No pianist has the distinctive soft percussive ever-roving touch like the eminent elder statesman Barry Harris. July 3 to July 8, the NEA Jazz Master will baptize the Village Vanguard (178 Seventh Ave. South) in the purest tradition of jazz pantheon.
His renowned trio and longtime accompanists will include bassist Ray Drummond and drummer Leroy Williams. The pianist, composer, arranger and educator will celebrate his 89th birthday Dec. 15. Until that time, he will continue to entice audiences into his web of undisputed great music called jazz.
During the 1970s, Harris lived with Thelonious Monk at the Weehawken, N.J. home of the jazz patroness, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter. He still lives in that home today. The native of Detroit has recorded more than 25 albums as a leader and composed 40 compositions.
Before relocating to New York City in the 1960s Harris had earned attention by playing with Miles Davis and Thad Jones and touring with drummer Max Roach. On arriving in New York, he collaborated with Dexter Gordon, Illinois Jacquet, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley and Yusef Lateef.
Don’t worry about his repertoire. Just be assured Harris will be swinging in yesterday’s now. His performances are jazz history moments.
For tickets call 866-432-1577 or visit the website villagevanguard.com.
Shhh! Hear those birds in the distance chirping rhythmic phrases of Jimmy Heath’s “Gingerbread Boy” and Dr. Billy Taylor’s “I Wish I knew How It Feels to Be Free?” That can only mean one thing. It’s time for a swinging summer of Jazzmobile.
Jazzmobile’s SummerFest 55 kicks off July 6, with renowned drummer Louis Hayes and his quartet in Marcus Garvey Park (Richard Rodgers Amphitheater), 124th Street and Fifth Avenue, 7 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.
Hayes, a Detroit native, worked with Yusef Lateef and Curtis Fuller before moving to New York in August 1956 to replace Art Taylor in the Horace Silver Quintet, and in 1959, he joined the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, with which he remained until 1965.
July 11, the hard bopper tenor saxophonist Houston Person performs at the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial (Grant’s Tomb) on West 122nd Street and Riverside Drive, 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Person is known for his long association with the vocalist Etta Jones, with whom he recorded and performed for many years.
In Harlem, Person has a reputation for shaping jazz into a rolling ball of soul and blues, which means some dancing will be going on.
The trumpeter Jeremy Pelt performs July 13 at Marcus Garvey Park, 7 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. The trumpeter has recorded 12 CDs as a leader, including his recent “Make Noise!” (Highnote 2017).
July 14, there is a “Brooklyn Block Party” on MacDonough Street (between Ralph and Patchen avenues), featuring vocalist Antoinette Montague, who understands the concept of putting on a dynamic performance. Her timbre ranges from boisterous blues to rousing soul and throw-down blues, 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
For a complete schedule, visit the website www.jazzmobile.org.
Since arriving on the New York jazz scene from Santiago, Chile in 1994, vocalist and songwriter Claudia Acuna has become a vibrant voice to be reckoned with.
Her smoky timbre can bring an audience to tears with her emotional touch to ballads or turn the house into a swinging house party or a hot Latin dance by singing in her native Spanish.
Don’t miss Claudia Acuna: A Tribute to Abbey Lincoln at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola (60th Street and Broadway), July 11 and 12. “The drummer Alvester Garnett first introduced me to Abbey,” said Acuna. “She was such an incredible human being as a singer and songwriter. I was so happy and honored that she invited me into her life and mentored me.”
Acuna thinks this tribute concert to Lincoln is a minor contribution for a musician who left such a legacy. “Abbey was a whole universe,” stated Acuna. “She was an actress, political activist and feminist. Her songs are so appropriate now. It’s been difficult to select a small number of her songs to perform for these shows.”
After living in Brooklyn for 24 years, the singer says she is a New Yorker. “This is where I dream and survive,” she said. “This city has watched me grow.”
Acuna had the pleasure of seeing Lincoln at least once a week, and that included so many conversations. Now that she is older and more mature, she says many of the things Lincoln shared with her now makes more sense. Her words of wisdom that have become a part of Acuna’s DNA are “be true to yourself and never give up.”
Just as Lincoln couldn’t be categorized, it is somewhat difficult to fit Acuna into a jazz box. She is automatically in another genre based on speaking both Spanish and English. She can be added into the World Music zone or Latin jazz. Just listen to her arrangement of the traveled “Nature Boy” and you will understand.
The tribute to Lincoln will be Acuna’s experienced journey influenced by her mentor.
For reservations, visit the website www.jazz.org/dizzys.
There is no way to acknowledge that you are a real funk fan if your record collection or memory doesn’t encompass the legendary, raunchy, funk singer Betty Davis.
Before the outrageous costumes of LaBelle, the sexually explicit Madonna or the funk of Prince, there was the original Queen of Funk, Betty Davis, who for a short period during the early 1970s reigned supreme.
Most recently, the documentary “Betty: They Say I’m Different” was screened at the IFC Center in the West Village. The film was directed by Phil Cox and produced by Damon Smith. Jill Newman Productions presented it as part of the Blue Note Jazz Festival.
After such a grand stand on the rock and funk scene, Davis suddenly disappeared for 35 years, with very few having any idea of what happened to her. The title was taken from one of her more popular songs.
Davis, at the age of 72, resurfaced after years of conversations with Cox and Smith regarding this documentary. She finally agreed to a rare telephone interview from her home near Pittsburgh to talk about the film and her music. She said, “I figured it would be better to have them cover me when I was alive than when I was dead.”
“Betty: They Say I’m Different” promotes the fact that Betty was an innovator. She was an independent woman opening a path of raunchy funk music while wearing seductive outfits that had yet to find their way onto the music scene.
In her lyrics, she told men what she wanted to do to them. She was the aggressor as opposed to falling prey to the dominate lyrics of male performers.
Long before explicit lyrics became a way of life, Davis releasing songs such as “Nasty Gal,” which declares, “You said I love you every way but your way/And my way was too dirty for you,” and “He Was a Big Freak,” which boasts, “I used to whip him/I used to beat him/Oh, he used to dig it.”
The present-day Davis is shown mostly from behind and heard in voice-over. I’m not sure who narrated the film, but it covers her early life in Durham, N.C., where she (Betty Mabry) was born in 1945. She began writing her first songs at the age of 12 and headed to New York City in the early 1960s, when she was 17.
In 1967, the Chambers Brothers recorded one of her songs, “Uptown to Harlem,” which says, “If the taxi won’t take me, I’ll take a train.”
She later met Miles Davis. They were married in 1968 and divorced after a turbulent, sometimes violent, year. “Every day married to him was a day I earned the name Davis,” she says in the film. Her face is on the cover of “Filles de Kilimanjaro” (Columbia 1968).
She was the voice that moved Miles Davis toward fusion and his style of clothing—the leather pants, colorful shirts, heels and wild sunglasses—and hanging with Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone.
After the divorce, Davis managed her own music career. She had written a ton of songs and knew major musicians. “I never considered myself a great singer,” she said. “I think Chaka and Aretha are great singers. But I could connect with the ambience of a song. I could project my feelings and my words to the music.”
She added, “I used to make the guys uptight sometimes. The women were very receptive with me.”
The film gives an honest perspective of who Davis was and her perspective on life and the trials and tribulations of the music business. She noted she disliked the business because “they were always trying to change me and do music I didn’t want to do.” If you are about the funk, then check Betty Davis. As she noted at the end of the film, “Being different is the only way.”
The film uses stills, interviews with members of her Funk House Band, writers such as Greg Tate and Vernon Gibbs and early videos.