Category: "Concert Reviews"
Revive Da Live: Live Music Advocates Reshaping the Northeast's Soundscape
Tags: Concert Reviews, Jazz, Jeru da Damaja, Large Professor, Music
"I listen to a lot of music y'all, don't mind me," announced Large Professor two Thursdays ago from the stage of New York City's Le Poisson Rouge. The noted producer and rapper co-headlined Revive Da Live's inaugural flagship concert series and when not dropping a few bars of rare jazz and hip hop sample sources, repeated variations of this statement. "I be listening to a lot of music," he'd note, wipe his brow and segue into another record. Few in the crowd of mostly eighties babies could have heard Large Pro's hits in their heyday but even for those present who could recall first hearing "Criminal Minded" in seventh grade or outside of church doing the wop with some girl, the archaeological playlist demanded attention. Hustling back and forth between turntables and laptop, he commanded stares and digital camera flashes, but was only able to get one intrepid b-boy to get down, the lead-footedness, not a product of indifference, but a bit of wonder.
Learning is a linchpin of Revive Da Live, a two-year-old event promotions and live music advocacy company with a growing buzz in the northeast. Founder Meghan Stabile provided some context via phone in advance of the show, "The motto of Revive Da Live is dedicated to exposing live jazz music and hip hop in hopes of creating a larger awareness and appreciation for jazz live music and helping musicians that create it."
Stabile established the company as a senior studying voice and music business at Boston's Berklee College of Music and credits the school and job at local haunt Wally's Café for introducing her to a wider world of music. "I started singing when I was really little. One of my all time favorite bands that got me into playing was Silverchair. I was kind of into that whole grunge scene." But with Berklee came exposure and inspiration, which translated into throwing shows that attempted to wrest some of the music she came to appreciate, primarily contemporary jazz, out of the underground.
The reliquary too. Stabile and her Revive Da Live cohorts don't approach their work as erudite museum curators but grounded masters of ceremony by not only incorporating the vocabulary of hip hop but by omitting the exclusive vocabulary of jazz appreciation. There is no talking down just fresh enthusiasm. "I feel like I represent a lot of people," Stabile said. "I basically am that person that I am trying to get to as far as audience is concerned. I didn't grow up with it. It wasn't something that was on he radio. It wasn't something that was on TV all the time."
Revive Da Live is just twenty events into realizing a vision that hopes to reengage young music fans with inventive live music but has already made a notable impact and cultivated a faithful if musician-heavy following. "Hands down, nobody's doing what we're doing," Stabile said. "It was that way in Boston and its that way here in New York."
The first concert of their flagship series bore witness. Large Pro proceeded to "duet" with Slum Village drummer Daru Jones and then an impressive array of jazz instrumentalists shared the stage with rap vet and amateur comic Jeru da Damaja, bringing life to his undiminished classic The Sun Rises in the East. But Jeru, a relative newbie to the scene, didn't allow for the jazz musicians--bassist Esperanza Spalding, pianist Ray Angry, saxophonists Jaleel Shaw and Marcus Strickland, trombonist Corey King, trumpeter Igmar Thomas and the aforementioned Jones--to get theirs until the end on the late J Dilla production De La Soul's "Stakes is High." It's a song heavily favored by the many jazz musicians reared when hip hop became pop, many of whom call Dilla a chief influence. Ray Angry, bobbed vehemently as he elaborated on the melody and the familiar loop, extended and improvised, similarly charged the soles of the healthy crowd that remained.
Tomorrow evening, Friday November 21st, Revive Da Live presents drummer Chris Dave (of Erykah Badu, Mint Condition and Robert Glasper's bands) and Friends at the Hip Hop Cultural Center of Harlem as part of the JazzMix festival.
Photo Credits: Large Professor and Jaleel Shaw at Le Poisson Rouge photographed by the author on Thursday, November 6, 2008.
"Excessively Nasty": One Night with Leon Ware
Before last night, I knew little of Leon Ware beside his connection to Maxwell but when the the elder songwriter's band revved up, waiting on his dramatic descent down the stairs from Blue Note's dressing room into their main space Monday night, I heard where I'd heard him from and more. The slender 68-year-old, presiding over six piece band and guest vocalist Maya Azucena, recalled the orchestrated funk of Maxwell. At times it was too heavy and partnered with his tendency to talk sing, reminiscent of a lounge singer. But it was flashbacks to his early hits that brought his talent to the fore.
