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FRED HERSCH: FINDING INSPIRATION

By Ken Dryden

Fred Hersch’s contributions as a pianist, composer, bandleader and sideman have made him one of the top musicians of his generation. The Cincinnati native was drawn to jazz in his youth and benefited from the mentoring of local musicians who challenged him. Fred needed to expand his horizons, so he drove to Boston to track down Jaki Byard at the New England Conservatory for a spontaneous audition, which Jaki granted and told him immediately afterward that he was accepted. Fred worked with many remarkable teachers there, including Joe Maneri, Jimmy Giuffre and George Russell. Fred recalls, “After graduation in June 1977, I was living in the Village. I wanted to play with the best players in the world, and felt that I had the tools and wanted to be challenged. I was mentored by bassist Sam Jones; from him, I learned about swing in a deep way. Playing with him was a lot of cred, because people respected him.

Through Sam I got to Art Farmer, through Art I got to Joe Henderson, then I was with Stan Getz for a brief stint. I played gigs with Charlie Haden, Buster Williams, Al Foster, Billy Hart. The skill set for a young jazz pianist moving to New York in 1977 was to have good time, be able to swing, know the tunes, be able to comp. Sight-reading was a plus, but you weren’t expected to compose all your own original music. NEC was a jazz department then, not yet a jazz program. Even though I benefited, I don’t feel that I’m a part of the jazz education era. Back then, you could hang out at the bar with all the great musicians. It was a very open scene. Even though I was playing great gigs with those people, I was still playing parties, in the Catskills, in restaurants, paying dues and I made my first album at the age of thirty. You had to have a record label then, someone willing to back you to do it. I’ve been able to release one or two albums a year over the past 38 years.”

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DIANNE REEVES: THE RIGHT CHOICE   

by Joyce Jones

When I connected with Dianne Reeves to gather additional information for this feature, she informed me that she took off for the summer. “Girl, I have my LIFE, my house, my enjoyment, my peace – all of those kinds of things,” she says. Even though Dianne had taken a break, she was working on a recording project with her longtime collaborator and “brother from another mother” Brazilian guitarist Romero Lubambo. “He’s a very close friend of mine. I enjoy working with him,” she says. The recording is scheduled to be released in January 2025. “After many years of working with Romero, and my love for Brazilian music, because I think that every recording that I’ve ever done, there’s some part of Brazil that shows itself in my work,” says Dianne. “We’ve, for years, done duo concerts, and we (have) a lot of fun and joy together. We decided to go into the studio and do what we’ve always done.” Dianne adds, “It’s a small record, but it’s big with heart, and it shows our relationship with music.”

Although Dianne was born in Detroit, MI, she was raised in her family home of Denver, CO, where she has settled in for quite some time now. Dianne’s grandmother’s father was a founding minister of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Denver. However, a large motivation for steering Dianne into music was her family, as many members were entertainers and musicians. Two of her grandmother’s sisters were entertainers. She has an uncle who was a bassist with the Colorado Symphony for over 40 years. He was the first Black member of the San Francisco Symphony, and he played European classical and jazz bass. 

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by George Kanzler

Guitarist Dave Stryker has forged a long career firmly rooted in soul jazz. Early on, he paid his dues playing with soul jazz B3 organist Jack McDuff and with leading soul jazz tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine. In recent years, he has led an organ trio and recorded a series of albums in a collection he’s named Eight Track, which includes many soul jazz and R’n’B/Soul hits from the 1970s and 1980s. But as a teenager in the 1970s, Dave wasn’t just, or primarily, into music. He was also an avid film buff, a fan of the burgeoning indie film movement of the era, as well as such studio-based franchises as 007, James Bond. That love of film has persisted throughout his life, leading him to call his latest recording project “one to check off my bucket list."

Goes to the Movies, Dave Stryker with Strings, Orchestra arranged and conducted by Brent Wallarab (Strikezone Records), features eleven tunes from ten different movies, all but one featuring a string and brass (trombone choir) orchestra, with Stryker and a rhythm section, occasionally joined in solo roles by violinist Sarah Caswell; Greg Ward, alto sax; Jim Pugh, trombone; and Mark Buselli, flugelhorn.

