Ballard Jazz Festival Starts Wednesday
from The Seattle Times:
The last few years of tenor saxophonist Hadley Caliman’s career have been among his most productive, after decades spent off the radar in prison, in recovery — both the result of his past drug addiction — and quietly teaching music while living in the Columbia River town of Cathlamet.
Caliman, who will perform Saturday at the annual Ballard Jazz Festival, is awaiting the release of his third album in two years (a yet unnamed recording with longtime friend Pete Christlieb), which follows “Gratitude” in 2008 and this year’s “Straight Ahead.” In early April, the album peaked at No. 2 on the JazzWeek Jazz Chart — a measure of radio airplay in North America.
Caliman and his quartet from “Straight Ahead” (trumpeter Thomas Marriott, pianist Eric Verlinde, bassist Phil Sparks, drummer Matt Jorgensen) will open the Mainstage Concert at 7:30 p.m. They will be followed by the festival’s headliner, Brazilian trumpeter Claudio Roditi, who will play with Seattle-based pianist Jovino Santos-Neto, also a Brazilian native. Bassist Chuck Deardorf and drummer Mark Ivester make up the rest of the rhythm section.
The festival, in its eighth year, has matured to reliable form, featuring the area’s best jazz musicians and five days of performances all over downtown Ballard. As usual, the festival brought in a prominent player from outside the area, Roditi, a New Yorker and a regular at the Lionel Hampton festival in Idaho. Singer Greta Matassa will perform at a jazz brunch Sunday, expanded to include two seatings at 10 a.m. and noon.
But most of the sentiment surrounds Caliman, 78, for whom the past few years have also been a time of narrowing focus for reasons unrelated to playing jazz.
Caliman has liver cancer.
“I’m almost 79, how much more time am I supposed to get, 30 more years?” Caliman said, laughing gently. “Give me a break. You just have to face it … It will just take care of itself.
Continue reading at The Seattle Times.
When Matt Vaughan heard that a Saturday in April had been set aside two years ago to honor indie-music stores, the owner of Seattle’s Easy Street Records thought it was “a waving of the white flag.” Still, he went along and opened his doors with modest expectations.
A surprisingly inventive duo plays spontaneous improvisations on Jazz Northwest on Sunday April 18 at 1 PM PDT on 88.5, KPLU. Pianist Bill Anschell and soprano saxophonist Brent Jensen have found each other molto simpatico when freely improvising on standards. Astute listeners as well as players, the two musicians often sound as if one mind is guiding ten fingers as they dissect familiar music in the course of playing it, examining and comparing fragments before reassembling a song. On this concert recorded at an Art of Jazz Concert at The Seattle Art Museum, the duo plays music ranging from Fats Waller to Thelonious Monk and several familiar standards.
There are no chairs to sit in when you listen to music at the Crocodile. An open floor has always worked best for the kind of music and audiences the famous rock club is known for.
Veteran tenor saxophonist Hadley Caliman—he was on the Central Avenue scene in Los Angeles during the ’50s—teams with golden-toned trumpeter Thomas Marriott on the frontline for this inspired outing. Flaunting a beautiful, burnished tone and remarkable fluidity on his horn, Caliman sails through his “Cigar Eddie,” Harold Land’s “Rapture” and Lee Morgan’s Latin-flavored “Totem Pole” with confidence and old-school swagger. And he acquits himself with rare elegance and taste on Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life” and the poignant ballad “You Leave Me Breathless.” Marriott, who produced the session, also contributes the driving “Cathlamet,” and the two horns engage in some facile, energized exchanges with pianist Eric Verlinde on Joe Locke’s uptempo swinger “Blues for PT.”
Bring out your brass — and your marching drums.
TONIGHT, APRIL 9