Avery Sharpe Honors His Mentors

Bassist Avery Sharpe is perhaps best known for his lengthy tenure with the great McCoy Tyner who he joined in 1980. A varied career, he has worked with such significant artists as Art Blakey, Archie Shepp, Dizzy Gillespie and Pat Metheny in addition to his long tenure with Tyner. He has also recorded a number of highly praised albums that showcase his original compositions. On his JKNM Records label, he has issued Legends and Mentors: The Music of McCoy Tyner, Archie Shepp and Yusef Lateef, on which he plays homage to them, first performing an original dedictated to each as well as two compositions by each. For this disc he has brought together a band that includes John Blake on violin; Joe Ford on saxophones as well as flute; Onaje Allan Gumbs on piano; and Winard Harper on drums. Blake and Ford both are also alumni of Tyner’s band.

The first trio of tunes is Sharpe’s Big Mac, his salute to Tyner followed by Tyner’s Ballad For Aisha and Fly With the Wind Big Mac brings together distinctive voicings of Blake’s violin and Ford’s alto along with strong solos. Tyner’s Ballad For Aisha has a middle-eastern flavor which Blake’s violin brings to the fore with Gumbs maintaining the flow after which Ford enters on soprano sax followed by Sharpe taking center stage. Sharpe launches Fly With a Wind, which one assumes Sharpe, Ford and Blake played numerous times with Tyner. The exhilarating composition never grows stale.

The Chief is the tribute to Archie Shepp, and its stately melody also features one of Ford’s strongest solos here, with Sharpe’s solo serving as a bridge to Blake. Shepp’s Steam is a lovely waltz while Ujaama hits a hot tempo with Ford back on alto and Blake solo is followed by Gumbs and Ford, with Sharpe solid anchoring the performance.

Gentle Giant, a performance that features changing tempos opens with some marvelous flute from Ford, while Sharpe takes an unaccompanied solo followed by Harper’s thoughtful drum solo. Lateef’s slightly exotic Morning, with its delicate, dance-like rhythms is a strong feature for Ford on tenor while the uptempo Because They Love Me is an exhilarating romp with Ford again on tenor and Blake and Gumbs both playing impressive here. Lateef’s music perhaps has not remained as much in the forefront of the jazz world as that of Tyner and Shepp, and hopefully tthesef performances will rectify that.

Legends & Mentors is a loving tribute by Sharpe and his colleagues of three of the past century’s major jazz artists who are done proud by the performances here.

This review originally appeared is the April 2008 Jazz & Blues Report (Issue 303). I received my review copy a publicist for this recording. Avery Sharpe’s website is http://www.averysharpe.com/ and he has a new recording out, Running Man.


Here is Avery Sharpe with his trio doing Mr. P.C.

Rick Germanson's solid piano not simply off the cuff

Pianist Rick Germanson may be best known as a member of drummer Louis Hayes’ Cannonball Legacy Band, and with Hayes and bassist Gerald Cannon, has a new album, Off the Cuff (Owl Studios), that is a swinging session that ranges from hard driving post bop to lyrical ballad playing.


One can hear a definite McCoy Tyner influence in some of the playing, but he tosses in his own twist in some of the compositions such as the opening Quagmire with Hayes’ employing some nice brushwork on the interesting theme. Jill’s Song, dedicated to his late sister, opens with his thoughtful solo piano before segueing into a genial waltz time with some nice playing. Daytona, another number displaying a Tyner-ish tinge, features some strong bass from Cannon.


A lovely ballad performance,Up Jumped Spring, serves as a tribute to its composer, Freddie Hubbard, with some nice brushwork from Hayes adding to Germanson’s thoughtful playing. The tempo quickens along with a hint of Latin rhythms on the Arlen/ Mercer standard, This Time The Dream’s On Me, which is followed by Burt Bacharach’s Wives and Lovers, which allows Cannon to take a nice solo.


The Way of Water, is a reflective and evocative solo followed by Autumn in New York, again with Hayes shining on brushes and Cannon exploring the low-end on his improvisation. Bill Milkowski notes, in the accompanying booklet, that Brick hints at Horace Silver’s Cooking at the Continental, and likewise is a burner, which also provides a solo showcase for Hayes.


In all, Off the Cuff is a solid showcase for pianist Germanson and is available from at Rick’s website, http://www.rickgermanson.net/disco.html, amazon, itunes, and other sources.

My review copy was provided by a publicist for the release. The review appeared originally in the August 2009 Jazz & Blues Report (Issue 319). I have changed the website on how to buy this because the link in published review no longer works.

Innerviews Provides Creative Insights

Innerviews: Music Without Borders
by Anil Prasad
Foreword by Victor Wooten
2010: Abstract Logix Books

On the cover of the fascinating new book, “Innerviews: Music Without Borders,” it says Extraordinary Conversations with Extraordinary Musicians. Anil Prasad has been editing Innerviews, which he calls the web’s longest-running music magazine, since 1994 and is also a contributor to Guitar Player and Bass Player publications. Innerviews offers interviews with musicians in a wide variety of genres and styles of music, including rock, jazz, fusion, hip-hop, world music, pop, and folk. The interviews are intended to get away from typical celebrity oriented interviews and to “enable artists to speak about topics that matter to them.”

