Jazz

Li-T was asking me about jazz clubs. A friend of hers is in town from Japan for a conference, and she wanted advice on where to take her. When I first moved to New York, I scoured the Voice for listings of who was playing when and where. In the first six months after arriving, I saw Ron Carter, Branford Marsalis, Max Roach, Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, Bobby Hutcherson . . . I was searching out all the artists I'd been listening to throughout college. A year later, I stopped. I had seen most of the artists I had wanted to see (save maybe Jackie McLean) and couldn't really afford the cover charges and drink minimums on my then salary.

There are still some bands with standing gigs in New York I've been meaning to catch, including the Mingus Big Band. For a long time, Toshiko Akiyoshi's big band had a Monday night gig at Birdland I had always known about it, but never seemed to find the time to go. It wasn't until I heard on NPR that she was calling it quits that I bought tickets to her last show, this time at Carnegie Hall. I had seen her husband, Lew Tabackin, in Pittsburgh while I was in college, leading a group that included Niels Henning Orsted-Pederson, and he was still in fine form. Akiyoshi's command of her big band was exact. At the end of the concert, the band members left one by one until it was just Akiyoshi and her husband. Then she stopped playing, bowed, and walked off, leaving Tabackin alone. He played his sax as he walked towards stage right. After he left, Akiyoshi waved from the stage door, then disappeared. Posted by eku at January 19, 2004 1:33 AM