My monthly list of recommended CDs, as published in The New York City Jazz Record, April 2013: Ches Smith and These Arches, Hammered (Clean Feed) Benoît Delbecq & Fred Hersch Double Trio, Fun House (Songlines) Charles Lloyd & Jason Moran, Hagar’s Song (ECM) Nicholas Payton, #BAM Live at Bohemian Caverns (BMF) Kendrick Scott Oracle, Conviction (Concord) Ben Wendel & Dan Tepfer,
The Critic’s Pick from the current issue of Philadelphia Weekly. Those brackets in the last sentence were not my idea…. Nicholas Payton Sat., Feb. 11, 8pm ($30), 10pm ($25). Chris’ Jazz Café, 1421 Sansom St. 215.568.3131 www.chrisjazzcafe.com Nicholas Payton, a trumpet ace since his teens, has embraced a new role as a Twitter agitator, the self-proclaimed “Creator of #BAM aka
Inevitably, a firestorm erupted on Twitter and Facebook after trumpeter Nicholas Payton published this post, titled “On Why Jazz Isn’t Cool Anymore.” And then this follow-up, “An Open Letter To My Dissenters.” In the second post Payton writes, “‘Jazz’ is an oppressive colonialist slave term and I want no parts [sic] of it.” This sounds similar to Fred Ho’s assessment:
I’ve just gotten around to posting PDFs of my JazzTimes features on Donny McCaslin and Nicholas Payton. In other news, looking forward to end of semester, when I hope to start posting more often on this blog.
From the April 2011 issue of The New York City Jazz Record: — A pattern emerged when the Nicholas Payton Television Studio Orchestra played its third Saturday set at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola (March 5th): “Blues for Booker Little,” a simmering, Latin-tinged opener featuring the leader on trumpet and Chelsea Baratz on tenor, gave way to “Blue,” a dissonant, shadowy piece