Saxophonists

Sunday 10/5/14 Show: Cal Massey’s legacy with Salim Washington

Photo: Cal Massey |

The next show will air on Sunday, October 5, 2014 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 installment of Suga’ will feature a discussion with musician, composer and educator Salim Washington on the work of the legendary trumpeter, composer and arranger Cal Massey. You can hear a short preview below.

Calvin “Cal” Massey (January 11, 1928 – October 25, 1972) is virtually unknown with the exception of both highly knowledgeable “jazz” scholars and a small coterie of illustrious musicians who remain alive and were immensely indebted to Massey’s musical influence and mentorship.

Massey studied trumpet under Freddie Webster, and following this played in the big bands of Jay McShann, Jimmy Heath, and Billie Holiday. In the late 1950s he led an ensemble with Jimmy Garrison, McCoy Tyner, and Tootie Heath; John Coltrane and Donald Byrd occasionally played with them. In the 1950s he gradually receded from active performance and concentrated on composition; his works were recorded by Coltrane, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Lee Morgan, Philly Joe Jones, and Archie Shepp. Massey played with Shepp from 1969 until 1972.

The most comprehensive article on Cal Massey was written by the late Fred Ho. Ho is also responsible for the only recording of Massey’s 1970s nine-part “Black Liberation Suite,” which was revisited in 1986 with new arrangements by one of Massey’s close collaborators Romulus Franceschini, Massey also performed in The Romas Orchestra with Franceschini.

Massey’s last composition was Lady Day: A Musical Tragedy. Massey was a father figure and close friend to many of the greatest “jazz” musicians of the post-World War era until his early death in 1972.

Salim Washington is co-author of Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever and continues to be a committed teacher, writer, speaker and performer in numerous solo, group and ensemble projects. He is also touring with the Eco-Music Big Band, a jazz ensemble mixing the music of Fred Ho and Cal Massey with political aspects. When he first met Fred Ho at Harvard in 1976, the two instantly became good friends, political comrades and musical collaborators. The two crossed paths again in 2000 when Fred reached out and asked Salim to join his Afro-Asian Music Ensemble. The pair would go on working together, playing and giving lectures as a scientific duo in numerous events. In 2012, they started the Scientific Soul Sessions, a collective for revolutionaries to build a soulful and scientific community. The Eco-Music Big Band is one of the many progenies from this effort of using art to inform politics and vice versa.

Show 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.

Web Extras:

Read Brooklyn College Professor Jeff Taylor‘s article “Brooklyn Rediscovers Cal Massey” in the spring 2010 American Music Review for more background on Cal Massey: PDF

Watch the late Fred Ho conduct a 2012 live performance of Massey’s “The Black Liberation Suite, Part One” at Harlem’s Red Rooster club with show guest Salim Washington on saxophone.



Watch

Sunday 6/8/14 Show: Vision Festival 19

Photo Credit: Photo Credit: Max Bashirov. Used with permission.

The next show will air on Sunday, June 8, 2014 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. During this installment, Suga’ in My Bowl will spotlight Vision Festival 19 with the “wearer of many hats” Patricia Nicholson Parker and this year’s Lifetime of Achievement recipient saxophonist, pianist and bassist Charles Gayle.

Since 1996 the Vision Festival has brought music, visual art, and dance together under the aesthetic of avantjazz and improvisation. By bringing several expressive art forms together, they inform, inspire, and expand audiences across disciplines.

Each year, Arts for Arts/Vision Festival dedicates an evening to honoring the achievements of one living artist whose music has inspired and influenced the world around him/her. This serves not only to honor our living legends, but also inform the world of the importance of their achievements because of the information that is disseminated about the artists. This year, June 11, 2014, AFA honors Charles Gayle for his Lifetime of Achievement.

Arts for Arts says of Gayle, “A gentle and humble artist, he is clearly one of the greatest saxophone players. He is 75, yet he refuses to lay back and rest on his musical accomplishments, for fear that the music might lose its ability to move us — Charles Gayle does not play for himself, but to serve. His intention is to move and inspire, and he has dedicated his life to this goal.”

