From the Archives: In 2013 at WSJ on Ryan Truesdell’s Gil Evans Project

I’m delighted that this Jazz Standard gig has become an annual celebration of Gil’s music.

Big Band’s Moment, Relived Anew

The Gil Evans Project Will Perform at the Jazz Standard

By

Martin Johnson

May 12, 2013 10:34 p.m. ET

Ryan Truesdell doesn’t play an instrument in public, nor does his current band play his music. Yet the 33-year-old bandleader-composer is on his way to jazz renown. Last year he released “Centennial: Newly Discovered Works of Gil Evans” (Artist’s Share), an album of previously unrecorded arrangements and compositions by the jazz great. It won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement and was widely hailed as one of the best jazz recordings of the year. Now he’s back working with his big band, the Gil Evans Project, and from Tuesday through Sunday they will perform Mr. Evans’s repertory at the Jazz Standard.

Conductor and composer Ryan Truesdell at the Jazz Standard in Manhattan. PHILIP MONTOGMERY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Mr. Evans is best known for his collaborations with Miles Davis. Two of their recordings, “The Birth of the Cool” and “Sketches of Spain,” are the cornerstones of many jazz collections. Messrs. Evans and Davis also teamed up on three other highly regarded albums, “Miles Ahead,” “Porgy and Bess” and “Quiet Nights.” Yet Mr. Evans (1912-88) was active for decades before and after working with Mr. Davis, and most of his own music is just as highly regarded, if not as well known.

“Gil Evans is a definitive master of jazz arranging,” said Jazz at Lincoln Center’s curator, Phil Schaap, who cited Mr. Evans’s ability with musical textures, his ability to move between changing styles of jazz, and the historical continuity of his work.

Mr. Truesdell first encountered Mr. Evans’s work when as a high-school student he bought a copy of “Porgy and Bess” from a used-record store in his native Madison, Wis. He was expecting a traditional big band and instead was moved by the impressionistic range of music. “It was bold, yet with feathery-light execution,” he said one recent Monday afternoon at Jazz Standard. Mr. Truesdell was initially an alto saxophonist, but in graduate school at the New England Conservatory of Music he shifted his focus to composition and arranging. At NEC, he studied with Bob Brookmeyer, whose innovative arrangements share many attributes with Mr. Evans’s music.

Although Mr. Truesdell’s credentials led him toward founding a big band, wasn’t he daunted by the gargantuan task? Mr. Truesdell giggled. “Bob would often ask his students ‘Are you crazy?’ and he’d say ‘If you’re not, then maybe you should choose a different career.'”

Mr. Truesdell isn’t crazy in a conventional sense, but he says he’s hooked on the big-band sound. “Those 60 minutes of hearing all of those instruments play such wonderful music, it’s a rush,” he said.

Although rare, Mr. Truesdell’s career path isn’t unprecedented. Maria Schneider and Darcy James Argue also lead big bands devoted to a richer, more impressionistic style that blends contemporary classical music and jazz. Both were Mr. Brookmeyer’s students. Ms. Schneider worked as Mr. Evans’s copyist in New York in the 1980s; until recently, Mr. Truesdell held a similar position for Ms. Schneider.

“Centennial” began as Mr. Truesdell’s personal research project. “I really wanted to immerse myself in all things Gil,” he said. “But never in a million years did I think it would lead this far.”

In his research he wanted to get as many original charts and manuscripts as possible rather than transcribe them from recordings. He contacted Mr. Evans’s widow, Anita, and his sons Miles and Noah. Then he contacted musicians who often worked with Mr. Evans. As he turned up arrangements and compositions that had never been recorded, Ms. Schneider encouraged him to make a recording. He funded it via Artist Share, the listener-supported company that facilitates the work of Ms. Schneider and many others.

The music on “Centennial” ranges from tunes arranged in 1946 to one written by Mr. Evans in 1971, but none sound dated. It’s a reflection of how Mr. Evans’s concerns, particularly texture and unusual harmonies, are such a vital part of today’s music, whether in the big bands of Ms. Schneider and Mr. Argue or smaller groups like Tim Berne’s Snakeoil or Ryan Keberle’s Catharsis.

