"Special Hiromi" / Michel Camilo On JazzSet Hear The Concerts From The Newport Jazz Festival at July 29,2010

Wiqan Ang Photography

Hiromi performs at Newport Jazz Festival,July 29,2010.

First,just inside the festival gate,the audience packs the Harbor Stage for Hiromi.

Her light-to-squeaky onstage voice belies her huge piano sound and technique, applied full-bore to longtime warhorses "Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise" and "I Got Rhythm."

Hiromi's stride-style left hand pumps rhythm to support the fabulous speed and articulation of her right.

And, with her electronic keyboard and guitarist John Shannon in her band, she's got fusion in her arsenal, too.

She calls her group Sonic Bloom.

Michel Camilo performs also at Newport Jazz.

On the main stage,Michel Camilo is a Newport veteran.
After Hiromi attended his Master classes at Berklee College of Music in Boston, the two performed duo piano concerts in Japan.
Camilo is the current Jazz Creative Chair with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

He and the DSO have performed Camilo's first piano concerto and will stage the American premiere of his second in February 2011, with Leonard Slatkin conducting.

In other words,Michel Camilo operates at the top of the musical world and without borders.
In a recent interview with Tomas Pena on Jazz.com,Camilo got to the heart of something important about our times.

"People don't realize we are living in a golden era of jazz," Camilo says.

"Musicians of my generation are touring and playing constantly.The last time we played Tokyo,it was for a crowd of 5,000 people, and that's not the only concert where we get audiences like that.

We did a concert in Germany last year, and it was filmed for German television. Things like that are happening."

His trio with Charles Flores and Cliff Almond is long-running. His more episodic group is the Michel Camilo Big Band.

It might be playing in the U.S. soon; at least it's rumored that a CD is coming.

And musicians, check out these voicings for the first three chords of "Poinciana" below, courtesy of Camilo, which you can watch on YouTube.

Set Lists

Hiromi's Sonic Bloom


"Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise" (Hammerstein, Romberg)


"I Got Rhythm" (G. & I. Gershwin)

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Michel Camilo Trio

"Piece of Cake" (Camilo)

"Repercussions" (Camilo)

"Poinciana" (Simon & Bernier, arr. Camilo)

"Descarga for Tito" (Camilo)

"A Night in Tunisia" (Gillespie, Hendricks, Paparelli)

Michel Camilo Trio :

Michel Camilo, piano;

Charles Flores,bass; Cliff Almond, drums.

Hiromi's Sonic Bloom :

Hiromi, piano and keyboards;

John Shannon, guitar; Tony Grey, bass;

Mauricio Zottarelli, drums.

Marciac 2011

With Brad Mehldau

Hiromi la vraie Grande Classe.



& Michel Camilo&Anthony JACKSON

From Within - Dvd "Calle 54" - HD.

Piano:Michel Camilo.

Bass:Le Fantastique Anthony Jackson.

Drums:Horacio"El Negro"Hernandez

. Charles-Eric Charrier : The French multi-instrumentalist layers Jazz, Noise and Melody to make an intriguing Parfait of Sound .

Charles-Eric Charrier is a multi-instrumentalist who lives and works in Nantes, France, and says he's recorded nearly two dozen albums.

For his latest work, Silver, Charrier played most of what's on the record:

Bass, piano, trumpet, metallophone, charango and what he calls "breath." Longtime collaborators Ronan Benoit and Cyril Secq also sat in on the sessions: Benoit covered percussion while Secq handled guitar, organic synthesizer and additional metallophone and charango.

As far as how long the three have worked together, Charrier says, "[I] don't remember well, because I've got this fabulous impression to [have] known them since a very long time, maybe before Jurassic."

Perhaps that's why the album's recording process wrapped in just four sessions — that's one week total.

That sort of obsessive commitment and well-rounded instrumentation is what makes Silver resound.

It starts as a faint glow, growing in brightness with each sparse snare-drum strike.

Slow, Nancy Sinatra-esque guitar cuts through the psychedelic, seductive rhythms of the opening track.

Unfathomably, those same slap-backed strings assimilate into the wall of emotive sound.

Classic brush-drumming is paired with ambient samples in the following track, "12 From," catapulting the sound into space-jazz territory.

