The Jazz Connection to Michael Jackson

When the SFJAZZ Collective presents new arrangements of Michael Jackson’s music in October, they join the ranks of major jazz artists who have found inspiration and fertile ground for experimentation within the late King Of Pop’s oeuvre, going back to saxophonist Gary Bartz’ recording of “I Wanna Be Where You Are” on his NTU Troop album Juju Street Songs in 1972, the same year Jackson’s original hit the charts. Miles Davis recorded the Thriller classic “Human Nature” on his 1985 release You’re Under Arrest, and pianist Vijay Iyer deconstructed the tune on both his 2010 recording Solo and 2012’s Accelerando. Organist Joey DeFrancesco recorded an entire album devoted to Jackson’s music entitled Never Can Say Goodbye, and other artists including Lester Bowie, Mal Waldron, Stanley Jordan, Ramsey Lewis and Chico Freeman have recorded versions of Jackson’s memorable songs.

Fonce Mizell

Michael Jackson was a pop superstar from the time he was old enough to sing, joining the Jackson Brothers band at the age of seven and sharing lead vocal duties with his brother Jermaine a year later, when the band name was changed to the Jackson 5. Although Jackson’s music and that of his siblings had little to do with the improvisational basis that marks the jazz tradition, the Jackson 5’s early hit-making career at Motown had established connections to the jazz world, including the utilization of Motown’s stable of jazz-associated sessions musicians such as keyboardist Joe Sample, bassist (and saxophonist) Wilton Felder, guitarist Tommy Tedesco, and drummer Earl Palmer.
A primary member of the production and songwriting team working with the Jackson 5 at that time, known widely as The Corporation, was Alphonso “Fonce” Mizell; a composer, keyboardist, and producer who co-wrote and performed on nearly all of the group’s early hits including “ABC,” “I Want You Back,” “Maybe Tomorrow,” “One More Chance,” “The Love You Save,” and “Mama’s Pearl.” Mizell studied with jazz trumpet great Donald Byrd as a young man, and when Motown relocated to Los Angeles from Detroit, Mizell and his brother Larry began their own production company that worked closely with a number of the era’s greatest jazz artists, releasing a procession of albums that defined the soul-jazz sound of the early 1970s including Byrd’s Black Byrd and Street Lady, Gary Bartz’s Music Is My Sanctuary, and flutist Bobbi Humphrey’s Blacks and Blues.

Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones

On the set of Sidney Lumet’s 1978 musical The Wiz, Jackson met producer and composer Quincy Jones, who was doing arrangements for the film’s score, and enlisted Jones to produce his next solo album – a project that would change the course of Jackson’s career and make music history over their three album partnership.
Jones began his musical life prodigiously, beginning as a trumpeter at 12 and playing with a National Reserve band by 14 – the same year he met a young Ray Charles, who would be a huge inspiration to the budding musician and composer. Jones was fully immersed in the jazz world by his late teens, touring Europe with vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, and later with bebop pioneer and trumpet giant Dizzy Gillespie. By the time the two music giants met, Jones had already gained fame for producing and arranging Frank Sinatra’s albums with the Count Basie Orchestra and composing the soundtracks of In Cold Blood, In the Heat of the Night, and The Italian Job. Jones was responsible for some of the most memorable tunes in popular culture, from “Soul Bossa Nova,” a 1962 tune that became synonymous with Mike Myers’s hugely successful Austin Powers franchise, to 1973’s “The Streetbeater,” theme to the iconic TV comedy Sanford & Son. He is a seven-time Oscar nominee, holds the record for most GRAMMY nominations at 79, was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2008, and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.

Jackson’s creative partnership with Quincy Jones was one of the most fruitful in music history, producing three albums that stand not only as the high watermark of the singer’s career, but of American popular culture. The compositions on all three records bear Jones’ stamp of sophistication, featuring guest sidemen from the jazz world including guitarists Eric Gale and Larry Carlton, keyboardist George Duke, saxophonist Tom Scott, drummer N’dugu Chancler, and jazz organ titan Jimmy Smith, who provided a soulful solo on the title track of Bad. Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad won eleven GRAMMY awards among them and sold in excess of 120 million copies combined, with Thriller remaining the best-selling album of all time in the U.S.

Kind Of Blue: Bill Evans' Liner Notes

Kind Of Blue (side one) was recorded today (March 2nd) back in 1959. Read pianist Bill Evans' original liner notes (below) for one of the greatest jazz albums of all time!

Improvisation in Jazz

by Bill Evans

There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment. Erasures or changes are impossible. These artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea to express itself in communication with their hands in such a direct way that deliberation cannot interfere.

The resulting pictures lack the complex composition and textures of ordinary painting, but it is said that those who see well find something captured that escapes explanation.

This conviction that direct deed is the most meaningful reflections, I believe, has prompted the evolution of the extremely severe and unique disciplines of the jazz or improvising musician.

Left to right: John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis + Bill Evans

Group improvisation is a further challenge. Aside from the weighty technical problem of collective coherent thinking, there is the very human, even social need for sympathy from all members to bend for the common result. This most difficult problem, I think, is beautifully met and solved on this recording.

As the painter needs his framework of parchment, the improvising musical group needs its framework in time. Miles Davis presents here frameworks which are exquisite in their simplicity and yet contain all that is necessary to stimulate performance with sure reference to the primary conception.

Miles conceived these settings only hours before the recording dates and arrived with sketches which indicated to the group what was to be played. Therefore, you will hear something close to pure spontaneity in these performances. The group had never played these pieces prior to the recordings and I think without exception the first complete performance of each was a "take."

