Davis and Kassa Overall). The University of Pittsburgh hosted the first ever Mary Lou Williams Cyber Symposium where ViJay Iyer, Jason Moran, and Allen performed a three piano improvisation from Harvard, Columbia and the University of Pittsburgh, in real time using Internet 2 technology.

Geri Allen was the product of a family of educators. Her father Mount V. Allen Jr was a retired Detroit Public School Principal, and her mother Barbara Jean was a defense contract administrator for the U.S. Government. “Our parents insisted my brother and I go to college. We took their advice. I pursued a career as a jazz performer, and completed my undergrad degree at Howard, and my master’s at Pitt. Mount pursued a career as a jazz advocate and presented, completing his masters at Lehigh University. He is currently Director of Operations, at the San Francisco Jazz Center.”

Geri Allen, a mother of three, acknowledges her family for making it possible for her to sustain longevity in a sometimes challenging and always changing field of the music industry.

Allen had enjoyed a very successful over thirty-year performing career as a NYC jazz musician. She returned to Pittsburgh to continue her legacy as a cutting edge pianist/composer, recording and performing artist. Allen was just as passionate about her work with her undergrad and graduate students at the University of Pittsburgh, and she firmly believed that “meaningful access to music was one of the keys to success in any field, and music informs our sensitivity to others”. She was a fierce advocate for all children of all ages to have direct hands on access to music, and the creative and empowering process jazz inspires.

Geri Allen is survived by her father Mount Vernell Allen, Jr., brother Mount Vernell Allen III and three children: Laila, Wally and Barbara Antoinette.

(Bio adapted from the Geri Allen website)

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Geri Allen will be the subject of a tribute concert at the 2018 Winter Jazz Festival at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium (63 5th Avenue in Manhattan) on January 15. Drummer Terri Lyne Carrington will be the musical director of a spectacular cast, including Angela Davis, Esperanza Spalding, Craig Taborn, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Ingrid Jensen, Jack DeJohnette, Jaimeo Brown, Jeff Tain Watts, Kassa Overall, Kris Davis, Linda May Han Oh, Maurice Chestnut, Mino Cinelu, Ravi Coltrane, S. Epatha Merkerson, Tia Fuller, Vijay Iyer and more to be announced. Concert proceeds will go to the Geri Allen estate.

Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman and Hunter colleges in the City University of New York system.

Sunday 1/8/2017 Show: Winter Jazz Fest/ Liberation Music Orchestra

Photo: Charlie Haden and Carla Bley.
 
The next show will air on Sunday, January 8, 2017 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast concludes WBAI’s coverage of the 2017 Winter Jazz Festival. Our focus is the Liberation Music Orchestra, founded by late bassist Charlie Haden that is closing out the 2017 WJF. Featured guests are multi instrumentalist Joe Daley and Ruth Cameron: Haden’s widow, longtime manager and producer of several of Haden’s albums.
 

 
Synonymous with the legacy of late jazz bassist Charlie Haden, the Liberation Music Orchestra was one of the most influential groups to emerge from the avant-garde jazz period of the 1960s. Founded by Haden and pianist/collaborator Carla Bley in 1969 as way to protest social and political injustices — and as a vehicle for exploring large-scale works of free and forward-thinking jazz — the Liberation Music Orchestra was a vital component of the bassist’s career until his death in 2014.
 
The group’s landmark 1970 album, Liberation Music Orchestra, featured original and well-curated cover compositions arranged by Bley that touched upon an array of sociopolitical topics, from the Vietnam War to the civil rights movement. It also showcased the group’s stylistic eclecticism, incorporating jazz, folk, and world music elements. Helping to achieve this sound was a cadre of jazz luminaries including trumpeter Don Cherry, saxophonist Gato Barbieri, drummer Andrew Cyrille, trombonist Roswell Rudd, trumpeter Michael Mantler, and others.
 
Over the next five decades, Haden and Bley would reconvene the LMO with varying lineups for a handful of albums including 1982’s The Ballad of the Fallen, 1990’s Dream Keeper, and 2005’s Not in Our Name. Throughout these recordings and various live performances, Haden displayed both his abundant musical vision and his profound commitment to supporting progressive political movements, environmentalism, and social justice worldwide.
 
Having contracted polio at age 15, Haden’s health suffered in later years and he was eventually diagnosed with post-polio syndrome. The condition left him in a weakened state and severely limited his ability to perform. Haden died in Los Angeles in July of 2014. He was 76 years old. In 2016, Impulse! released Haden’s final album with the Liberation Music Orchestra, Time/Life (Song for the Whales and Other Beings). Produced by Haden’s wife, Ruth Cameron Haden, and Carla Bley, the album featured a live performance Haden gave with the Liberation Music Orchestra in Belgium in 2011, along with three new studio recordings the LMO made after his death with bassist Steve Swallow, one of Haden’s many longtime friends.
 