Mr. Truesdell’s six-night stand at Jazz Standard will feature four different performances. Tuesday and Wednesday he will focus on the music Evans wrote early in his career for the Claude Thornhill Orchestra. Thursday will be devoted to the Evans recordings “New Bottle Old Wine” (1958) and “Out of the Cool” (1960). Music from “The Individualism of Gil Evans” (1964) will be performed Friday and Saturday. On Sunday Mr. Truesdell will focus on the Evans-Davis collaborations “Miles Ahead” and “Porgy and Bess.”

Does Mr. Truesdell fear getting lost in the jazz great’s shadow? “I don’t, really. I mean, I’m honored to have my name affiliated with Gil’s in any way,” he said. Then he noted, “I’m devoting the summer to writing for the start of my own band, so I’m curious to see how my writing has changed throughout this whole journey.”

—Mr. Johnson is a writer in New York.

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From the Archives: At WSJ on Nelson George in 2011

• NEW YORK CULTURE

Artist Films a Farewell to His Home

Nelson George Looks Back to a Time When Fort Greene Spilled Over With Talent

By

Martin Johnson

Updated April 28, 2011 12:01 a.m. ET

“I call it black history with a smile,” said the author and filmmaker Nelson George recently over beverages at a muffin shop in Fort Greene. “Everyone who came here found their artistic voice and became a success.”

Nelson George in his home neighborhood of Fort Greene. He is at work on a new film called ‘Brooklyn Boheme.’DANIELLA ZALCMAN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Mr. George means “here” literally. Fort Greene, the Brooklyn neighborhood he has called home for nearly 26 years, is the subject of his latest project, a two-hour documentary called “Brooklyn Boheme.” The film, which was co-directed by Diane Paragas and funded in part via donations through the entrepreneurial web site Kickstarter, is currently in the post-production phase. It explores a brief window in the neighborhood’s history, from the mid-1980s through recent years, during which time it hosted a remarkable assemblage of African-American and Hispanic actors, writers, filmmakers, poets and musicians as they transformed from aspiring artists into stars.

For Mr. George—who, if prompted, will rattle off the various addresses he’s lived in the neighborhood—the film represents a swan song of sorts. When he’s finished making “Brooklyn Boheme,” he will leave Fort Greene, which he says is no longer the neighborhood he came to love in the 1980s. “I think all of us benefited from our time in the community,” he said. “It was a place where ambitious young people found themselves and laughed a lot.”

Generally speaking, the 1980s and ’90s were a fertile period for African-American cultural development throughout the city, from the birth of hip-hop in the Bronx to the Young Lions jazz movement in Manhattan and the filmmaking of Spike Lee and Matty Rich in Brooklyn. But Fort Greene, said the writer and musician Greg Tate, stood apart for the remarkable number of African-American artists—such as Wesley Snipes, Branford Marsalis, Chris Rock, Erykah Badu, Mos Def and Common—who emerged as stars while living there during those two decades. “I don’t think so much fresh, energetic, innovative black American talent has been so concentrated in one part of the city since,” he said.

Mr. George, 53 years old, said his new film grew out of his 2009 memoir “City Kid: A Writer’s Memoir of Ghetto Life and Post-Soul Success” (Viking), which explored the connections between his childhood in Brownsville and East New York and his career as renowned author and filmmaker. “After writing the book, I felt I should document that era,” he said. “I didn’t want it to be scholarly, just people who lived here talking about it what it was like.”

Mr. George arrived in Fort Greene in 1985 as a young writer. “I just happened to move around the corner from Spike [Lee],” he said. “I went with him to Knicks games back when he had really bad tickets.” He helped the burgeoning director finance his first film, “She’s Gotta Have It.”

