Mad About Thad...Thad Jones and Ralph Lalama

Jazz is a story of continuity, that of one generation passing on its knowledge to the next. Like the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," one can trace the lineage of one great player to another, whether through direct artistic influence or simple opportunities for exposure. Some great musicians take it upon themselves to actively mentor other young players so as to preserve and extend the future of the music. There are well-publicized examples, like that of Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers. But many others have thus far escaped notice, and one of those is that of Thad Jones and Ralph Lalama, the latter of whom is seeking to repay that debt and do the same in return of other young musicians...

Most people in the jazz world are familiar with both men. Thad Jones is a legend, a distinctive voice on the trumpet and one of the most influential composers and arrangers since Duke Ellington. He was also a member of one of jazz’s most famous families (he was the brother of Hank and Elvin Jones). Probably his most well-known achievement was the big band he founded with drummer Mel Lewis in the 1960s. The Thad Jones- Mel Lewis Orchestra as it was known played weekly at the Village Vanguard and became sort of the “Saturday Night Live” of jazz—a ground-breaking artistic endeavor that helped spawn the careers of countless great jazz players. Though the founders have since passed, the group lives on as the Village Vanguard Orchestra, selling out every Monday night, winning Grammies, and continuing to play Jones’ charts (among others) for aficionados and tourists alike. Ralph Lalama currently holds the second tenor chair, as he has done for over 25 years…

Ralph is one of the top saxophonists in the world and an excellent educator, a staple on the New York jazz scene as well as an internationally renowned performer. I met Ralph this year as a student of his at NYU's jazz program. One of the things that impressed me with him, aside from his obvious technical prowess and distinctive sound, was the breadth of his knowledge of this music's history. I don't mean from a "timeline" perspective either-- it's more that he has studied and thought about the styles and approaches of so many great jazz players that each lesson is like a (colorful) history lesson.

But there was a time when Ralph was a young unknown saxophonist with no contacts whatsoever on the New York jazz scene. In 1975, he was just a senior at Youngstown State University in Ohio playing in his final school band concert. The college brought in one Thad Jones as the featured guest artist, and Ralph got to play in front of him. More importantly, Ralph got to hang out with him a little bit, driving him to and from the performance. Jones gave the younger musician encouragement and told him that if he wanted to really pursue jazz, he should move to New York City and throw himself into the most intense scene in the world…

Shortly after graduating, Ralph took Jones’ advice and headed to New York. He called Jones upon arriving, and in October of 1975 Jones gave Ralph his first New York gig—3 nights playing with Jones’ quintet. Getting to play with one of his heroes was more than just a thrill for Ralph: “I learned more on that gig than anywhere else.”

By his own admission, when he first moved to New York, Ralph was far from the polished force on the sax that he is today. Jones’ early guidance and support made a huge impact on Ralph, who says simply, “he was my mentor.”

Ralph soon began touring with Woody Herman and Buddy Rich, but continued to receive calls from Jones to sub in on tenor for the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra. Ralph joined the band for good soon after Jones moved to Europe to finish his career and to live out the rest of his life. So the first follow-up to this story took place about a decade after Ralph moved to New York. The now Mel Lewis Orchestra went on a European tour and had a mini-reunion with Thad Jones. After Jones heard Ralph play again, he went up and put his arm around him and said, “Sounds great, you booger!” (a Jonesian term of endearment) Ralph knew then that he had truly arrived…

The second follow-up to this story is unfolding now. Ralph is seeking to honor Jones’ memory and music—as well as increase recognition of Jones’ role in jazz history—by producing a large concert for the public that will feature Thad’s music in a combo setting. He’s calling it “Mad About Thad.” I’m constantly on the lookout for fascinating jazz projects and I was extremely intrigued by the conversation I had with Ralph about this one. Most tributes to Thad Jones focus on his big band work, but Ralph’s project is unique in that it is designed for a small combo—much like that first quintet gig Ralph played with Thad 35 years ago.

There’s more to this than mere sentimentality, however. For Ralph, jazz improvisation ultimately boils down to melody (that’s one of the reasons we hit it off so well in my lessons with him—we’re both “melodicists” :-)) And Ralph wants people to hear Thad’s melodies in a very pure fashion, without the sound of the big band distracting them from the essence: the songs themselves and their harmonic movement.

As Ralph explained to me, Thad was both “ahead of his time and in his time.” Jones melodies utilized the concept of the upper extensions of the chords not just as accompaniment but as an integral part of the melody. While other jazz composers at the time were working with similar concepts, Jones “really explored and put his personal stamp on it…to the point where it just really flows.”

