Dave Scott, one of Kansas City’s most accomplished jazz exports, plays a few transcendently heartbreaking solos on his new album Setting Standards. Forsaking technical perfection, the trumpeter conveys the melancholy that comes with a mature awareness of the temporal nature of life on ballads including “Embraceable You”, “Emily” and “Once Upon a Summertime”. Pianist Jacob Sacks, bassist John Hébert and drummer Russ Meissner also avoid sentimentality while acknowledging the inevitability of loss. While the quartet’s readings of uptempo material are less distinctive, Scott’s exquisite statements on ballads make Setting Standards essential.
Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Charlie Parker, Count Basie and the Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society were name-checked in a recent episode of the Eight One Sixty program on 90.9 The Bridge.
*Dave Scott checked in with Joe Dimino.
Now’s the Time: Dave Scott
Trumpeter Dave Scott returns to his hometown for a show at Westport Coffee House on Thursday, June 29. The embedded video documents Scott’s appearance at Smalls Jazz Club in New York City two weeks ago. (The first set begins at the 36:20 mark).
Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Matt Otto told The Pitch about his new album.
*Dunn Deal, a restaurant operated by Gerald Dunn of the American Jazz Museum, is slated to open in August.
*Reed Jackson reviewed Pat Metheny’s concert at Muriel Kauffman Theatre.
*Dave Scott chatted with Joe Dimino.
*Julie Denesha interviewed Donald Harrison and Stephon Alexander in advance of an event at the Folly Theater.
*Outings by Peter Schlamb’s Electric Tinks and the Kansas City Latin Jazz Orchestra are included in a recap of the Boulevardia festival.
Album Review: Dave Scott- Song for Alice
Song for Alice is a sleeper. Unheralded and overlooked, the latest release by Dave Scott is worthy of consideration for jazz album of the year. The trumpeter originally from the Kansas City area is joined by saxophonist Rich Perry, pianist Gary Versace, bassist Johannes Weidenmuller and drummer Mark Ferber on the 2022 recording released in January by Steeplechase Records. Contrary to the title of the closing track “Indistinct Chatter,” the quintet’s free explorations are razor sharp and crystal clear. Only improvisers who have completely mastered straight-ahead forms can render outside contexts with such magnificently controlled eloquence.
Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Joe Dimino shared video clips from shows by Dave Scott and Charles Williams.
*The Chicago jazz advocacy group Fulton Street Collective streamed a performance by the Kansas City trio of saxophonist Pete Fucinaro, bassist Ben Tervort and drummer Brian Steever.
*Tweet of the Week: Kenneth Barreras- Master Musician Carmell Jones was born on this date in 1936. Here he is playing his own composition on a Nathan Davis recording. Davis himself does not play on this tune. With the legendary Kenny Clarke on drums. Carmell's Black Forest Waltz (link)
Concert Review: The Dave Scott Quartet and Arnold Young and the RoughTet at Westport Coffee House
Original image by Plastic Sax. From left to right: John Nichols, Jacob Schwartzberg, Arnold Young (obscured), Dave Scott, Quin Wallace and Gary Cardile.
A concert at Westport Coffee House on Sunday, July 10, felt consequential even though fewer than two dozen people paid the $10 cover charge. A quartet led by trumpeter Dave Scott and Arnold Young’s RoughTet shared the bill in a rare confluence of exceptional homegrown talent.
Scott, a New York based trumpeter raised in the Kansas City area, and the Kansas City drummer Young made waves in the region’s jazz scene alongside their eminent peer Pat Metheny several decades ago. On Sunday, the bandleaders were joined by representatives of several generations of Kansas City jazz musicians. Each participant responded to the momentous summit with inspired playing.
A rambunctious couple sitting near the bandstand hooted and hollered throughout Young’s freewheeling 45-minute opening set. They had the right idea. Assisted by his longtime compatriot John Nichols on bass and Gary Cardile on percussion, the veteran drummer acted as an irreverent version of Art Blakey as he mentored the youthful tandem of saxophonist Jacob Schwartzberg and trumpeter Quin Wallace.