Within a few years, Mr. George found himself surrounded by cutting-edge African-American artists and performers. He soon became an editor at Billboard magazine and a columnist for the Village Voice. In the years since, he has published 15 books and a number of screenplays, and directed several films. He cited Fort Greene’s proximity to Manhattan as well as its superior architecture and, in the 1980s, affordable prices—the result of a once-affluent, culturally rich area having fallen on hard times in the 1970s—for the rapid evolution of the community. “[Author] Carl Hancock Rux moved into a duplex apartment for $350 and his landlord asked him if he could recommend the other vacant units to his friends,” Mr. George said. “You could buy a house for a hundred thousand.”

Roger Guenveur Smith, an actor and author who has appeared in several of Mr. Lee’s films, moved to the neighborhood in the 1990s from Los Angeles. “I reveled in Fort Greene’s histories and its possibilities,” he said. “My daughter was baptized there, on the corner of Lafayette and Vanderbilt.”

Mr. George cited his friendship and collaborations with Mr. Lee, who lived and worked in Fort Greene for more than two decades, for his own interest in filmmaking, but he also credited the bustling artistic activity in the neighborhood. “It kept you motivated,” he said. “Everyone was always busy with interesting projects.”

His own impending move is motivated primarily by the opening of the Barclay’s Center, which will house the soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets of the NBA. Citing the population density and traffic that it will bring, he said, “the DNA of the area will change profoundly; it will be the end of this era of the neighborhood.”

But, he added, “I won’t leave before I finish the movie; that would just be wrong.”

At WSJ on Vanessa Rubin’s The Dream is You

• MUSIC REVIEW

‘The Dream Is You: Vanessa Rubin Sings Tadd Dameron’ Review: A Tribute to the Romanticist of the Bebop Movement

Vocalist Vanessa Rubin honors Tadd Dameron with an album that highlights his compositional genius.

Vocalist Vanessa Rubin PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER DRUKKER/VANESSA RUBIN

By

Martin Johnson

March 20, 2019 12:47 p.m. ET

The great composer and arranger Tadd Dameron (1917-1965) wrote “If You Could See Me Now,” one of Sarah Vaughan’s signature songs, but until now the rest of his formidable catalog of music, which includes jazz standards like “Lady Bird” and “Good Bait,” has rarely featured vocals. Vanessa Rubin, a vocalist who like Dameron is a Cleveland native, has long been a fan of his compositions. Now she’s released a recording more than a decade in the making, “The Dream Is You: Vanessa Rubin Sings Tadd Dameron” (Nibur).

Let a streaming service build a playlist around Dameron’s music and it’s likely that his songs will be mixed in with those of Gigi Gryce, Melba Liston and Oliver Nelson, colleagues of his whose work is now frequently overlooked as jazz has come to favor virtuosos and bandleaders. Yet Dameron was immensely respected in his time. Saxophone great Dexter Gordon called him the romanticist of the bebop movement, thanks to his penchant for lush harmonies and beautiful melodies, and Dameron’s music captures a distinctively postwar American sensibility. Compositions like “Bula-Beige” have the stately gleam of early Phillip Johnson architecture, and tunes like “The Scene Is Clean” embody the eager insouciance of Jack Kerouac’s beatniks from “On the Road.”

In creating her tribute, Ms. Rubin looked to Carmen McRae’s classic 1988 recording “Carmen Sings Monk” (Novus), 13 well-known songs by Thelonious Monk delivered with an appropriately wry sensibility and presented with the band on equal footing with the vocalist. Ms Rubin’s recording takes the same approach. She commissioned arrangements for her eight-piece band from Frank Foster, Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath, Willie “Face” Smith—each either played or studied with Dameron—and Bobby Watson, whose talent for melodies seems descended from the great composer and arranger.