But there is still more to this project than the intricate beauty of Jones’ melodies. Ralph wants to show his audience the kind of person that Thad Jones was, how a few words from him could alter the life of a young musician because of Jones’ obvious sincerity in everything he said and did. Ralph recalled one of his first impressions of Jones upon picking him up in Youngstown. They drove by a playground with a bunch of kids playing and Jones laughed with obvious delight and exclaimed “look at all those little boogers.” Ralph feels that Jones’ love for children reflects in his music (for example, some of his most famous compositions are “A Child is Born”, “Kids are Pretty People”, and “Little Rascal on a Rock”), so Ralph wants the audience to leave with a “nice, happy feeling of childish delight” in addition to a better understanding of Jones’ melodies and harmonies. A tall order, perhaps, but Ralph is the perfect combination of artistry, knowledge and charisma to pull it off…

Is Thad Jones under-appreciated? "Maybe," says Ralph, "but only because nobody knows about him." Lest you think that Ralph is channeling the great Yogi Berra, he elaborated on this: "People who know Thad's music love it-- his charts have changed the lives of band directors all over the country. But the general public isn't aware of what he's about. The same goes for Thad as a player...I hope to change that a little with this concert."

As for when this concert will take place, that's still in the works-- the truth is that putting together a jazz program, especially one with such a non-typical twist, is a pretty thankless task. So I'll put my two cents out there and ask anyone reading this to please pass along any ideas you have for potential funders/interested parties, etc...or send Ralph an email directly at ralphlalama@hotmail.com. Maybe we can make the web work for jazz yet :-)

Brava Anat!

Photo credit: Osnat Rom

Ok, I know I just wrote about the "3 Cohens", but I can't ignore great music :-) I had the incredible pleasure of hearing just one Cohen-- Anat-- during her week-long engagement at the Village Vanguard.

On clarinet.

You may wonder why that deserves a separate paragraph. I'll get to that. First, the show details. Entitled "Benny Goodman and Beyond," it featured Anat leading a stellar group comprised of Benny Green on piano, Peter Washington on bass, and Lewis Nash on drums.

Now back to the clarinet. At Berklee, we would not-so-affectionately refer to the clarinet as "the misery stick." While capable of producing a beautiful sound (well, not when I played it, but theoretically :-)), it is far less technically forgiving than the saxophone, and has really assumed a very minor role in the jazz world over the past 50 years, with Eddie Daniels and others as notable exceptions. During the big-band era, however, it enjoyed considerable prominence and one of the most popular and influential musicians of the day, Benny Goodman, was a clarinet player...

For that reason, Anat's show was quite aptly titled. Despite some marvelous individual work by various musicians like Daniels through the years, people still tend to associate the clarinet with Benny Goodman. Anat graciously acknowledges Goodman's long shadow, but has proceeded to take the clarinet to new places. While her set featured such traditional songs as "Tiger Rag," "St. Louis Blues," and "What A Little Moonlight Can Do," Anat offered a fresh interpretation of each. For starters, she has a modern-- and superb-- rhythm section with which to interact. Green's chord choices and comping patterns, Washington's sophisticated bass lines and Nash's poly-rhythmic responses all lend a new twist to older compositions. Her arrangements also seemed designed to highlight the group's different strengths as soloists, offering ample time for everyone to stretch out, explore the songs and interact.

But the real reason this show stood out was due to Anat's brilliant clarinet work. I'm not accustomed to hearing someone make a clarinet sound as easy to play as a tenor saxophone, but she did. I've heard people say that when you watch a truly great actor you forget that it's an actor playing the part and think only of the character-- I believe that the same is true with an instrumentalist. Within a few phrases I stopped marveling at Anat's clarinet technique and began marveling only at her musicality. She can weave the same intricate post-bop lines of a saxophonist through her solos, but with a clarinet's timbre...

And just as greater technique can unlock new ideas for improvisers, so can the natural qualities of an instrument. If you listen to some of the older Benny Goodman recordings, you'll hear him glide and "soar" above the other instruments due to the clarinet's voice-- it has an elegance and clarity of sound that probably comes from its classical origins (for an example of this, check out his version of "Memories of You" with Rosemary Clooney). Anat seemed inspired by the clarinet's capabilities as she added more glissandos to her modern vocabulary. There were a number of moments where she would seem to pause her lines and let a few of the rich higher notes ring out-- which certainly energized both the audience and her bandmates.