Fortunate: An Account of Maxwell's Radio City Music Hall Comeback Performance
Tags: Maxwell, Radio City Music Hall, Soul
"Get to Know Ya," built from behind Radio City Music Hall's curtains before last night's sold out crowd heard or caught a glimpse of the resurgent Maxwell. My sister had yet to return from the ladies lounge where minutes earlier Law & Order's Detective Finn Tutuola, gentlemanly clean, pleasantly greeted fans as he stood waiting on his wife Coco. I was nervous. It felt momentous and I didn't want her to miss a thing but she sped back into our second row center seats just in time.
Maxwell, his mane long since abandoned, appeared, descended the bandstand, his 10 cohorts in full groove, showing hints of the Marvin Gaye meets Jackie Wilson meets the 5 Borough melting pot style he's adopted. It's high octane but doesn't recall that famous MTV Unplugged couch shimmying and booty shaking that some used to attribute to his Puerto Rican lineage. It was more Rat Pack with a bit of raunch smoothed out by his winning smile and absolute guilelessness. People of color predominated from chain-hang-low types to single thirtysomething women to mature couples to every industry insider (Kevin Liles, Stephen Hill, Andre Harrell, Sylvia Rhone). I felt privileged to be there and lucky to be so close.
"Praise for the Sweetness": Notes on the Jazz for Obama Benefit Concert
Tags: Bilal, Doug Wamble, Jazz, Obama, Robert Glasper, Roy Hargrove
Tonight Joe Biden goes to bat for Barack Obama in the two senators' bid for the White House. Last night, a concentration of jazz talent made an appeal for the democratic candidates with sobriety, humor and flair. Jazz for Obama, a benefit for the Obama/Biden campaign that featured more than enough of the genre's luminaries to warrant the $50 to $250 tickets, was the second installment of political fundraisers organized by pianist Aaron Goldberg. Jazz for America's Future, a 2004 concert for then Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry, was the first, and Kerry's subsequent loss compounded by George Bush's disastrous second term imbued an insistence to the night's performances and a bit of melancholy.
All Along the Waterfront: Flying Lotus and Devin the Dude
Tags: Devin the Dude, Flying Lotus, Hip Hop
His mouth curled up, his face covered in a thin sheen of sweat, Houston's Devin the Dude took to lower Manhattan's South Street Seaport Sunday September 7th for the East Village Radio Festival. Postponed from Saturday due to tropical storm Hanna, the festival featured a predominantly hip hop lineup tailored to the cheeky tastes of monochromatic few in attendance. Despite a few technical trip ups, Devin amused the crowd with his randy raps for just over a half hour appalling the tourist throngs that South Street Seaport attracts."Lacville '79" and "Doobie Ashtray" were highlights as was "Fuck You" but nothing was entertaining as the scrunched up faces of sunkissed outoftowners during Devin's opener "Boo Boo'n."
I was expecting a chiller vibe from Southern California's Flying Lotus, a star on the rise with the discriminating pockets of electronic and hip hop fans but Fly Lo made for a fun show, an achievement since his props, laptop, sampler, etc..., were limited. He had an enthusiasm conveyed in a elastic head nod of giraffe proportions that translated to the crowd. Not sure if the crowd's narrow composition was his and the other performers making or that of East Village Radio's target audience but it was the only down side to the whole affair. KRS cleaned up the show but I've seen the legend rock too many times already to cede any of my precious time for any encores. All in all it, I'd have to say it was a good day in these last days of summer.
Check out more photos from the show at my Flickr slide show.
40 Days & 40 Nights: J*DaVeY
Tags: 40 Days & 40 Nights
To commemorate the most beautifullest time of the year for me, summertime in the NYC, I will be posting concert reviews from this Independence Day weekend through Labor Day. I'm calling this endeavor, 40 Days & 40 Nights. I aim to blog that many shows, whether they stir me when the sun bears down brutal or when it has set.