The album is an outgrowth of a collaborative project by Brent and Dave in 2023 at Indiana University (where they were both on the jazz faculty) to honor the centennial of guitarist Wes Montgomery, a native of Indianapolis. Brent wrote orchestral arrangements for a string orchestra to highlight Dave’s guitar tribute to Montgomery, and the pair wanted to continue that orchestra-soloist relationship on a recording project. But Dave did not want it to be a Wes Montgomery project. “I just love Wes too much," he said. But one of the tunes from the tribute, “Dreamsville,” the theme from the TV series Peter Gunn and movie Gunn, prompted Dave and Brent, also a movie buff, to come up with Goes to the Movies.

The album has a definite 1970s, CTI Records vibe, reflected in the lush string-horn arrangements, pianist Xavier Davis’s contributions on electric piano (a favorite of producer Creed Taylor, the CT of CTI), and Dave’s playing that is highly reminiscent of Wes Montgomery. “Wes was a big influence on me,” says Dave, who counts the guitarist as equally important to him as movies in his formative years.

Dave Stryker will be playing versions of the movie themes on Goes to the Movies at Birdland Theater, January 24–26, with his Organ Trio (Jared Gold, organ; McClenty Hunter, drums) and tenor saxophonists Troy Roberts (January 24-25) and Rob Dixon (January 26).

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Antoine Roney: Heart Music

by Raul da Gama

Where does music come from? We are, indeed, speaking of the realm of the platonic, the realm of the spirit. We are talking of each note that goes to form a string of ineffably precious and beautiful pearls that, in turn, forms a proverbial necklace that adorns the melody of a song. From a black dot on a line or the spaces between the lines of a staved paper? Certainly not where Antoine Roney comes from.

In the case of Antoine – as in the case of the spiritual ancestors of the horns from whom he has descended: Dexter Gordon, Hawk and Bean, Charlie Parker, Jackie Maclean, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Pharoah Sanders – it pulsates from the beat of his heart.

The heart – more than the head – speaks through Antoine’s horns. It is something he always knew from listening to music at home with his musically noble family. “Of course, technique is important,” he says, “but what’s in the heart determines the sound of your voice.” We all breathe the same air, but what you make of it aurally is what counts.

It is one of those unforgettable lessons you learn when your early mentors are Wayne Shorter and Jackie Maclean. “Jackie and [his son] René always said, ‘focus on telling the story… sing the blues.’ Sure, structure – the 12-bar structure of WC Handy – is important, but ‘composition is storytelling.’”

Antoine says, “I believe I have a story to tell. That, and because music has the power to heal. It’s why I make music.” 

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Dee Dee Bridgewater: Yesterday, Today … and Tomorrow
by Raul da Gama

How do you fit the life of someone celebrated for her multi-dimensional artistry, and more importantly, a quintessential human being, in a few hundred words or so? Why, even a 300- or 400-page book wouldn’t do to fit all that she has accomplished in life so far. Here’s a snapshot: three GRAMMY Awards, a Tony Award winner for her role as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wiz - the Broadway version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1975) - the Doris Duke Award (2019), NEA Jazz Master (2020), Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, first American to be inducted into the Haut Conseil de la Francophonie, Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Award (France), and that is just scratching the surface.

The soul is where Dee Dee’s art resides, and it is from that deepest recess of her being that it emerges. Her voyage of discovery took her first to Mali, to discover her African ancestry. The evanescent music of Red Earth: A Malian Journey (DDB Records, 2007) resulted from that part of her journey. From Bamako, the next stop was Memphis, where she was born and lived until three years of age, when she moved to Flint, MI. “After having done Red Earth, which was the African part of my journey,” Dee Dee says, “I needed to look at my birthplace. I was born in Memphis, TN. And I decided that I needed to look at my birthplace and my ancestry here in the United States.” That part of Dee Dee’s journey yielded perhaps her most stripped down, and also her most ambitious album, Memphis… Yes I’m Ready (OKeh, 2017). Again, that is just scratching the surface of her catalogue.

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