Charrier says he listened to a lot of African and Arabian records during the Silver sessions.

Those influences are evidenced in the subtle warbling of "9 Moving," with its strings rising wildly before coiling into an exhausted heap.

Listen "21 Echoes Short "

Filipek Zenfolio Charles-Eric Charrier

. Elvis Costello And Allen Toussaint: City of Hope .

Allen Toussaint

Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint have come together to write and record a warm, hopeful new album. The two chose to make The River in Reverse in Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans as a gesture of hope.

Most of the album's 13 tracks were recorded as free-flowing jam sessions.

A rock 'n' roll chameleon known for his ability and willingness to work in any genre of music — from classical to punk to R&B — Costello has proved his ability to adapt once again.

Toussaint is also an enormously talented and versatile musician, songwriter and producer, and he remains one of the most influential artists in jazz, blues and even country music.

It's only fitting that he should make this soulful album for his New Orleans hometown.

Elvis Costello

Set List

• "Who's Gonna Help Brother Get Further?"
• 
  
• "Freedom for the Stallion"
• 
  
• "Ascension Day"
• 
  
• "The Sharpest Thorn"
• 
  
• "Nearer to You"

. Remembering Jazz Photographer Herman Leonard .

Charley Gallay/Getty Images

Herman Leonard in 2008.

. August 16, 2010 .

Leonard died Saturday in a Los Angeles hospital, according to his official website. No cause of death was listed.

Herman Leonard's life was an example of the phrase "everything in its time."

Shortly after earning a fine-arts degree in photography in the late 1940s, Leonard was making a living as a commercial photographer during the day and hanging out in jazz clubs in New York at night.

Leonard focused his camera's lens on young musicians who would go on to become jazz legends: Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, to name just a few.

HERMAN LEONARD Ella Fitzgerald with Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Richard Rogers, Downbeat, New York 1949

HERMAN LEONARD DIZZY GILLESPSIE ROYAL ROOST N Y C 1948

HERMAN LEONARD Dexter Gordon, Royal Roost, New York City, 1948

HERMAN LEONARD Ray Brown, NYC, 1948

"You could look at his photos and almost hear the music," says John Edward Hasse, curator of American music at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

"He used light, shadow and smoke, and he made indelible the faces of many of the greatest American musicians of the 20th century."

While many of his subjects became his good friends, only a few of his photos were used on album covers. He gave many away to jazz clubs for promotional purposes.

Mostly, the negatives sat in boxes. 

Meanwhile, Leonard's career took him to Paris, where he worked as a fashion and commercial photographer for almost three decades. After taking a break from photography, the Leonard family eventually landed in London.

HERMAN LEONARD Nat King Cole, NYC 1949

HERMAN LEONARD Ella Fitzgerald with Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Richard Rogers, Downbeat, New York 1949

HERMAN LEONARD Charlie Bird Parker with Metronome All Stars, NYC 1949

HERMAN LEONARD Tony Bennett, New York City, 1950

His daughter Shana Leonard remembers it being a tough time.

"He was in his 60s at this point," she says. 

"I can't imagine when you're in your 60s and you have no money ... he was pretty lost at that point."

For direction, he returned to those early jazz negatives. "I would very comfortably say that these jazz negatives saved his life," Shana Leonard says.

Herman Leonard published his first book of photographs in 1985, more than three decades after he made his first images. After being turned down by the major London galleries, his first exhibit took place in a small space in 1988.

More than 10,000 people visited the show in its first month. 

What those people saw was what Leonard saw through his viewfinder sitting in the front row of jazz clubs so many years before, as he explained in a 2007 interview with NPR's Michele Norris.

"Well, that's where I could hear the music," Leonard said.

"And that's where it happened. It happens in the clubs. It doesn't happen in a photo studio. And I wanted to record image-wise to make a visual diary, if you wish, of what I was experiencing." 

Leonard died Saturday in a Los Angeles hospital .

Herman Leonard Sonny Stitt N.Y.C 1953

HERMAN LEONARD CHET BAKER N Y C 1956

HERMAN LEONARD Art Blakey, Paris, 1958

HERMAN LEONARD DUKE ELLINGTON, Paris 1960

Louis Amstrong Newport Jazz Festival, 1955 Herman Léonard.

