Sep 3, 2025 12:02 PM
Keeping the Flame at Van Gelder Studio
On the last Sunday of 2024, in the control room of Van Gelder Studio, Don and Maureen Sickler, co-owners since Rudy Van…
James Blood Ulmer performs at the NYC Winter Jazzfest on Jan. 15. (Photo: Bart Babinski)
(Photo: )Now established as the jazz equivalent of the State of the Union, the NYC Winter Jazzfest is angling to become the best jazz festival in America. It descends each January on New York’s Greenwich Village, bringing newly prominent young artists and established talents heading up new projects. It’s as wide a spectrum as fans and newcomers can get of the cutting edge of jazz in the 21st century, and in 2016 that spectrum was wider than ever—for better or worse.
WJF’s core programming remains a two-night marathon, this year held on Friday, Jan. 15, and Saturday, Jan. 16. Each of a dozen venues hosted a parade of acts in 50-minute sets—any given bandstand can be occupied for more than seven hours straight. The New School, a university located in Greenwich Village, provided four spaces to the festival, stretching it for the first time across Washington Square.
Still, the southern end of the Village hosted the majority of spaces, thus offering the most choices for beginning one’s marathon. Bleecker Street’s legendary club The Bitter End (where the concert producer Revive Music held its showcase) offered one the most tantalizing: Makaya McCraven, the Chicago-based drummer/producer whose album In the Moment was among the most riveting debuts of 2015.
McCraven’s live show not only lived up to his album; it illuminated it. In the Moment was recorded live, but heavily edited and remixed, so that ostinato was impossible to distinguish from tape loop. The performance suggested that there were fewer of the latter than it seemed.
McCraven’s compositions, the rhythm section of himself and bassist Joshua Ramos, and the solos by guitarist Matt Gold, trumpeter Marquis Hill and vibraphonist Justefan were built on short-phrase patterns, either full repeats or expansions into longer, more elaborate lines that nonetheless returned to the initial phrase. Expansions were a particular specialty of Hill; his solo on the set’s sole cover, “Lonely Woman,” was a series of riffs that Hill established, developed, and blended throughout his solo.
McCraven’s band found other ways to play with rhythmic figures and repetitions as well. The unnamed opening tune found Justefan playing less restrained, horizontal lines—but with the rhythms and cadences of a rap MC. Gold’s guitar on “The Jawn” repeated a vamp, but with each new recycling he subtly adjusted the accents. On the closer, the band went polyrhythmic; while Gold and Ramos played a triple meter, McCraven played a longer line that ended with a half-beat.
Impressively, however, the band managed to remain laid-back throughout; this was chill-out music, rhythmic percolations and all. It was a remarkable testament to the power of this ensemble, and of McCraven’s music.
McCraven presented an inspiring beginning, but he was far from the only highlight of Friday night’s marathon. There was also pianist James Francie’s Kinetic quintet, performing at the Glass Box Theater in the New School’s Jazz Building. Joel Ross (“The Michael Jordan of the vibes,” as Francies called him) undertook a pugilistic attack on his instrument, meshing with the equally punchy, but dizzyingly intricate, work by drummer Jeremy Dutton. As for Francies, his playing (especially on his own tune “Sway”) was the rare beast that can without hyperbole be called “Tatumesque.”
A block away, at the New School’s Auditorium, Christian McBride’s New Jawn project (a quartet with saxophonist Abraham Burton, trumpeter Josh Evans and drummer Nasheet Waits) played a tumbling, loose sound that colored jovially outside the lines. Burton, on “Clero’s Flipped,” balanced tuneful bebop licks with atonal sheets of sound; McBride embossed “Raise Four” with a thick-toned, declarative solo that all but dismantled Monk’s simple theme.
There were some frustrations on Friday night, however. Avant-garde guitarist James “Blood” Ulmer applied his fragmentary approach to solo blues; it worked, but the point was made after perhaps two songs (including a take on the traditional “Sitting On Top Of The World”). The final two performances at Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square (a duet between violinist Sarah Neufeld and bass saxophonist Colin Stetson, plus a surprise set by The Bad Plus) might have been fine music, but the acoustics were so bad that it was hard to tell.
Finally, exciting though the expanded venue list must have been for the WJF organizers, it robs the festival of its sense of intimacy and ease of access—rather than walking across the street or a few blocks from one club to another in the short space between acts, one must now add cab fare to the price of admission in planning their festival agenda.
(Note: To read a review of trumpeter Avishai Cohen’s performance at the 2016 ECM Winter JazzFest, click here.)
—Michael J. West
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