Finally, as I mentioned the last time I heard her perform with the rest of her family, she plays with an expressive joy that infects the audience-- I can't remember the last time I saw so many people smiling at a jazz concert! :-) I really recommend going to see her live the next time she is performing...this town is full of great players and innovators, but you're cheating yourself if you pass up the opportunity to hear someone literally revive a beautiful instrument and blaze a new trail. Plus it's always cool to say that you heard someone before they become a household name, although after winning a number of prestigious jazz awards, you may not have much time left for that in Anat's case...

Brava Anat!

Old Friends, New Music

From the "Road Not Taken Category" (or more accurately, "A Detour" :-))...

I just attended a beautiful show at the Village Vanguard entitled "The 3 Cohens Sextet". It featured siblings Anat Cohen on tenor sax and clarinet, Yuval Cohen on soprano sax, and Avishai Cohen on trumpet. The stellar rhythm section consisted of Aaron Goldberg on piano, Matt Penman on bass, and Gregory Hutchinson on drums.

Yuval Cohen is a special story for me. When I was at Berklee College of Music in Boston in the mid-90's, Yuval and I became great friends as we were both students of saxophone legend Joe Viola. Yuval, while a far more advanced player than I, was always gracious and a wonderful friend. I spent a lot of time picking his brain about saxophone technique and playing sessions, liberally interspersed with games of chess and basketball...through Yuval I met his younger siblings, Anat and Avishai, both prodigious talents who also came to study at Berklee from Israel. My family even had the pleasure of hosting them for a wonderful day at the ocean in Gloucester, Massachusetts. One of the things I remember Yuval telling me was his dream of one day writing original music for, and starting a band with, his family.

Unfortunately, what was a very promising start to a music career was halted when Yuval developed a medical condition during an international tour that left him unable to use his hands. When I last visited him in Israel, he had stopped playing completely and had begun a career in, coincidentally enough, law...

Well, Yuval is back and then some. With a lot of hard work he regained the ability to play and has subsequently put his legal work on hold to resume a thriving musical life. He has formed his dream band with Anat and Avishai (both of whom are now at the top of the New York and international jazz scene), and "The 3 Cohens" are in the midst of a week-long date at the most storied venue in jazz. He is truly an inspiration to me.

So, onto the music! I attended the 11pm show on Wednesday, and was thrilled by a generous six song set. The evening featured music by all of the Cohens, including an uptempo arrangement of "Ornithology" by Avishai, Yuval's innovative re-harmonization of "Love and the Weather," and Anat's original composition, "Yuvali." All three Cohens displayed a remarkable virtuosity on their respective instruments, but that's par for the course in the upper echelons of the jazz world. What sets them apart-- as individual players and as a unit-- is their warmth and communication, which seems to feed their creativity as well. I can't remember the last time that I witnessed a group of musicians so attuned to each other. In a music scene renowned for it's detachment, the Cohens were rooting each other on, dancing, and letting out low whistles after particularly cool solos. And it translated into greater creative energy for each of them, for the rest of the rhythm section, and engaged the audience. Truly a pleasure.

As for the rest of the band, the superlatives get a little old, so I'll leave it that they are each "monsters" (that's a high compliment in jazz parlance). Matt Penman and Greg Hutchinson are some of the most skilled, creative and in-demand musicians on the jazz scene today. And Aaron Goldberg is simply amazing. Aaron and I actually go back further than Yuval and I do: we played in a school jazz band together in 1989-1990. He was good when he started, really good in short order, and soon became amazing (simultaneously attending Harvard while the rest of us were slogging through music school). He is now one of the world's leading voices on jazz piano, and he thrilled the audience and his band-mates with spell-binding solos and sensitive interpretations of the originals...

The 3 Cohens have released several recordings, and I highly recommend them all, particularly their latest, "Braid" (which also features Aaron Goldberg). They bring joy to their music and you will love it.

I'll close by saying that even though my evening was about the music and warm reunions (they are still the same good-natured and humble people they were as students), I couldn't help but think about what an inspiring story Yuval, Anat and Avishai are. They have worked their way from being complete unknowns from another country to trailblazers on the New York jazz scene, they have had overcome all sorts of adversity and odds, and their love and support for each other is apparent and heart-warming. I thought about meeting them as kids almost 15 years ago, and it makes me wonder what other special talent is hiding in unusual places...

Congratulations again, guys. You sound wonderful. Joe Viola would be very proud...