And 155 of his prints are in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. 

They share space there with many jazz items, including the trumpet of his old friend, Dizzy Gillespie.

Armstrong Louis , Herman leonard

Billie Holiday and her dog , kitchen N . Y . C 1949 Herman Leonard

Billie Holiday Shoes HERMAN LEONARD 1955 N.YC.

Elington Duke Olympia Theater 1958 Herman Leonard

HERMAN LEONARD MILES DAVIS 1989

THE PICTURE SHOW Herman Leonard's Vision Of Jazz : NPR :

. Hank Jones Trio On JazzSet .

Fran Kaufman

Fran kaufman Site

Hank Jones was born on July 31, 1918, in Vicksburg, Miss., and grew up north of Detroit in Pontiac, Mich.
His family was large, loving and religious.

Five years behind Hank, brother Thad Jones was born; a few years after Thad, brother Elvin.

All three Jones Brothers made magnificent contributions to jazz.


Hank lived the longest; he died on May 16, 2010.


Following his death, one of the best tributes was the May 17 re-airing of a conversation between Jones and Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

And before this May 2, 1998, performance in from the Gilmore Festival in Kalamazoo, Jones sat down and answered some questions from JazzSet.


He told us that his first tour outside the U.S. took him to Europe in 1948 or '49 with Jazz at the Philharmonic.

In 1956, he went to Thailand with Benny Goodman on a State Department tour. Goodman was "a very strict leader, an excellent musician.


" In that era, Jones was freelance, which he described like this:


"A contractor calls you up and says, 'Are you free on Thursday?' Well, I'm not free, but I'm reasonable."


Host Dee Dee Bridgewater adds, "That is so Hank Jones."

Set List

"Speak Low" (Ogden Nash, Kurt Weill)
"Lady Luck" (Thad Jones, Frank Wess)
"Favors" (Klaus Ogermann)
"Interlude" (JJ Johnson)
"Blue Monk" (Thelonious Monk)
"Round Midnight" (Bernard Hanighen, Monk, Cootie Williams)

Hank Jones Trio

Hank Jones, piano
John Clayton, bass
Dennis Mackrel, drums

Through the 1960s, he was one of the first African-Americans — if not the first — to be employed as a staff musician at a network, CBS.


In the 1970s revue Ain't Misbehavin', he played Fats Waller's piano parts onstage on Broadway.


In the 1990s, Jones worked regularly in Japan, and was featured on wonderful albums from the Verve label — hymns with bassist Charlie Haden, a blend of African music and jazz with musicians from Mali.

When he turned 90, Jones told Jazz Times that all he hoped for was to make each performance better than the previous one.
He practiced his scales and arpeggios until he died.
You can hear it in his keyboard clarity.

Take our web-only extra, "Round Midnight," for example. Each phrase of the melody launches with four pick-up notes.


Jones articulates and voices every set of pick-ups differently — off the cuff, but accurate.

It's a piano lesson.


For this night at Rose Street Market, bassist George Mraz wasn't available, so John ClaytonJazzSet,


"Hank plays a lot of bass notes in his left hand, but I don't feel like I'm getting in his way.
I can't explain that."

Dennis Mackrel, Jones' regular drummer, said,

"Even if I do something wrong, Hank has a talent; he's always looking the other way."

Rafa Rivas/AFP/Getty Images

Hank Jones recorded more than 60 albums under his own name during his career.

Round Midnight Origin

. Charles Mingus . Extraits, Photos . La Virtuosité .

Photo by Hans Kumpf

. jazzpages.com hkumpf .

"Tensions" is the perfect name for a Mingus tune. One of the few virtuoso contrabass players in the truest definition of that word, the emotionally tempestuous bassist could goad all manner of sounds from the tension and release of his fingers on strings.  

Charles Mingus music was often a hot, sweaty mess of collective improvisation, and as both leader and mad scientist, he often drove the members of his band to the limits of their own potential as improvisers. Listen to the pulse behind the stuttering horns on "Tensions." And that solo? Mercy!

Bluenote.com Charles Mingus Cornell1964

Charles Mingus, Paris 1964 Photo by Guy Le Querrec

. Magnum photos . Archives Charles Mingus .