Ms. Rubin’s voice is leaner than Vaughan’s and McRae’s, but she delivers the lyrics with a smooth storytelling confidence. The recording opens with Mr. Foster’s jaunty arrangement of “Lady Bird,” which is sung as a contemporary love song bolstered by solos from trumpeter Eddie Allen and pianist Kenny Davis. Ms. Rubin’s take on “If You Could See Me Now” presents a more grounded character; tender and tough, she’s less in need of love for validation than Vaughan’s. Her take on “Good Bait,” which was arranged by Mr. Smith, captures the witty tone of the original. Ms. Rubin wrote lyrics for the song “The Dream Is You” and renamed it “Reveries Do Come True.” The number is a crisply sung, midtempo paean to love.

Ms. Rubin, who recently turned 62 years old, emerged on the New York scene in the ’80s and recorded frequently in the ’90s. After being dropped from her label in 2002, she began working on this recording while doing guest spots on others, including “Full Circle” (Creative Perspective), a release she co-led with saxophonist Don Braden. The arrangements are more faithful to the originals than is in fashion today, yet that serves a vital purpose. In highlighting Dameron’s compositional genius, it’s easy to hear a through-line from him to the work of composers like Thad Jones and Bob Brookmeyer, two of the leading influences on contemporary large-ensemble music. Perhaps someday soon a vocalist influenced by their compositions will put words to their music.

Mr. Johnson writes about jazz for the Journal.

From the Archives: at WSJ in 2004 on Steve Lacy

• MUSIC

A Career-Long Tribute To Thelonious Monk

By

Martin Johnson

Updated March 11, 2004 12:01 a.m. ET

When soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy first heard the music of Thelonious Monk on record in 1953, the 19-year-old reedman was immediately taken by the music’s swing, humor, craftsmanship and elements of surprise. Then in 1955, he heard Mr. Monk in a performance at a small Manhattan jazz club and was astonished. “I flipped,” he recalled. “It was so wonderful; the music was sublime and very droll.”

At that time, Mr. Monk was still regarded by all but a few jazz visionaries as an eccentric pianist who composed awkward and idiosyncratic tunes. During the next decade the jazz world came around and embraced Mr. Monk as one of its most innovative composers and performers, and now his compositions rank him alongside Duke Ellington in the jazz pantheon. His music is a cornerstone of any jazz education. Meanwhile, Mr. Lacy has established himself as one of jazz’s greatest saxophonists, and he is the premier interpreter of the Monk repertoire. His second recording in 1958, “Reflections: Steve Lacy Plays the Music of Thelonious Monk” (New Jazz/Original Jazz Classics), was devoted entirely to Mr. Monk’s music and he has led several important ensembles devoted entirely or substantially to that catalog. This Tuesday night, he will present a new group, Monksieland.

MONKSIELAND
Iridium, midtown Manhattan
March 16-March 21

The band is a quintet, and it features the renowned young trumpeter Dave Douglas and three longtime associates of Mr. Lacy, trombonist Roswell Rudd, bassist Jean-Jacques Avenel and drummer John Betsch. For Mr. Lacy, now 69, the group harkens back to a quartet he and Mr. Rudd led in the early ’60s that was devoted entirely to Mr. Monk’s music. “At first the music can be very intimidating and you have to be very formal with it,” said Mr. Lacy. But he added “after you know it very well, you start to find a freedom on the other side.” That freedom reminded Mr. Lacy of the Dixieland bands that he grew up on, hence the “ie” in the name of the new band.

He said that idea grew in part of his work on the faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. “My students are very interested in Thelonious’s music,” he said. “But we’re playing it like Dixieland and they are not so used to that.” Mr. Lacy said that his students were more accustomed to free jazz ensembles where everyone plays at the same time. “I’m trying to get it back to a more traditional, complementary form like the old jazz where the songs were treated in a very loose manner; that’s still the spirit of jazz that I love.”

