Heeeloooo?

No one seems to be home.  Guess we’ll open up the Froggy Bottom Café for the Friday Night Jazz Jam a little early today, for the happy hour crowd.  So enjoy; it’s all on the house since there doesn’t seem to be any management types around.

But please – don’t shoot the piano player!
Or you get several hours of just bass and drums…

Well, I was out of town a good part of this week on business; had to drive over to Nashville and back, a 2-CD trip each way.  So before I left I thought I’d go see what’s new in the way of jazz CDs at the library to enjoy on the drive (along with Air America Radio podcasts, of course – but I have to have my jazz to let my blood pressure come down between AAR stories on the latest outrages, so I don’t have a stroke while driving, LOL).

Anyway, one of the CDs I got was “Resonance,” by a group I had never heard of, the Taylor Eigsti Trio.  Turns out Mr. Eigsti is the same age as my older son!  The album is quite impressive.  Here’s a good summary from a late 2003 review in the Boston Phoenix by Ted Drozdowski:

To judge by the CD-cover portrait, 19-year-old Taylor Eigsti seems set on becoming the next Justin Timberlake rather than following the path of McCoy Tyner, which he does admirably on this album’s 11 pieces. Eigsti is a Southern California jazz-piano whirlwind with a light touch, a fluid sense of improvisation, and a gift for wrapping his creative flights in solid melodies. He opens by taking Chick Corea’s “Got a Match” at just the showy pace, with manic octave chords, you’d expect from a young hotshot. But as soon as that number ends, his own “Juliette” reveals a sense of humor in his rhythmic approach as well as an ability to let the blues unravel in its own greasy time. His “Avolation” hints at spiritual interests in the mysterious way its melody builds over pulsing bass notes before easing into a comfortable groove. And the manner in which he lingers over the changes of “Somewhere,” as if dragging his feet against the ballad’s customary flow, provides grounding for colorful harmonic excursions and other rich-textured departures from the tune; it’s the first really personal reimagining of the Bernstein chestnut in some time. The disc closes with the near-solo composition “Introspection,” a quality not often fully formed in players so young; carved from big, round notes, the delicate performance again reveals the depth of his talent and the titanic possibilities of his career. This may be the sound of a future giant awakening.

More info at a profile of him here.

You can listen to clips from this CD here, and you can hear him on an internet simulcast this Sunday, August 21, on Bud Spangler’s “Sunday Night Suites” on KCSM 91.1 FM, 8pm pacific, 11pm eastern, which will be featuring “Live at Yoshi’s:” The Anton Schwartz Quintet featuring Taylor Eigsti on piano and Julian Lage on guitar.

…Which leads me to Anton Schwartz, another young rising star on the jazz scene.  Unlike many young geniuses who burst onto the jazz scene at a young age, however, Schwartz didn’t come directly to jazz through a single-minded pursuit of his art:

…In college, however, Anton pursued other passions. He earned a B.A. in Mathematics and Philosophy at Harvard, graduating magna cum laude in 1989. Next came Stanford, where, as a National Science Foundation fellow, Anton performed doctoral research in Artificial Intelligence. But all the while, Anton continued to play music. He held the prestigious first tenor sax chair in the Harvard Jazz Band, after Don Braden and before Joshua Redman. And inevitably, Anton’s heart drew him to a full-time jazz career. In ’95 he jumped feet first into the San Francisco jazz scene that has remained his home, even as he’s traveled the country.

I’ve been lucky enough to hear both his first album, When Music Calls, and his second, The Slow Lane, and can recommend both of them highly.  Sound clips are available for both albums on the linked pages.

But don’t believe me; according to the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

Anton Schwartz has everything you want to hear in a modern jazz saxophonist–an appealing, consistent tone, an abundance of ideas fueling both his compositions and his improvisations, and superb taste in musical collaborators.

Since we seem to have stumbled onto a theme for this week, namely `musicians starting jazz careers at a young age,” let’s run with it.

OK, our next artist called Dizzy Gillespie his “musical father”. In fact Dizzy gave him an ‘updo’ horn just like his own.  Need more clues?  Are you old enough to remember the music ABC TV associated with the 1976 Olympics and the 1980 winter Olympics?  Yes, many, many years before his song “Feels So Good” was selected by smooth jazz stations across the US as their all-time #1 song (I couldn’t make that up), Chuck Mangione – along with his brother Gap, a pianist – recorded their first album as “The Jazz Brothers” in – are you ready? – 1960!  So, if you want to go for a ride in my time machine back 45 years, you can hear clips from this CD here, as well as see just how young Chuck looked back then.  You’ll be surprised – unlike where his music may have later gone, this jazz is the real thing: late-`50’s early-`60’s bop.  Check it out and you too can say “Who would have thought?”

Something new this week, then a free gift for reading to the end.  (No fair skipping to the end and collecting your gift without checking out the full diary!)

Current Jazz Birthdays:  Any of your favorites here?  Give us your stories and recollections!

15 August
Oscar Peterson. Born 1925.

16 August
Bill Evans (piano). Born 1929.
Mal Waldron. Born 1926.

18 August
David Benoit. Born 1953.

21 August
Count Basie. Born 1904.
Art Farmer. Born 1928.

25 August
Wayne Shorter. Born 1933.

26 August
Branford Marsalis. Born 1960.  

27 August
Alice Coltrane. Born 1937.
Lester Young. Born 1909.

Click here for your free gift.  Enjoy, and see you next week!