 
Partial bio adapted from Allmusic.
 
This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.
 
Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra will be closing the 2017 Winter Jazz Festival at Le Poisson Rouge at 8:00 PM on January 10 with pianist Geri Allen. This concert will be preceded by a panel discussion on social and environmental justice at 6:00 PM.
 
Web Extras
 
Read our report from Haden’s NYC memorial service on our blog. Also listen to Joyce Jones’s interview of Charlie Haden and Ruth Cameron on an earlier show.
 
Watch the Liberation Music Orchestra play “Throughout” in this live clip.
 

 
Watch the Liberation Music Orchestra play “La Pasionaria” in this live clip.
 

 
Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman and Hunter colleges in the City University of New York system.

Sunday 12/11/2016 Show: David Virelles

Photo: David Virelles.| Joyce Jones. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons CC-NC-BY-ND.
 
The next show will air on Sunday, December 11, 2016 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast officially kicks off WBAI’s coverage of the 2017 Winter Jazz Festival as we start the program with Festival Director Brice Rosenbloom. Our featured musical guest is pianist, composer and bandleader David Virelles.
 

 
Cuban born pianist/ composer David Virelles grew up in a musical home. He started studying music at seven, as well as being exposed to the rich Cuban musical traditions.
 
Brooklyn-based Virelles, who once became the first recipient of the Oscar Peterson award, has performed or recorded with Ravi Coltrane, Henry Threadgill, Román Díaz, Tomasz Stanko, Wadada Leo Smith, Jane Bunnett and The Spirits Of Havana, Dewey Redman, Sam Rivers, Steve Coleman, Andrew Cyrille, Hermeto Pascoal, José Luis Quintana “Changuito”, Stanley Cowell, Chucho Valdés, Paul Motian, Chris Potter, Mark Turner, Tom Harrell, Milford Graves, Alberto Lescay, among others. Virelles was named “#1 Rising Star” in the Piano category in DownBeat Magazine’s Critics Poll in 2015.
 
Virelles’ album Continuum (on the New York label Pi Recordings) made several “Best Of The Year” lists in 2012, being selected #1 in The New York Times. His album Mbòkó, released in 2014 on the Munich label ECM also ended up in virtually every “Best Of The Year” list, including The New York Times, NPR, iTunes, The Village Voice, DownBeat Magazine, among other sources. Virelles’ new release on ECM, Antenna, is available now.
 
Partial bio adapted from David Virelles’s website.
 
This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.
 
Virelles is scheduled for two sets at the 2017 Winter Jazz Fest’s ECM Stage at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium on January 7. He appears in a duo with saxophonist Ravi Coltrane and in a set with trumpeter Tomasz Stanko.
 
We are offering autographed vinyl copies Virelles’ new release on ECM, Antenna as a thank you gift for a $35 pledge supporting WBAI-FM. We also appreciate pledges of any amount or encourage you to become a sustaining member with a monthly pledge.
 
 
Web Extra
 
Watch Virelles in this live clip with saxophonist Chris Potter’s sextet.
 

 
Watch Virelles play with saxophonist Ravi Coltrane.
 

 
Watch Virelles play with Jane Bunnett.
 

 
Watch the official preview video from the 2017 Winter Jazz Fest!
 

 
Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman and Hunter colleges in the City University of New York system.

Sunday 5/29/2016 Show: Vision Festival 21 Preview

Photo: Bassist Henry Grimes — 2016 Vision Festival honoree
 
The next show will air on Sunday, May 29, 2016 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This membership/fund raising broadcast will preview the 2016 Vision Festival and feature interviews with pianist Geri Allen (in her first time Vision appearance), guitarist Marc Ribot, drummer Andrew Cyrille and composer/vocalist Lisa Sokolof honoring the career of bassist Henry Grimes. As usual, we will hear from organizer Patricia Nicholson Parker.
 

 
WBAI is media sponsor of Vision 21, New York’s longest running jazz festival. It starts June 5 with films on the Sun Ra Arkestra at Anthology Film Archives and moves to Judson Memorial Church from June 7 through 12 for nightly live avant garde jazz, poetry, dance, and visual art. See the full schedule at their site.
 
During this membership program, Arts for Art has generously donated 3 one-day passes to offer as thank you gifts for those who support WBAI-FM. You can pledge online or call in during the show. Suga’ will also offer 7 autographed copies of Quincy Troupe’s Miles & Me as a thank you gift for a pledge to help WBAI-FM/Pacifica Radio in New York continue to provide programming you enjoy.
 