Mr. Lacy’s career has traveled a circuitous path. His instrument was primarily a staple of older jazz styles such as swing and Dixieland when Mr. Lacy emerged and established a role for it in both the post bebop of the ’50s and the free jazz movements of the ’60s. In contrast to the long, keening, ecstatic lines that highlighted the work of Sidney Bechet, a master of swing, Mr. Lacy’s style was terse and pithy. His solo style is very precise, full of staccato figures that often release into long but controlled lines. Mr. Lacy’s interpretations of Mr. Monk’s music inspired John Coltrane to take up the soprano, and he used the straight horn on his rendition of “My Favorite Things,” one of his best-known performances. The Lacy-Rudd quartet never entered the studio, though “School Days” (HATology) documents a 1963 concert by this splendid group.

In 1962, Mr. Monk hired the saxophonist for a six-month stint in his band. “It was like a crash graduate course from the master,” said Mr. Lacy of his tenure. “It was a little over my head, but I think that Monk realized I was so into his music that I needed a session like that.”

In the late ’60s, with employment opportunities in America on the decline, Mr. Lacy relocated to Paris, where he lived for nearly three decades. While there, he fell in with the European free improvisation scene, and he recorded frequently with members of that circle. In addition, he and his wife, violinist-vocalist Irene Aebi established a pioneering group that created a repertoire for the jazz art song. It was also during this stage of his life that he began a long, fruitful association with pianist Mal Waldron, another Monk aficionado, with whom he often performed in duet and quartet settings through the ’80s and ’90s.

After a brief stint in Berlin, Mr. Lacy returned to U.S. in 2001 and took a teaching position at the New England Conservatory of Music. Since returning to the States, he has been especially active, performing in duets with pianist Danilo Perez, and leading a group called Beat Suite, a quintet devoted to putting the words of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs to music. In addition, he’s been especially impressed with what he calls the Brooklyn school, musicians such as Douglas and pianist Uri Caine. He feels he’s returned to a vibrant jazz scene.

“It’s highly eclectic,” he said. “There are all kinds of styles going on. It may still occupy a small percentage of sales, but the number of people involved is huge. There is such a vast array of possibilities.”

Mr. Johnson last wrote on Luther Vandross.

From the Archives, in 2009 at WSJ on Linda May Han Oh and JD Allen trio recordings.

• MUSIC

Not Your Usual Jazz Trios

By

Martin Johnson

Updated Nov. 3, 2009 12:01 a.m. ET

Two of the most exciting jazz recordings of the season are from trios, but these groups are not in the familiar configuration of piano or guitar plus bass and drum.

“Shine!” (Sunnyside) comes from saxophonist J.D. Allen and his band, which features drummer Rudy Royston and bassist Gregg August, and “Entry” (Linda Oh Music) is led by bassist Linda Oh, who is joined by trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and drummer Obed Calvaire. Both recordings reflect the enticing possibilities found in these small groups.

TUNE IN

Listen to clips from “Shine!” by J.D. Allen with Rudy Royston and Gregg August:

• Sonhouse
• Shine!

* * * * *

Listen to clips from “Entry” by Linda Oh with Ambrose Akinmusire and Obed Calvaire:

• Gunners
• Patterns

Mr. Allen wrote the music in “Shine!” with his austere lineup in mind. “In a trio setting the music becomes less about harmony and rhythm and more about conversation between the musicians,” he said in a recent interview.

“I wanted to do something completely different,” Ms. Oh told me a few weeks ago. She said the idea of a trumpet trio appealed to her for its unique sound, and “you’re completely exposed; there’s nowhere to hide.”

Ms. Oh’s music may provide a challenge to its players, but it is mostly pure pleasure for the listener. The overall sound is bright, warm and concise, and her compositions are full of infectious melodies and sophisticated dynamics. Ms. Oh, 25, is a relative newcomer to the New York jazz scene. Of Chinese and Malaysian parentage, she grew up in Perth, Australia. The music of rock bands with great bassists, such as Led Zeppelin, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Primus, inspired her to take up the electric bass. In college, she was encouraged to switch to the acoustic version of the instrument.

“I was skeptical at first,” she said. “Then I heard Ray Brown on Oscar Peterson’s ‘Night Train,’ Scott LaFaro on Bill Evans’s ‘Sunday at the Village Vanguard,’ and Charlie Haden’s Quartet West.” Her distinctive, tuneful sound is indebted to all three of her jazz idols.

