Jazz is always on the move, and that’s why it is the music closest to my heart. I care about living in society, the world around me, the people around me, I’m interested in what they do and think and how they work together. Put that together with the rhythmic bril-liance, the incredible musical skill, the beauty of hearing ideas pour forth straight from the heart and mind—something as fulfilling as conversations with close friends after long sep-arations—the sheer excitement of phrasing and inflection, the intelligence, humor, and hip-ness…I mean, how is it that everyone on earth is not crazy for jazz?
Every time a musician puts their hands to the keyboard or strings, the mouthpiece or microphone to their lips, they have at their disposal a century of practices, styles, and ideas (this is usually called a tradition, but that word has such strong implications of chauvinistic ossification that it’s better to see the component parts) to channel, build from, take or leave. Pop music—and there’s plenty of pop music I love—makes illusory progress, only to fold back on itself and recycle a previous style in new hues. Pop music is like fashion, something that we like to have in our lives that suits our taste, but also subject to trends, herd mentali-ty, and full of sensations that, in retrospect, can be baffling. Jazz is like life, accumulating experiences and knowledge, but also superior because it inherently progresses into the fu-ture, while we as individuals can only hope each day finds us wiser and more mature.
That makes the return of the Vision Festival—jazz is back, baby!—that much more welcome and important. The COVID-19 pandemic forced a hiatus in 2020, and so this year’s version, held at Pioneer works in Red Hook and The Clemente on the Lower East side, was the 25th. Like every year, the festival honors a notable figure, this year that was the great and deeply undervalued Amina Claudine Myers, and as always it brings together the leading voices in the freer style of jazz centered around bassist William Parker; familiar names like pianists Matt Shipp, Dave Burrell, and Cooper-Moore, drummers Gerald Cleaver and Andrew Cyrille, saxophonist David Murray. These are about the finest figures of the wisdom and maturity in free jazz. And as festival artistic director Patricia Nicholson Parker told the Brooklyn Rail in a New Social Environment interview, these musicians, who are New Yorkers, get the bulk of their gigs in Europe and beyond, and so the Vision Festival is one of the few opportunities to actually hear your neighbors play live.
And, again, all this music is on the move. Coming up fast is a younger generation that includes bassist Brandon Lopez, guitarist Ava Mendoza, and tenor saxophonist James Brandon lewis and trumpeter Jaimie Branch, two real new stars on the jazz scene, the kind of musicians who you should pay attention to, because every note they play is bringing the music into the future. Their sets at Pioneer Works (a great space with frustratingly poor sound engineering), the last Thursday and Friday in July, were highlights of the seven days and nights of 45 concerts.
They were also successful in making music that belongs to the current social and politi-cal situation but that is still music. Since the ‘60s, a lot of free jazz has been heroically trying to address all-American subjects like racism, police violence, authoritarianism, and more. The effect of that on society, unfortunately, has been so slight as to be effectively non-existent. Music doesn’t change worlds, if it works it might change individual minds. The kind of jazz listener who comes out to the Vision Festival is most likely white, older (at least in their 50s), and, I am 100% certain, an anti-Trump Democratic voter, if not a member of the DSA or a self-styled anarchist. Telling them that fascism is bad, as Amirtha Kidambi and her band Elder Ones did, before Lewis’ set, may make them feel good about themselves but doesn’t make a single mark on society.
Lewis, on the other hand—and Branch the following night—spoke eloquently about so-ciety without saying a word, he let his rich, soulful sound, the energy of his lungs and mind, speak for him. He led his quartet, with Aruán Ortiz on piano, bassist Brad Jones, and drummer Chad Taylor, that can be heard on his 2020 album Molecular, in a roiling set. The group made a churning sound, like one long shout from the chest and full of emotional power, but just under control enough so that everything was clear. Lewis’ has already played soulful, funky jazz and done some hellacious mixtures of jazz and hip hop, now he’s digging deep into the human experience and it’s exciting as anything happening.
Branch led her unique combo, Fly or Die, with cellist Lester St. Louis, bassist Jason Ajemian, and Taylor again on drums. Familiarity with her playing never prepares one for the power and charisma she projects from the stage. There’s a cutting brightness to her sound that makes me think of Miles Davis’ at his most extroverted, blasting out attitude on Jack Johnson and Live-Evil. Fly or Die is a lean band with a steely groove, plenty of space to fill in with communication, a nice wise-ass edge, and Branch’s own singing and spoken comments (very much musical) about how shit is fucked up and bullshit. Though stylistical-ly very different, Fly or Die was a companion to Third Landing, a group that played at The Clemente on July 25. Fronted by Mendoza and the Last Poets’ Abiodun Oyewole, this was a slashing free rock band supporting plainspoken outrage about the state of things. Oyewole laid out the injustices, and spoke about how “America should be a paradise.” He didn’t bother with a solution that ended in an -ism, instead Third Landing made music about the gap between human behavior and human systems and humanity, best expressed by mak-ing music, itself. He didn’t preach to the choir, he grabbed their lapels and made sure they saw the world outside the church.
The choir was there, though, and it belonged to Myers. All of July 23 was handed over to her and it was a marvelous evening. Myers lead three different groups, her Amina Clau-dine Myers Voice Choir, Generation IV, and her Trio. Myers is one of those musician who we do not get to see enough, even though her range of achievement is stupendous. The Voice Choir, an octet that includes Myers, delivered an extended suit of new spirituals and tremendous, scat-based vocal improvisations from the likes of Fay Victor, Lisa Sokolov, , and Chinyelu Ingram. Generation IV is another vocal group, a quartet of Myers (who also plays piano and organ in both groups), Richarda Abrams, Pyeng Threadgill, and Luna Threadgill-Moderbacher. Their regular set is a survey of famous gospel songs and Negro spirituals like “Steal Away” and “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep,” and also Myer’s excellent original gospel song, “Call Him.”
The experience of both of these groups was fulfilling, the music beautiful and soulful in a older-fashioned way, but also modern, bluesy, a musical living church that is much need-ed in a country where the public face of Christianity is of a narcissistic and solipsistic per-version of grace and the political authoritarianism of white grievance and dominance. My-ers music making is about human failings and aspirations, the same humanity that Oyewole spoke of. Her Trio, with Jerome Harris playing bass, guitar, and adding some skillful polyto-nal singing, and drummer Reggie Nicholson, was an absolute knockout. There was singing, but no words, just music that was even more modern blues and soul and funk than jazz. When she moved to the organ, it was a thrill that had the hips and shoulders bobbing and weaving.
That was some of the most formal music of the festival, the bulk of which was free im-provisation, and the bulk of that somewhat disappointing. Perhaps with the pandemic, peo-ple are out of practice. Shipp played a fantastic 45 minutes, with Parker and violist Mat Maneri. The pianist had a leaner sound than usual, focusing on lines and etched articula-tion, rather than harmony, and had a bouncing, even joyful, drive. Ideas just flowed and flowed from the trio, everything fresh. Burrell and alto saxophonist Darius Jones played a set that same night, and it took them awhile to find completely sympathetic common ground, but when they did, things went deep. But most everything else was a good-natured mess, everyone sincere and full of energy, but no one much listening to each other. It hap-pens, and if the musicians were just so fucking glad to be playing again that making it work went out the window, that’s not much to complain about.