Renditions of selections from their new album Fear Is the Mind Killer were gloriously raucous. Scott sat in with the RoughTet before playing a 70-minute set with the New York based Michael Eaton (the saxophonist is from nearby Liberty), bassist Jeff Harshbarger and drummer Marty Morrison.
Eaton took several Coltrane-esque solos and a few of Scott’s distinctive statements resembled variations on “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Yet the ensemble mostly shifted between the proto-harmolodics of early Ornette Coleman, ominous post-bop and joyful Kansas City swing. Such transcendent displays of left-of-center artistic excellence in the face of public indifference are a hallmark of Kansas City’s jazz scene.
Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*NPR’s Weekend Edition featured Julia Lee’s “Snatch and Grab It” on the 75th anniversary of the bawdy song.
*Dave Scott checked in with Joe Dimino.
*The lineup of the 2022 edition of The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival in New York City includes Jason Moran, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Archie Shepp and Buster Williams. (Tip via LK.)
*Tweet of the Week: KCMO Parks and Rec- It’s official! @MayorLucasKC has declared June 21st #MakeMusicKC Day in #KCMO! Join us #OneWeekFromToday as @KansasCity joins the global celebration of music with 100+ free live music performances by 60+ artists at venues all over the metro!! Listings at makemusicday.org/kcmo
Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Dave Scott and Tim Brewer chatted with Joe Dimino about their past and present endeavors.
*The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center hosts a jazz-themed art exhibition through December 31.
*The author of this blog muses on the shifting landscape for music venues in a report by KCUR’s Laura Spencer.
*Tweet of the Week: John Armato- Veteran music journalist Bill Brownlee calls "The Drummer Loves Ballads" one of the Top 25 Kansas City Albums of 2021. Thank you Bill! (link)
Book Review: Carolyn Glenn Brewer- Beneath Missouri Skies: Pat Metheny in Kansas City 1964-1972
Original image by Plastic Sax.
Pat Metheny’s 1976 debut album Bright Size Life is so magical that listeners would be forgiven for thinking the music materialized out of nowhere. Carolyn Glenn Brewer’s illuminating new study Beneath Missouri Skies: Pat Metheny in Kansas City 1964-1972 provides a detailed accounting of the origins of the Lee’s Summit native’s sound.
Brewer, the author of the excellent Changing the Tune: The Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival, 1978-1985, exhaustively traces Metheny’s formative musical endeavors. Her story opens with The Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and closes during the summer following Metheny’s graduation from high school.
Not only is Brewer a contemporary of Metheny, she was a fellow musician and sister of one of Metheny’s primary teen collaborators. She bolsters her eyewitness impressions of many of the key events of Beneath Missouri Skies with extensive research and interviews.
Beneath Missouri Skies will delight Metheny enthusiasts eager to learn even the most minute details of his musical development, but it’s even more crucial as a history of a previously underdocumented era of jazz in Kansas City. The scarcity of recordings and videos of the scene Brewer describes makes her work necessary.
The colorful antics of Gary Sivils, the business acumen of Warren Durrett and the influential theories of John Elliott loom large. Musicians such as Herman Bell, Rod Fleeman, Russ Long, Bettye Miller, Dave Scott and Paul Smith also play key roles in Beneath Missouri Skies. While she clearly has great personal and professional affection for her subjects, Brewer doesn’t romanticize the setting.
She recounts the demeaning musical compromises musicians were obligated to make at the majority of gigs in Kansas City. Metheny and his colleagues were regularly compelled to cover shopworn pop hits like “Proud Mary.” The inference that these artistic constraints would contribute to Metheny’s crossover success is among the multitude of insights provided by the invaluable Beneath Missouri Skies.