“Entry” is Ms. Oh’s debut recording, and she aimed to make it a unified statement. “I wanted to make a concise concept album,” she said. “It’s the sort of recording that people listen to the whole thing in one sitting, rather than a showcase of every lick or style I can play.”

In contrast to Ms. Oh’s music, which often recalls a picnic on a sunny hillside, the music on Mr. Allen’s “Shine!” is like a fast drive on a dark, winding road—exhilarating but just a tad reckless. His trio has a directness in its playing that gives the 12 songs on the recording an urgency that draws the listener in.

Mr. Allen, 36, was born in Detroit, and after being mentored by many leading musicians there he moved to New York, where he has played for key figures ranging from Betty Carter to Butch Morris. He formed his trio for the recording “I Am I Am,” released in 2008, and has kept it going ever since.

A unique part of Mr. Allen’s approach with his trio is a self-imposed time limit: No song can be more than five minutes long on a record, or much more than that in concert. “I find that keeping the compositions within a certain time limit helps with the storytelling aspect of a recording or a live performance,” he said. “Shorter compositions put movement in the forefront.”

These sorts of unconventional trios have a long history in jazz. Saxophone trios like Mr. Allen’s date back to 1957 and Sonny Rollins’s landmark performances at the Village Vanguard, and some unorthodox trios may have roots in the experiments of saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre in the late ’50s. In the ’60s and ’70s, unusual configurations were a stock in trade of the jazz avant garde. But while many of those ensembles rebelled against the conventional pleasures of jazz, today’s new groups embrace them.

Thanks in part to the fragile economics of jazz, it seems clear that trios will be permanent part of the landscape. But the economic advantages of smaller ensembles are being matched by an outpouring of extraordinary music. “Less is more” is a timeworn cliché, but this season in jazz it’s also an accurate assessment.

—Mr. Johnson writes about jazz for the Journal.

Going Way, Way Back. At WSJ in 2006 on Vijay and Rudresh

This piece got me an agent and nearly a book deal!

Musical Masala

By

Martin Johnson

Updated April 20, 2006 12:01 a.m. ET

New York

Ten years ago, when saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa was introduced to pianist Vijay Iyer, both men were shocked; neither had imagined that the other existed. Both musicians were American-born with family roots in Southern India, and both were 25 years old and passionately interested in playing jazz with an Indian twist.

“I thought I was the only one,” said Mr. Mahanthappa with a laugh from his Brooklyn apartment.

The two also had a common mentor, saxophonist and composer Steve Coleman, who introduced them at a Stanford University jazz workshop. Mr. Mahanthappa had traveled to California from Chicago, where he was pursuing a master’s degree in music at DePaul and playing on the local scene. Mr. Iyer was working on a doctorate in music and cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley, and touring with Mr. Coleman. It’s an understatement to say that the young musicians became fast friends.

Rudresh Mahanthappa and Vijay Iyer.

Before long they were playing in each other’s bands and building an impressive body of work, which includes two world-premiere concerts in Manhattan this week and a duo recording, “Raw Materials” (Savoy), that will be released next month.

Tonight, at The Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson Street, Mr. Mahanthappa will present the second of two performances of “Code Book,” a new work for his quartet, which includes Mr. Iyer on piano plus bassist François Moutin and drummer Dan Weiss. The work, which was commissioned in part by the New Works Program of Chamber Music America, merges Mr. Mahanthappa’s interest in jazz, Indian classical music, modern classical harmony, math and cryptography.

“I’ve been interested in codes and cryptography since I was very young,” Mr. Mahanthappa said. He used the John Coltrane classic “Giant Steps” to illustrate how his interest works in “Code Book.” “‘Giant Steps’ is a very systematic piece. It divides octaves into thirds. Whether the audience knows that doesn’t really matter — it was a way for Coltrane to get across what he was hearing,” he said. “I took ‘Giant Steps’ and ran it through some cryptographic methods,” he continued. “It still feels like ‘Giant Steps’ to me, but I don’t know if it will feel that way to the audience.”

