I caught a fantastic show last night in Iowa City, finally getting the chance to see the Brad Mehldau Trio in person. I've been a fan for years, and so it was nice to experience them live.

This was a make-up gig from 2005 when Mehldau was snowed in and couldn't reach Iowa City for a show. This time, he almost was forced to postpone again, but the problem was on our end: the University of Iowa's Hancher Auditorium was severely damaged during massive flooding we experienced here in June. The facility won't open until 2010, but in the meantime many of this season's shows were rescheduled for area venues (new season tagline: "Can't Contain Us.") This show was at the City High School auditorium, and it's a safe guess that no matter how talented the school's many alums may have been, this was the best thing to ever grace that stage.

I wrote a review for CorridorBuzz.com where those interested can find out all of the details. Suffice to say it was the best jazz I've seen this year, and that's saying something given the caliber of talent at this year's Iowa City Jazz Festival.

Labels: concert, jazz, music

I took in a lot of great jazz over the weekend thanks to the Iowa City Jazz Festival. I was working, reviewing some of the sets for CorridorBuzz.com (including Friday, Saturday and Sunday). The festival headliners were all excellent: Medeski, Martin & Wood on Friday, John Scofield on Saturday and Joshua Redman on Sunday. I got what I expected from MMW and Scofield -- funky, groove-based jazz -- but was pleasantly surprised by Redman. You can't rest on the phenom thing for too long, so I knew he had the goods, but I've never been moved by his music on record. Live, he was electric, playing with passion and enthusiasm. He played accompanied by just bass and drums, so there was no chance to lay out, no break, no rest. He brought it for about 80 minutes with little more than the time between songs and the occasional drum or bass solo to even get a breath.

The event is something to look forward to all year, as we don't get a lot of big name live jazz here in Iowa City very often. There is a very talented group of players in the area, thanks in part to the great jazz programs at the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa just up the road in Cedar Falls, so we do have the opportunity to hear live jazz (though not as often as we should). As for big draws, however, we now must wait until November when Brad Mehldau comes to the UI's Hancher Auditorium, assuming that damage from the devastating flooding over the past several weeks can be repaired in time.

Photos by Loren Keller.

Labels: jazz, music

It isn't often that jazz from outside the mainstream gets any press, so it was a pleasant surprise to read about '70s and '80s jazz in today's New York Times. The piece deals with the many blogs that have sprung up that deal with that time period, particularly with a round of discussion among several of them that it was high time to create a canon of such works that might serve as evidence that, contrary to popular belief, the genre didn't wither and die when the '60s came to a close.

Included in the piece is a frequent stop of mine, Destination: Out, as well as many other sites that will join it among my music bookmarks. Of particular note are Do the Math, kept by Ethan Iverson, pianist for the Bad Plus, and Darcy James Argue's Secret Society (you'll find his initial contribution to the discussion at the link). Their discussion revolved around listing worthy jazz albums from those two decades, an exercise that resulted in a greatly pared-down list of about 500 titles.

That led to the creation of a wiki, Ear of the Behearer (named for a 1973 Dewey Redman disc that is, of course, on the list), which lists the discs and allows users to add favorites of their own. It's skeletal now, but with some effort from passionate participants, it could become a valuable resource.

Labels: jazz