The Festival will also celebrate the musicWitness®, Visual Artist Jeff Schlanger. Schlanger created the art on the Vision Festival 19 flyer and live paints during the festival, creating improvised visual art responding to the music.

Check out the schedule for Vision Festival 19 at their website. You can see the Vision program guide with artist interviews, a profile of Jeff Schlanger, and more at ISSUU. We’ll also have festival coverage on our blog.

Produced, engineered, edited, and hosted 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 this 2013 performance of the Charles Gayle Trio live at Clemente Soto Velez Center.



Watch visual artist musicWitness® Jeff Schlanger demonstrate his live painting to music and talk about some of his musical influences.

Sunday January 5th Show: Yusef Lateef Memorial

Reminder: Suga’ in My Bowl now airs weekly on WBAI, except for the last Sunday of the month! Please update your calendars, pass the word on to friends, and share on social media if you like the show.

The next show will air on Sunday Janury 5, 2014 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 installment of the program will be a memorial to the recently deceased Yusef Lateef. We’ll feature a 2010 interview with Lateef and a new interview with long-time collaborator and friend Adam Rudolph. The original show also featured an interview with journalist and educator Herb Boyd, who co-wrote Lateef’s autobiography The Gentle Giant.



Yusef Lateef is a Grammy Award-winning composer, performer, recording artist, author, educator and philosopher who has been a major force on the international musical scene for more than six decades. He is universally acknowledged as one of the great masters and innovators in the African American tradition of autophysiopsychic music — that which comes from one’s spiritual, physical and emotional self. In 2010, he was declared a Jazz Master by the National Endowment of the Arts.

As a virtuoso on a broad spectrum of reed instruments — tenor saxophone, flute, oboe, bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, argol, sarewa, and taiwan koto — Lateef has introduced delightful new sounds and blends of tone colors to audiences all over the world.

As a composer, he compiled a catalog of works not only for the quartets and quintets he has led, but for symphony and chamber orchestras, stage bands, small ensembles, vocalists, choruses and solo pianists. His extended works have been performed by the WDR (Cologne), NDR (Hamburg), Atlanta, Augusta and Detroit Symphony Orchestras and the Symphony of the New World. He won a Grammy in 1987 for his recording of “Yusef Lateef’s Little Symphony,” on which he performed all the parts.

As an educator, Lateef devoted much of his life to exploring the methodology of autophysiopsychic music in various cultures and passing what he learned on to new generations of students. He was a Five Colleges professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA, from which he was awarded a Ph.D. in Education in 1975. His doctoral dissertation was entitled “An Overview of Western and Islamic Education.”

As an author, Yusef Lateef has published a novella, A Night in the Garden of Love, and two collections of short stories, Spheres and Rain Shapes.

Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour.

Produced, engineered, edited, and hosted by Joyce Jones.

Photo: Yusef Lateef. Creative Commons licensed by Flickr user Tom Beetz via Wikimedia.

At this time, we don’t have information on memorial and funeral arrangements. See our blog and Facebook page for updates.


Web Extras:

Read his obituary in the The Guardian newspaper.
Watch Lateef and Rudolph in a live 2010 performance in Milan, Italy:

Sunday 11/10 show: Renè McLean

Important programming note: Good news! Suga’ in My Bowl is now on weekly on WBAI, except for the last Sunday of the month! That means more shows, more opportunities to work through the backlog of people we’d like to talk to, and more great jazz and interviews for our listeners! So update your calendars and please pass the word on to friends if you like the show. We’re largely a D.I.Y. operation and rely a lot on word of mouth for growing our listening base. Thanks, and keep listening!