Miles Davis + Bill Evans

Although it is not uncommon for a jazz musician to be expected to improvise on new material at a recording session, the character of these pieces represents a particular challenge.

Briefly, the formal character of the five settings are: "So What" is a simple figure based on 16 measures of one scale, 8 of another and 8 more of the first, following a piano and bass introduction in free rhythmic style. "Freddie Freeloader" is a 12-measure blues form given new personality by effective melodic and rhythmic simplicity. "Blue in Green" is a 10-measure circular form following a 4-measure introduction, and played by soloists in various augmentation and diminution of time values. "All Blues" is a 6/8 12-measure blues form that produces its mood through only a few modal changes and Miles Davis' free melodic conception. "Flamenco Sketches" is a series of five scales, each to be played as long as the soloist wishes until he has completed the series.

Your Top 5 Favorite "My Funny Valentine" Renditions

Who did it best? Sinatra? Chet? Or another artist? We asked you on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram over Valentine's Day weekend, you answered. Below, in order of votes, are your Top 5 renditions of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's timeless ballad.

SFJAZZ's Week Of Love might be over, but there's a lot more great music coming up. Check out the lineup.

Tribute: Horace Silver (1928-2014)

Horace Silver: New Jersey, December 2, 1956

We mourn the loss of Horace Silver—composer, pianist, and father of hard bop—who passed at 85 today. Silver was a true giant of jazz.

Read NPR's tribute.

For an artist who released dozens of records as a bandleader (notably on Blue Note Records, 1955-1979), co-founded and led the Jazz Messengers with Art Blakey, while also recording with Miles Davis, Milt Jackson, Hank Mobley and many others, it's impossible to choose any one recording to embody his legacy. The playlist below is a start:

In 2010, the SFJAZZ Collective paid tribute to Horace Silver on their 7th Annual Concert Tour, performing new arrangements of classics like "Cape Verdean Blues," "Señor Blues," "Sister Sadie," "Peace" and a standard of standards, "Song For My Father." The tour was documented by Mezzo:

Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate upon it in order to get the most of it. You must absorb most of it. The harmonies within the music can relax, soothe, relax, and uplift the mind when you concentrate upon and absorb it. Jazz music stimulates the minds and uplifts the souls of those who play it as well as of those who listen to immerse themselves in it. As the mind is stimulated and the soul uplifted, this is eventually reflected in the body.

-- Horace Silver

Tribute concert this August to Horace Silver's Song For My Father with Matt Clark.

Summer Concerts On Sale to the General Public Tomorrow!

Tickets for the 32nd Annual San Francisco Jazz Festival (Jun 11-22) and our Summer Sessions concert series (Jul 17-Aug 24) go on sale tomorrow (Wednesday) at 11am!

Highlights include:

• Juan de Marcos and the Afro-Cuban All-Stars
• Medeski, Scofield, Martin & Wood
• Hammond B3 Organ Soul-Jazz legend Dr. Lonnie Smith and his In the Beginning Octet
• The hip and deeply soulful singer, José James
• Back by popular demand, Yemen Blues
• Tom Harrell's Colors of a Dream with Esperanza Spalding
• Miles Electric Band - an 11-piece group of Miles Davis alumni

SFJAZZ Members save 25% on select shows and pay no ticket service fees. Members can also save an additional 10% when purchasing 10 or more tickets to any combination of shows, and have access to Members-only concerts such as Dianne Reeves (selling fast) on June 15th! Check out the summer lineup.

WATCH: Trumpeter Sean Jones on jazz education

Trumpeter Sean Jones dropped by the SFJAZZ Center to talk jazz education. A masterful improviser with a feeling for the post-bop 1960s music of Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard, Jones leads a crackling quartet featuring pianist Orrin Evans, bassist Luques Curtis, and drummer Obed Calvaire, a member of the stellar SFJAZZ Collective. The Sean Jones Quartet shares a double bill with fellow trumpet ace Christian Scott during The Festival of the Trumpet on Aug 21, 2014, part of SFJAZZ Summer Sessions.

Special thanks to San Francisco Performances for facilitating the interview.

Song credit:
"60th & Broadway"
Composed by Sean Jones
Im•pro•vise (Mac Avenue)

Check out the line up of the 32nd Annual San Francisco Jazz Festival and 2014 Summer Sessions, on sale to the General Public this Wednesday (4/23) at 11am!

News+Happenings: August 16, 2012

Highlights include:

• The jazz world mourned the loss of Chicago based tenor saxophonist Von Freeman who passed away at the age of 88 last weekend.
• Robert Glasper announced plans to release Black Radio Recovered: The Remix EP this fall, featuring re-imagined tunes from his latest album.
• Can Ravi Coltrane live up to his father's legend with the release of his new album Spirit Fiction?
• Check out Esperanza Spalding live at Jazz in Marciac, performing her new single "Crowned & Kissed".
• Fast Company has their own spin on social web strategies, taking cues from jazz great Miles Davis!
• Ornette: Made in America is the title of a newly restored documentary film about jazz giant Ornette Coleman, made by Shirley Clarke and set to open August 31 at New York City’s IFC Center. 
• The New York Review of Books provides some insight into the extensive career of saxophonist Sonny Rollins in their most recent blog post.
• Branford Marsalis spoke with NPR about the failings of modern jazz and his hopes for the next generation of musicians.
• SFJAZZ Collective member Edward Simon is on a quest to put out a new live CD featuring his trio, can you help him achieve his goal?