This month of public programs presented by the National Jazz Museum in Harlem features retrospectives (Louis Armstrong and Hank Jones), discussions with two of the most prominent and influential contemporary saxophonists (Joe Lovano and Steve Coleman) as well as a talk with top jazz journalist Bill Milkowski, and live performances that riff on the connection between visual art and jazz, by trumpeter Marcus Printup and trombonist Ryan Keberle at the Rubin Museum of Art, and the NJMH All Stars at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Whether your taste leans toward the historical and traditional, or to the futuristic and cutting edge, you’ll find it this month. Mark your calendar and bring some friends!

   
Monday, August 2, 2010
Jazz for Curious Readers
Bill Milkowski
7:00 – 8:30pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300
Bill Milkowski, a New York-based freelancer who contributes regularly to Jazz Times, Modern Drummer, Guitar Player, Bass Player, Jazziz, Audio, and various international music publications, has written more than 4,000 articles for these and various other magazines since publishing his first article as a freelancer in 1974. He’s also penned more than 250 sets of liner notes to date. He is the author of "Rockers, Jazzbos & Visionaries" (Billboard Books, 1999) and "JACO: The Extraordinary Life And Times Of Jaco Pastorius" (Miller Freeman Books, 1995), which is being made into a feature film by Blue Rider Pictures out of Santa Monica, California.
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on September 26, 1954, he began playing guitar at the age of 12 and came under the sway of rock guitar icons such as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck along with blues gods like B.B., Freddie and Albert King. His earliest experiences with jazz guitar came via Charlie Christian and later Joe Pass. Milkowski studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977.
In May of 1987, Milkowski was diagnosed with testicular cancer and underwent surgery and following radiation therapy. A benefit to help defray the costs of his rehabilitation was held at the old Tramp’s nightclub on 15th Street in New York. The evening was hosted by JJA’s Howard Mandel and featured such artists as John Scofield, Michael Brecker, Danny Gottlieb, John Zorn, Mike and Leni Stern, and others. Milkowski’s own band The Pit Bulls also performed. From 1991 to 1992, he served as co-host for "The Other Half," a Saturday morning blues show on radio station WNYE.
In 1993, Milkowski moved to New Orleans, where he indulged in all manner of decadence and over-eating and second lining. During his three-year stay in the Crescent City, he served as the overnight dj on radio station WWOZ. His "Milkman’s Matinee" program, which aired from 2-5 a.m., was a particular favorite with insomniacs and musicians coming home from their gigs. His daughter Sophie (pictured on the back inner sleeve in "Rockers, Jazzbos & Visionaries") was born in New Orleans on April 1, 1995.
Milkowski returned to New York in October of 1996 and presently resides in Washington Heights—so far Uptown that Harlem is Downtown.  

   
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Jazz for Curious Listeners
Pops is Tops: Louis Armstrong at 109: Louis 101: An introduction to Swing
7:00 – 8:30pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300
However one defines swing in jazz, Louis Armstrong is central to its meaning and application. Join hosts Loren Schoenberg and Ricky Riccardi for our annual PopsFest, where we celebrate the art and legacy of the Father of the jazz idiom.
Ricky Riccardi is a Louis Armstrong expert with a Master’s in Jazz History and Research from Rutgers University where he studied under respected jazz historians Lewis Porter, Henry Martin and John Howland. He taught jazz history for a year at Rutgers and has delivered lectures on Armstrong at the Institute of Jazz Studies, the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and the Satchmo SummerFest in New Orleans. Later this year Pantheon will publish his What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years. Currently, Riccardi is the Project Archivist for the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens.