Prasad in his introduction to the interviews collected here states “Innerviews’ focus on artists with expansive creative mindsets are clearly speaking to an underserved demographic in the world of music journalism: the thinking listeners for whom music isn’t just aural wallpaper or a lifestyle component, but rather a living, breathing, essential part of everyday existence. …”

Rather than focus on meaningless trivia, soulless sales data, or simply promoting their latest recording or tour, Prasad’s aim is to get the “musicians to delve deep into their souls to discuss topics that really matter to them.” And he has done this since 1994 with a number of interviews that are on the web site, www.innerviews.org. The book “Innerviews” brings together 24 interviews of Jon Anderson, Björk, Bill Bruford, Martin Carthy, Stanley Clarke, Chuck D, Ani DiFranco, Béla Fleck, Michael Hedges, Jonas Hellborg, Zakir Hussain, Leo Kottke, Bill Laswell, John McLaughlin, Noa, David Sylvian, Tangerine Dream, David Torn, Ralph Towner, McCoy Tyner, Eberhard Weber, Chris Whitley, Victor Wooten, and Joe Zawinul. I do not believe these interviews are on the website, although there may be earlier interviews by some of these individuals up there.

Each interview is preceded by Prasad’s concise summary of their musical biographies. Then he starts asking about some of the issues the artist has in the creative process. His first question of Jon Anderson (best known for his work in Yes) is “Provide some insight into your creative process.” From Anderson’s answer, Prasad inquires into how Anderson channels his philosophical and spiritual perspectives into the music he writes. A further inquiry is into the group dynamics of Yes that made them so remarkable between 1971 and 1974. Similarly after discussing Bjork’s career, including an all-vocal album, he asks her “How did knowing you were going to attempt an all-vocal album affect how you wrote material for it.” Or, to Bill Bruford “Describe your approach to collaborating with Ralph Towner and Eddie Gomez during the making of ‘If Summer Had Its Ghosts.’” Later he asks Bruford “What are some of your key bandleading philosophies?”

I cited the above queries to give a sense of the concerns that can be found in all of these interviews, which include the creative process, how one collaborates with other musicians, how the nature of a project affects how material is composed. This is not to mean that other matters are ignored, such as McCoy Tyner reflecting on the deification of John Coltrane or elevation of artists by the public beyond the realm of humanity. The musicians themselves are eloquent spokesmen for themselves, as Tyner in responding to the question of deification states “And athletes. Yeah, we have a tendency to do that. Sometimes we’re very destructive too. We take a person and build him up and then we sometimes bring him down. To say, ‘Well, okay, yeah. If you want me to be a god, fine. I accept that’ can be a little risky.”

Then there is Stanley Clarke who in his interview discusses turning down Miles Davis. Noting that after Chick Corea’s “Light as a Feather” he got calls from tons of bands including what was left of the Doors. “Anyway, Miles used to come see Return to Forever at the Village Vanguard. In those days, it was still done the way they did in the ‘50s. They would just come to the gig and say ‘Man, I want you to play in my band.’ I’ll never forget it. Miles came to the Vanguard in this weird, red leather suit. It almost looked pre-Michael Jackson. Miles looked like a spaceman, coming there and he said in his Miles voice ‘You don’t want to play with Chick. Fuck Chick. You don’t need to play with him. Come play with me.’ But I was very loyal and the movement we were trying to create.

“I looked at Miles and I looked at Chick and the bigger picture. I felt I could do more with Chick than Miles, although it would have been nice for the resume to play with Miles and experience that. So instead, I’d hang out with Miles and go see him a lot because we used to live near one another.”

There are any number of insights about music and life. I like this one from Bill Bruford’s interview, “Fans often have too much grinding of axes as they get older. They get grumpy about what an artist has done or has not done in terms of living up to their expectations. Once you establish yourself—particularly in North America— as being something or somebody, it can be difficult to move on. For instance, it would be very hard for a rock star like Mick Jagger to turn into John Coltrane, even if he wanted to. He will always be Mick Jagger, and I’ve had a lot of that. But I think there is a large number of people who don’t know much about us that come in off the street to get an evening of what I think is top flight music. They’re not interested in the fact the drummer once had lunch with Phil Collins.”

Like many of you, I was not familiar with many of the musicians included here. I learned quite a bit about a number of performers and certainly am going to check out some of the referenced recordings in a few chapters from these ‘new to me’ musicians, and the insights on these musicians was as valuable. That is an indication of the value this book has. “Innerviews: Music Without Borders” is a collection of conversations with significant and important musicians that will stimulate the reader. It merits the interest of serious lovers of contemporary music whose love crosses genres.


For purposes of FTC regulations, a publicist sent me a review copy of this book.

The Duke Elllington Jazz Festival Is Coming

Starting this Wednesday, October 1 and running until October 7 at various venues in Washington, DC, the favorite son in the Nation's Capital is celebrated with the annual Duke Ellington Jazz Festival. One can catch free jazz at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage or at daytime concerts near the Washington Monument, or catch the annual NEA Jazz Masters Concert at the Lincoln Theatre. That event will have the Duke Ellington Orchestra performing along with the DC Bass Choir with special guest Christian McBride at the Lincoln Theater, Saturday Night October 3, as well as the free Jazz on the National Mall at the Sylvan Theater near the Washington monument, Sunday October 4 with a line-up including Afro Blue, Taj Mahal, Christian Mcbride Quartet, Conrad Herwig Latin Side Project, Mccoy Tyner Quartet, and Dee Dee Bridgewater. DC's jazz clubs like Bohemian Gardens, Blues Alley and Twins will be presenting other jazz giants like Sonny Fortune and Monty Alexander. Here is the link to the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival.

Here are some clips of some of the performers to whet your taste. 1st up is Taj Mahal.



2nd is Christian McBride



Next up is McCoy Tyner



Sonny Fortune is at Twins Friday and Saturday



Finally, Dee Dee Bridgewater