J*DaVeY, MANHATTAN, 8.20.08
The intimidatingly cool Los Angeles duo J*DaVeY has intrigued an exuberant minority of discriminating music fans collectively sold on industry co-signs, their acute fashion sense and genre polyamory. But in these past few years as J*DaVeY's built a buzz, they've piqued more appetites with their electronic excursions than they've truly satisfied.
40 Days & 40 Nights: Joel Dorn Tribute
Tags: 40 Days & 40 Nights, Jazz, Joel Dorn, Soul
To commemorate the most beautifullest time of the year for me, summertime in the NYC, I will be posting concert reviews from this Independence Day weekend through Labor Day. I'm calling this endeavor, 40 Days & 40 Nights. I aim to blog that many shows, whether they stir me when the sun bears down brutal or when it has set.
"KEEP A LIGHT IN THE WINDOW: A TRIBUTE TO JOEL DORN," MANHATTAN, 08.13.2008
Last night, if not for my 62 year-old father, visiting from Seattle, I would have been rocking uptown to Slick Rick the Ruler instead of reclining on the Upper West Side in the shadow of handful of old time jazz and soul icons. The British-born, Bronx-bred rapper is hardly my contemporary but I fondly remember the tail end of his career, "Hey Young World" for example, from the early part of my listening life. I have a more tenuous link to the artists featured in Lincoln Center's homage to the late record producer Joel Dorn. Just one of the featured performers, Roberta Flack, did I remember permeating my Seattle townhouse as a child, the rest were just revered names that I'd heard bandied about in my time reading, writing and studying popular music.
40 Days & 40 Nights: Erykah Badu
Tags: 40 Days & 40 Nights, Erykah Badu, Soul
To commemorate the most beautifullest time of the year for me, summertime in the NYC, I will be posting concert reviews from this Independence Day weekend through Labor Day. I'm calling this endeavor, 40 Days & 40 Nights. I aim to blog that many shows, whether they stir me when the sun bears down brutal or when it has set.
ERYKAH BADU, BROOKLYN, 8.04.08
In a plunging grey jump suit with her go-to Afro wig loosely affixed, Erykah Badu began her free Wingate Field performance with "The Healer." It's a spiritual gumbo that reflects the 37 year-old soul singer's broad cosmology and tastes mostly of hip hop. Magnanimous in her band-hushing and crowd-shushing, Badu was Monday night as big as the culture and just as diffuse. As is her wont, she commanded her band to lay out on alternating lines for much of her 14-song set making for a jerky evening. This compulsion to explain what I, and it seemed many others, would rather feel ensured that few of her songs were met with the noise she expected Brooklyn to bring.
40 Days & 40 Nights: Peter Hadar
Tags: 40 Days & 40 Nights, Music, Peter Hadar, Soul
To commemorate the most beautifullest time of the year for me, summertime in the NYC, I will be posting concert reviews from this Independence Day weekend through Labor Day. I'm calling this endeavor, 40 Days & 40 Nights. I aim to blog that many shows, whether they stir me when the sun bears down brutal or when it has set.
PETER HADAR, MANHATTAN 7.23.08
Last Wednesday, there didn't look to be any "L.E.S. Artistes" slinking through 205, a small club on the corner of Chrystie and Stanton in New York City. It was more a mix of young professionals, disparate industry types and random midweek revelers. Although a slightly stilted scene for soul singer Peter Hadar, which the reggae-lite stylings of opener Sophia Bastian did little to abate, the New Jersey native presided with ease.
40 Days & 40 Nights: Bahamadia
Tags: 40 Days & 40 Nights, Bahamadia, Hip Hop
To commemorate the most beautifullest time of the year for me, summertime in the NYC, I will be posting concert reviews from this Independence Day weekend through Labor Day. I'm calling this endeavor, 40 Days & 40 Nights. I aim to blog that many shows, whether they stir me when the sun bears down brutal or when it has set.
BAHAMADIA, BROOKLYN, 7.23.08
A jeep deposited Bahamadia at Brooklyn's Brower Park a full hour after her free show's scheduled start. I was a little miffed but the meager crowd, a mix of neighborhood residents, veteran hip hop heads and peasy-headed dancers didn't seem to mind. After a run to the restroom, the rapper apologized, citing a broke down train as the cause of her delay, and then assertively spit my qualms away.