The next show will air on Sunday November 10, 2013 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 installment of the program will feature an interview with saxophonist, flutist, multi-reed instrumentalist (and son of Jackie McLean) Renè McLean. Listen to a short preview below:

Born in New York City, Renè Profit-McLean (a/k/a Muhammad Al-Amien Abdul Kariem) world renowned Multi-reed Instrumentalist (Alto, Tenor, Soprano saxophone, Flutes, Ney, Shakuhachi), Composer, Band leader, Educator and Producer, began his musical training at the age of nine under the tutelage and guidance of his father, world renowned alto saxophonist and educator Jackie McLean. Renè recounts: “My father began giving me the saxophone in stages beginning with the mouth piece then the neck and finally the horn”. As an adolescent, the young McLean was already performing with local Jazz, R&B, Calypso, Latin and other bands of varied musical traditions, making his debut with Jackie McLean’s band in the early-1960’s as well as leading his own bands.

Renè McLean’s debut as a band leader and producer began at the age of 16 in August 1963 on New York City’s lower east side at the East River Park Amphitheater in a concert sponsored by Mobilization for Youth Inc. and produced by Renè featuring several bands of Young Lions of the era which included his group featuring : Larry Willis (Piano), Eddie Gale (Trumpet), Pete Pearson (vibes) and Alan Silver (Bass). In addition his band also played at the original world famous Birdland as part of Alan Grant’s Sunday afternoon Jazz series featuring young and up coming musicians, as well as being one of the first bands to perform at the famous lower eastside 60’s Jazz spot “ Slugs”. He later introduced the owners to Jackie McLean; that was the beginning of Jazz at Slug’s, the rest is history.

For five decades or more Renè McLean served as Protégé/Apprentice to Jackie McLean; twenty of those years as Musical Director to the numerous ensembles Jackie and Renè co-led. Renè McLean maintains an active travel/performance career leading his own band and various related projects. Renè is currently a Professor of African -American music on the faculty of the Jackie McLean Institute at the University of Hartford, and Master Artist /Director In -Resident of Music at the Artists Collective, Hartford CT. McLean has performed at many international & national festivals, conducted workshops and lectured at numerous universities and cultural programs in the U.S., Caribbean (including Cuba), as well as in South America, Europe, Lebanon, Japan, Indonesia, South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Madagascar and Mauritius. In 1990, the United States Information Agency invited and sponsored Renè McLean to perform and conduct workshop/lectures at the Jazz A Mada festival in Madagascar and Mauritius. In 1993 the United States Information Agency invited and sponsored the Jackie Mclean/Renè McLean Jazz Dynasty band to tour six Southern African Countries.

Renè McLean defines his music as “transcending socio-political and cultural boundaries—it’s a universal language.”

Produced, engineered, and edited by Joyce Jones. Hosted by Joyce Jones.

Remember to check out our On the Bandstand feature located on our blog for NYC Metro area listings of Suga’ guests.

Watch Renè McLean play with poet Amiri Baraka in this rendition of “So What”, recorded live in Italy in 2013.

Sunday 9/22 Show: Kenny Garrett

The next show will air on Sunday September 8, 2013 from 11 PM to 1 AM Eastern Standard Time on WBAI Radio, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of “Suga’ In My Bowl” will feature an exclusive interview with alto/soprano saxophone player and composer Kenny Garrett. We will discuss his career, and most importantly, his new CD release Pushing the World Away

We’ll begin the program with a short interview with Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater and Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, who are working on a documentary titled BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez about poet/author/educator (and former Suga’ guest) Sonia Sanchez. There’s a Kickstarter campaign actively in effect. We’ll find out about it and the documentary.

Over the course of a stellar career that has spanned more than 30 years, saxophonist Kenny Garrett has become the preeminent alto saxophonist of his generation. From his first gig with the Duke Ellington Orchestra (led by Mercer Ellington) through his time spent with musicians such as Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers and Miles Davis, Garrett has always brought a vigorous yet melodic, and truly distinctive, alto saxophone sound to each musical situation. As a bandleader for the last two decades, he has also continually grown as a composer.

For his third Mack Avenue Records release, Pushing the World Away, alto/soprano saxophonist, composer/bandleader Kenny Garrett literally had to “push away” a steady flow of distractions to get to the inner core of the album, shifting priorities in his schedule and diving deep into the essence of the music.

This show is produced, hosted, and engineered by Joyce Jones.

Web Extras:

Watch Kenny Garrett’s solo on John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”, performed live in New York with Carlos Santana.