Mr. Mahanthappa grew up in Boulder, Colo., and studied music at North Texas State University and Berklee College of Music. Not feeling ready to tackle the rigors of New York life in the early ’90s, he settled in Chicago, where he taught and performed for several years. He took great inspiration from Mr. Coleman’s work.

“You could hear the depth of the jazz tradition in his sound, but it sounded unlike anything else,” he said of Mr. Coleman’s music. In particular, Mr. Mahanthappa was fascinated by the different meters and complex rhythms employed in Mr. Coleman’s groups. He traveled to Palo Alto, Calif., to meet and spend some time picking Mr. Coleman’s brain; he met Mr. Iyer, and their interest in Indian music proved complementary.

“I was more fascinated by the ragas, the melodic approach, trying to evoke the sound of the double-reed instruments or the singers of Carnatic music,” said Mr. Mahanthappa. “Vijay was more into the rhythmic aspects.”

Later that afternoon, from his Morningside Heights apartment, Mr. Iyer agreed.

“My approach to the piano is on the percussive side. I’ve been inspired by James P. Johnson, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Andrew Hill, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor and percussive traditions from India,” he said.

Mr. Iyer also cites pianist Randy Weston as a key figure. Mr. Weston fused aspects of West and North African percussion traditions into his playing. “I wanted to do something similar but with Indian drumming — bring it into dialogue with American piano tradition.”

Mr. Iyer was born in Rochester, N.Y., and although he showed musical skills at an early age, they took a backseat to math and science studies until he got to Berkeley, where he won a local jazz competition and soon after was hired to perform with Mr. Coleman’s band. Like his friend, Mr. Iyer moved to New York in the late ’90s.

He sees math as a key undercurrent in his musical pursuits. “There’s a lot of mathematical structure in our work,” he said. “The notion of permutation and combination at the arithmetic level is omnipresent in Indian music.”

Although both men are fluent in technical vernaculars, the first impression I take from their music is its meditative elegance. Mr. Iyer favors gentle clusters of insinuating rhythms, and Mr. Mahanthappa’s tone swings with jazz authority but with an unmistakably Indian inflection. Only some of their music is in the 4/4 walking beat of straight-ahead jazz, but little of it will feel foreign to jazz fans.

Blends of jazz with Indian classical music have had a longstanding niche and, parallel to the rise of Messrs. Mahanthappa and Iyer, that genre is growing again. Indian percussionist Zakir Hussain was invited to perform at last summer’s Montreal Jazz Festival, and he appears on a stellar new recording, “Sangam” (ECM), by saxophonist Charles Lloyd. Mr. Lloyd first pursued this fusion in the ’70s, when he recorded with Indian musicians, and he returned to it as a tribute to jazz drummer Billy Higgins. Of the recording, Mr. Lloyd said that the merging of jazz and Indian traditions created a unique tapestry of sound.

Mr. Mahanthappa and Mr. Iyer are emblematic of their generation of jazz musicians. They have found ways to tweak conventional forms to find their voice, rather than laying waste to the structures that preceded them. Most of jazz’s new movements in the past 60 years have been either revolutions or counter-revolutions, but what the current jazz lacks in “change the world” thunder, it makes up for in imaginative, accessible music.

Mr. Johnson writes about jazz for the Journal.

From the Archives: At WSJ on Henry Threadgill

• NEW YORK CULTURE

A Jazz Man With His Own Vocabulary

Once Confined to the Margins of the Scene, Henry Threadgill Returns to the Stage

By

Martin Johnson

Updated Nov. 9, 2010 12:01 a.m. ET

For a quarter century beginning in the mid-1970s, reedman and composer Henry Threadgill was a dominant force on the jazz and contemporary-classical music scenes. He led a variety of ensembles with increasingly idiosyncratic names like Air, the Henry Threadgill Sextett, the Very Very Circus, Make a Move and Zooid. These groups pushed the boundaries of both jazz and new music, yet they also trafficked in familiar elements like tangos, marches and fanfares. It was easy to become a Henry Threadgill fan without being a lover of jazz or new-music.