From the publisher’s description of Miles and Me:
 
Quincy Troupe’s candid account of his friendship with Miles Davis is a revealing portrait of a great musician and an intimate study of a unique relationship. It is also an engrossing chronicle of the author’s own development, both artistic and personal. As Davis’s collaborator on Miles: The Autobiography,Troupe–one of the major poets to emerge from the 1960s–had exceptional access to the musician. This memoir goes beyond the life portrayed in the autobiography to describe in detail the processes of Davis’s spectacular creativity and the joys and difficulties his passionate, contradictory temperament posed to the men’s friendship. It shows how Miles Davis, both as a black man and an artist, influenced not only Quincy Troupe but whole generations.
 
This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones.
 
Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.
 
Web Extras
 
Watch the trailer for Vision 21:
 

 
Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman and Hunter colleges in the City University of New York system.

January 10, 2016 Show: James Blood Ulmer

Photo: James “Blood” Ulmer at the 2014 Vision Festival. | Joyce Jones. Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, Some Rights Reserved.
 
The next show will air on Sunday, January 10, 2015 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast will feature an interview with composer, guitarist and Blues man James Blood Ulmer, who is one of the artists lined up to be featured during the 2016 Winter Jazz Festival. This program will close out our series focusing on the festival, which starts on January 13.
 

 
James “Blood” Ulmer is one of the few exceptions — an outside guitarist who has forged a style based largely on the traditions of African-American vernacular music. Ulmer is an adherent of saxophonist/composer Ornette Coleman’s vaguely defined Harmolodic theory, which essentially subverts jazz’s harmonic component in favor of freely improvised, non-tonal, or quasi-modal counterpoint. Ulmer plays with a stuttering, vocalic attack; his lines are frequently texturally and chordally based, inflected with the accent of a soul-jazz tenor saxophonist. That’s not to say his sound is untouched by the rock tradition — the influence of Jimi Hendrix on Ulmer is strong — but it’s mixed with blues, funk, and free jazz elements. The resultant music is an expressive, hard-edged, loudly amplified hybrid that is, at its best, on a level with the finest of the Harmolodic school.
 
Ulmer began his career playing in funk bands, first in Pittsburgh (1959-1964) and later around Columbus, OH (1964-1967). Ulmer spent four years in Detroit before moving to New York in 1971. He landed a nine-month gig at the famed birthplace of bop, Minton’s Playhouse, and played very briefly with Art Blakey. In 1973, he recorded with the ex-John Coltrane drummer Rashied Ali and his Quintet on the Survival label. That same year, he hooked up with Ornette Coleman, whose concept affected Ulmer’s music thereafter. The guitarist’s recordings from the late ’70s and early ’80s exhibit a unique take on his mentor’s aesthetic. His blues and rock-tinged art was, if anything, more raw and aggressive than Coleman’s free jazz and funk-derived music (a reflection, no doubt, of Ulmer’s chosen instrument), but no less compelling from either an intellectual or an emotional standpoint. In 1981, Ulmer led the first of three record dates for Columbia, which helped to expose his music to a wider public. Around this time Ulmer began an association with tenor saxophonist David Murray, bassist Amin Ali, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. As the Music Revelation Ensemble, this intermittent assemblage (with various other members added and subtracted) would produce a number of intense, free-blowing albums over a span of almost two decades.
 
Ulmer’s work has varied in quality over the years. In 1987, with the cooperative group Phalanx (George Adams, tenor sax; Sirone, bass; and Rashied Ali, drums), Ulmer drew successfully on the free jazz expressionism that made his name. His ’90s recordings with the Music Revelation Ensemble showed him still capable of playing convincingly in that vein.
 
Ulmer dug deeply into an investigation of the blues as the century turned. First he recorded Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions with guitarist Veron Reid both performing and producing. The album also starred veteran Ulmer sideman Charles Burnham on violin. In 2003, Ulmer issued No Escape From the Blues, recorded at Electric Lady studio. A thoroughly psychedlic funky take on the genre, Reid and Burnham were present in the same roles once more, and old friend Olu Dara stopped in to contribute as well. In 2005, Blood released Birthright, on Joel Dorn’s Hyena label. It is easily his most intimate recording. Completely solo in the studio (Reid once again produced), it contains ten orignals and two covers of classic reportoire and takes Blood’s blues journey to an entirely new level.
 
Bio adapted from Allmusic.
 
Ulmer will take the stage during the first of the marathon nights at the Winter Jazz Festival on Friday, January 15, 9:00 p.m. at the New School Auditorium, 66 West 12 Street.
 
This program is engineered, produced, hosted and edited by Joyce Jones.
 
Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.
 
The 2016 Winter Jazz Fest runs from January 13-17 at several locations in Greenwich Village. See the full schedule and artist lineup at their website. Head on over to our blog for previews, our annual cheat sheet to selected acts, and a full review when it wraps up.
 
Web Extras
 
Watch Ulmer perform live at the 2015 Skopje Jazz Festival.
 

 
Watch Ulmer perform “Are you Glad to be in America” live.
 

 
Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman and Hunter colleges in the City University of New York system.