  Thursday, August 5, 2010
Harlem Speaks
Joe Lovano, Saxophonist
6:30 – 8:30pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300
Joe Lovano began playing alto sax as a child in his birthplace of Cleveland, Ohio; a prophetic early family photo shows the infant Lovano cradled in his mother’s arms along with a sax. His father, tenor saxophonist Tony "Big T" Lovano, schooled him not only in the basics but also in dynamics and interpretation, and regularly exposed him to jazz artists traveling through such as Sonny Stitt, James Moody, Dizzy Gillespie, Gene Ammons, and Rasaahn Roland Kirk. While still a teenager, he immersed himself in the jam-session culture of Cleveland where organ trios were common and Texas tenor throw-downs a rite of passage. In high school, he began to absorb the free jazz experiments of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Jimmy Giuffre, and was greatly affected by the interaction which occurred between the musicians.
After high school he attended the famed Berklee School of Music in Boston where he met and began playing with such future collaborators as John Scofield, Bill Frisell, and Kenny Werner. He had been searching for a way to incorporate the fire and spirituality of late-period John Coltrane into more traditional settings. At Berklee he discovered modal harmony: "My training was all be-bop, and suddenly there were these open forms with deceptive resolutions. That turned me on, the combination of that sound and what I came in there with. I knew what I wanted to work on after that." In 1994, Lovano was given the prestigious "Distinguished Alumni Award" from Berklee.
Lovano’s first professional job after Berklee was, not surprising given his roots, with organist Lonnie Smith, which brought him to New York for his recording debut, followed by a stint with Brother Jack McDuff. This segued into a three year tour with the Woody Herman Thundering Herd from 1976 to 1979, culminating in The 40th Anniversary Concert at Carnegie Hall, which also featured Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Flip Phillips, and Al Cohn.
After leaving the Herman Herd, Lovano settled in New York City where he continues to live. His early years were filled with jam sessions and rent gigs, but eventually he joined the Mel Lewis Orchestra for its regular Monday night concert at the Village Vanguard, playing from 1990 to 1992 and recording six albums with the Orchestra. In addition, he worked with Elvin Jones, Carla Bley, Lee Konitz, Charlie Haden, and Bob Brookmeyer, among others, eventually joining the modern drummer Paul Motion’s band in 1981.
Beginning in 1991 with his first engagement as a leader (at the Village Vanguard), Lovano experimented with different ensembles, which reflect his searching and dynamic personality. As much a composer as player, he constantly seeks new ways to express his muse. His second Blue Note album Universal Language features the soprano voice of Judi Silvano, trumpeter Tim Hagans, and pianist Kenny Werner. His next album, the 1994 release Tenor Legacy, features tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman, and received wide critical acclaim, culminating in a Grammy nomination for "Best Jazz Small Group Recording."
In all, Lovano has over 25 recordings under his leadership, including Joyous Encounter (2005) with the late, great Hank Jones, and his most recent, Folk Art, featuring his group, US Five, featuring pianist James Weidman, bassist Esperanza Spalding, drummers Otis Brown III and Francisco Mela, and Lovano on saxophones.

   
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Saturday Panels
Remembering Hank Jones
12:00 – 4:00pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300
Until he recently joined the ranks of the dearly departed legends of jazz, pianist Hank Jones was one of a few remaining links to jazz’s storied past. He recorded countless albums as both a leader and as a sideman, having worked with virtually all of the jazz greats, from Coleman Hawkins and Ella Fitzgerald to Joe Lovano and Christian McBride. Two of his younger brothers, drummer Elvin and trumpeter, arranger, and composer Thad, were two of the most influential musicians in jazz. He was certainly the most respected, beloved and admired pianist across many generations of his peers, and the National Jazz Museum in Harlem is proud to honor his memory and legacy today.

  Jones began studying the piano as a boy, and at age 13 he began accompanying vocalists in Pontiac, Michigan, where he grew up. His father, a Baptist deacon, discouraged his sons’ interest in jazz, thinking it was evil. But its draw was strong for the young Hank Jones. He would travel to Detroit to hear concerts, where he first saw Louis Armstrong perform. While playing with local bands, in 1944 Jones met saxophonist Lucky Thompson, who encouraged the young pianist to move to New York City.

  Hank Jones’ first gig in New York was with trumpeter and vocalist Hot Lips Page at the Onyx Club in Manhattan. Soon he was playing with saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and in singer Billy Eckstine’s big band. The mid-1940s saw the transition from swing to bebop, and Jones shifted his style accordingly. In 1947, he began playing with Jazz at the Philharmonic, produced by Norman Granz, alongside several top bebop musicians. A year later he became Ella Fitzgerald’s pianist, touring with her for over five years, and in 1952, he recorded with Charlie Parker on Now’s the Time (Savoy Jazz).

  In the following decades, Jones played with clarinetists Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman, and in 1959, became the staff pianist at CBS Studios, a position he held for 17 years. He expanded his skills from pianist and accompanist to conductor in the late 1970s for the Broadway musical tribute to pianist Fats Waller, Ain’t Misbehavin’.

  Since then, Hank Jones continued to grow as a musician, performing and recording with musicians such as Joe Lovano, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Eddie Gomez, Al Foster, Jimmy Cobb, Sonny Stitt, Charlie Haden, and many others. In the last years of his life, he gave concerts and master classes around the world, spreading his talent and love for jazz. He died at age 91 on May 16th, 2010 in New York City.

  Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Jazz for Curious Listeners
Pops is Tops: Louis Armstrong at 109: Louis & Ella: A Musical Love Affair
7:00 – 8:30pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300
Join hosts Loren Schoenberg and Ricky Riccardi for our annual PopsFest, where today we’ll listen to and discuss the truly classic recorded collaborations between Pops and the First Lady of Song, Ella Fitzgerald.

  Friday, August 13, 2010
Harlem in the Himalayas
Marcus Printup
7:00pm
Location: Rubin Museum of Art
(150 West 17th Street)
$18 in advance | $20 at door |
For tickets: RMA Box Office <http://www.rmanyc.org/harleminthehimalayas/> or call 212-620-5000 ext. 344
Marcus Printup, born and raised in Conyers, Georgia, had his first musical experiences hearing the fiery gospel music his parents sang in church, and later discovered jazz as a senior in high school. While attending the University of North Florida on a music scholarship, he won the International Trumpet Guild Jazz Trumpet competition. In 1991, Printup’s life changed dramatically when he met his mentor this day, the great pianist Marcus Roberts, who introduced him to Wynton Marsalis, leading to his induction into the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in 1993. Conyers has since honored him with the celebration of “Marcus Printup Day” on August 22 annually.
Printup has performed and/or recorded with Roberts, Betty Carter, Dianne Reeves, Eric Reed, Cyrus Chestnut, Wycliffe Gordon, among others. He has several records as a leader, Song for the Beautiful Woman, Unveiled, Hub Songs, Nocturnal Traces, Peace in the Abstract, and his most recent, Bird of Paradise. He made his screen debut in the 1999 movie Playing by Heart and recorded on the film’s soundtrack.
He tours annually with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, spending one-third of his year touring world wide. Printup has an interest in teaching youth and experienced musicians and contributes to several camps annually. But tonight, expect fiery swingin’!

  Sunday, August 15, 2010
Jazz at The Studio
PORTRAITS: Mirrors in Time
2:00 – 4:00pm
Location: The Studio Museum in Harlem
(144 West 125th Street)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300
Featuring the NJMH All Stars
Join the NJMH All Stars for classic musical portraits by Duke Ellington (Bill Robinson, Florence Mills, Martin Luther King) and Charles Mingus (Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington) that will be contrasted with the works of Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Stuart Davis  and others.

   
Tuesday, August 17, 2010  
Jazz for Curious Listeners
Pops is Tops: Louis Armstrong at 109: Louis ’65: Eastern Europe
7:00 – 8:30pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300
Join host Ricky Riccardi for our annual PopsFest!

  Louis Armstrong was invited to visit Central and Eastern Europe for four weeks in the spring of 1965, and he barnstormed through Prague, Leipzig, East Berlin, West Berlin, Frankfurt, Bucharest, Belgrade, Zagreb, Liubljana, back to East Berlin, then on to Magdeburg, Erfurt, Schwerin, and East Berlin again–an itinerary that would have felled anyone without Armstrong’s enormous reserves. In June 1965, only two months after his return home, Armstrong was off to Eastern Europe again, and in Budapest 91,000 persons jammed the NEP Stadium to hear him play.

  Riccardi, one of the reigning experts on the late career of Armstrong, will be joined by museum Executive Director Loren Schoenberg to venture into this important tour overseas, midway through the turbulent 60s at home.

   
Tuesday, August 24, 2010   
Jazz for Curious Listeners
Pops is Tops: Louis Armstrong at 109: Louis in New Orleans
7:00 – 8:30pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300
As revealed in Terry Teachout’s recent biography of Louis Armstrong, the man whose trumpet and singing styling defined the feel of an entire musical idiom was ambivalent about his own birthplace of New Orleans, where jazz itself was born.
Come discover the why as well as the ways and means Armstrong and New Orleans are tied together inextricably.

   
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Harlem Speaks
Steve Coleman, Saxophonist
6:30 – 8:30pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300
Saxophonist Steve Coleman, according to many of his musical peers, is central to the modern development and evolution of music today. In a similar manner as Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, Coleman’s musical journey is a constant search for revelation of the continuity of sound, music, culture, and spirituality.

  From the age of 14-17, in his native south side of Chicago, he studied the basics of music and saxophone technique, and then decided that he wanted to learn to improvise. Charlie Parker, whom his dad listened to all the time, was a key early influence, as were premier Chicago saxophonists the caliber of Von Freeman, Bunky Green, Gido Sinclair and Sonny Greer.