“What first struck me about Henry’s work is its lyricism,” said Butch Morris, a composer, cornetist and conductor who has followed Mr. Threadgill’s career since the ’70s. “He’s taken familiar forms and really advanced them.”

Saxophonist Henry Threadgill and his group Zooid will perform this week at Roulette in SoHo. AMY SUSSMAN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

 

Then about eight years ago, Mr. Threadgill faded to the margins. He released no widely distributed recordings, and was heard in concert only sporadically. He finally returned last autumn with his band, Zooid, on “This Brings Us To, Vol. I,” (Pi Recordings), which was widely hailed as one of the best jazz recordings of the year.

This season, Mr. Threadgill is much more prominent, with “This Brings Us To, Vol. II” (Pi) and Mosaic Records’s limited-edition eight-disc retrospective, “The Complete Novus & Columbia Recordings of Henry Threadgill & Air.” In addition, Zooid is to perform Mr. Threadgill’s newest works at Roulette in SoHo for three nights this week beginning Thursday.

Over drinks at an Italian café near his East Village home, Mr. Threadgill said the hiatus gave his band time to master his new style of composing music. “I have completely left the majorminor system in favor of a chromatic way,” he said.

Liberty Ellman, Zooid’s guitarist, added via email, “It’s a system for developing harmony and counterpoint from a set of intervals that originate in chord analysis.”

For Mr. Threadgill, one of the key goals of the new system was to facilitate collective improvisation along the lines of early jazz. Mr. Ellman said it was a challenge to learn the new system. “It’s difficult at first to put aside your pre-existing vocabulary while learning to play Henry’s music, but over time it becomes intuitive and it really opens your ears up to a larger musical universe.”

Mr. Threadgill, 66 years old, was born and raised in Chicago. He moved to New York in the mid ’70s and made his first mark with Air, a trio featuring bassist Fred Hopkins and drummer Steve McCall. Their 1979 recording, “Air Lore,” which is included in the Mosaic set, offered reinterpretations of the music of Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton, and is acclaimed as one of the best jazz recordings of the late ’70s. “He’s one of the only musicians who has gone beyond the surface markers of Morton’s style,” said Anthony Coleman, a pianist and composer who recently also released a recording of Morton’s music. “It’s more than mere photo-realism.”

In the early ’80s, Mr. Threadgill presented his Sextett. He explained that the second ‘t’ in the group’s name highlighted the fact that their music was written for six instruments, though it was played by seven musicians (the drum part required two men). “You can have a quartet sung by 40 musicians, 10 singing each part,” he said. “I wanted my music to be viewed with the same respect.”

Other Threadgill ensembles included on the Mosaic collection typically feature unusual instrumentation. The Very Very Circus features two tuba players. “Hopkins spoiled me,” Mr. Threadgill said, referring to Air’s bass player. “Regular walking bass lines make the music too slow.”

Make a Move blends electric guitar with accordion and harmonium. The unifying element is Mr. Threadgill’s horn: His alto saxophone has a gritty, emotional quality, often an urgent voice above a wealth of intriguing rhythms.

The Mosaic box also includes unreleased work from Mr. Threadgill’s rarely heard X-75 ensemble. Unfortunately, some of the composer’s most intriguing ensembles have gone unrecorded. For instance, a YouTube clip from a concert in Hamburg, Germany, in 1988 is one of the few public documentations of his 18-piece Society Situation Dance Band. Mr. Threadgill felt it should only be heard in concert.

Mr. Threadgill still lives in the same neighborhood he moved to in the mid ’70s, and has seen the East Village change enormously since then. Yet he continues to find great inspiration sitting in Tompkins Square Park. “You can still learn so much from watching and listening to what goes on there.”

—Mr. Johnson writes about jazz for the Journal.