  After hearing groups from New York led by masters like Max Roach, Art Blakey, Woody Shaw, The Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, Sonny Rollins, and other legends come through Chicago with bands that featured excellent players with advanced musical conceptions, Steve knew where he wanted to go next. He felt he needed to be around this kind of atmosphere in order to grow musically.

After hitchhiking to New York and staying at a YMCA in Manhattan for a few months, he eventually gigged with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band, which led to stints with the Sam Rivers Big Band, Cecil Taylor’s Big Band and others. Soon he began cutting records as a sideman with those leaders as well as pivotal figures like David Murray, Doug Hammond, Dave Holland, Michael Brecker and Abbey Lincoln. The most important influences on his music at this time were listening to tenor saxophonist Von Freeman (who primarily influenced Coleman as an improviser), saxophonist Sam Rivers (who influenced Steve compositionally) and drummer/composer Doug Hammond (who was especially important in Steve’s conceptual thinking). In this period, he also listened intensely to the music of West African masters sparking what became a diasporic journey into the artistic and spiritual continuum beginning in Africa and extending to all parts of the globe.
For the next several years Coleman spent a good deal of time playing in New York City’s streets for small amounts of money with a street band that he put together with trumpeter Graham Haynes, the group that would evolve into the ensemble Steve Coleman and Five Elements. It is this group that would serve as the flagship ensemble for most of Steve’s activities.

  Within a short time the group began finding a niche in tiny, out-of-the-way clubs in Harlem and Brooklyn where they continued to hone their developing concept of improvisation within nested looping structures. These ideas were based on ideas about how to create music from one’s experiences which became the foundation which Coleman and friends call the M-Base concept. However, unlike what most critics wrote this concept was philosophical, Coleman did not call the music itself M-Base.

His travels to Egypt, India, Ghana, Cuba, Senegal, Paris and other parts of Europe—perhaps philosophical and historical explorations as much as musical—have impacted the soundscapes he creates with his various ensembles, the technological resources he taps into to create and present his music, and even the concepts he captures in writing, as with a profound analysis of the music and styling of Charlie Parker featured on the website, Jazz.com.

  Tonight’s discussion promises to be profound and revelatory, so come ready to journey on the wings of the mind and voice of one of the most influential artists of our current age, Steve Coleman.  

   
Friday, August 27, 2010   
Harlem in the Himalayas
Ryan Keberle Double Quartet
7:00pm
Location: Rubin Museum of Art
(150 West 17th Street)
$18 in advance | $20 at door |
For tickets: RMA Box Office <http://www.rmanyc.org/harleminthehimalayas/> or call 212-620-5000 ext. 344
Since his arrival in New York City, jazz trombonist and composer Ryan Keberle has played in many styles, including all genres of jazz, avant-garde, Latin, classical, and rock. And though based here in NY, where he performs at noted venues, he also tours internationally.
Keberle graduated in 2001 from the Manhattan School of Music where he studied with critically acclaimed trombonist Steve Turre and composers Mike Abene and the late Manny Album. Upon graduation he received the William H. Borden award for musical excellence in jazz, given to one member of each graduating class. He went on to study with Wycliffe Gordon and David Berger as a part of the Juilliard School’s groundbreaking Institute for Jazz Studies. In May of 2003, he became a member of Jazz at Juilliard’s first graduating class.
Recently, Keberle performed on NBC with the Saturday Night Live band, and was selected as one of ten finalists for the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Trombone Competition. Aside from being a regular member of the Maria Schneider Orchestra and about 15 other ensembles based in New York City, Ryan has also performed with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Frank Wess, Jimmy Heath, Slide Hampton, Charles McPherson, the late Percy Heath, Teo Macero, Jon Hendricks, Joe Lovano, Eric Reed, and Ivan Lins, among others.
And when not performing on stage, Ryan can be found in the classroom at City University’s Hunter College, where he began his tenure as a visiting professor in 2004 or cooking in the kitchen of his Brooklyn apartment.
And you can surely expect some cookin’ tonight in our last show at the Rubin Museum of Art for the summer of 2010!

  Tuesday, August 31, 2010  
Jazz for Curious Listeners
Pops is Tops: Louis Armstrong at 109: Louis: The Rare Films
7:00 – 8:30pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300
Hearing Louis Armstrong sing and play is a study in sonic bliss, where earthy gutbucket reaches to the high heavens, eliciting smiles because your soul has been kissed. And seeing Pops on video adds a visual dimension that you will see tonight. Expect insights into the mask of the entertainer Armstrong wore, and the blinding artistic genius that counter-stated all of the clowning and mugging for the camera and audience.