A Lubricious Hiatus

Well, I’ve done it again: stop posting for two weeks and fail to update my readership on the situation.  My apologies.

I have previously hinted that this might happen, but now it’s official: real life requires my full attention and focus right now, and there just isn’t space for me to publish writing here that meets my own standards of quality and personal investment.

During my time off, though, I’ll be thinking about how to move forward with Lubricity, so expect improvements and a higher degree of general awesomeness upon my return.

Thank you to everyone who has been reading my thoughts on the jazz discourse.  I look forward to offering further contributions upon my return.  In the meantime, add your two cents on “What the Heck is Jazz?” and check out some of the other excellent sites on the blogroll.

See you soon!

A Grand Experiment for the Jazz Internet

When I started this blog, I hoped that my perspective and writing could help shed some light on what I dubbed “the definition-resistant tradition we call jazz.”  I hope that my thoughts so far have proven to be somewhat successful in that regard, but I think that there’s an even better way to dig into it: reading yours.  So I’ve started a new section of Lubricity.  Take a look up at the top of the page and you see a new section: “What the Heck is Jazz?”  There, you can leave a comment with your own answer to the question.  I have a couple up already to get you started.

Can you finish the sentence that begins “Jazz is …”?  I challenge you to give it a shot.  Later, I’ll toss some more provocations under that page and see what you have to say.  I look forward to reading what you come up with.

Note: I’ve closed comments on this post, because I want you to click over to the new page and take a shot at defining jazz.  If you have something else to say, try popping a tweet to @arodjazz.  Also, if you pass on the link, it’s better to link to the “What the Heck is Jazz?” page than to this post.

Please Don’t Call Me A Jazz Nerd

The recent post at Twenty Dollars (via A Blog Supreme) has REALLY struck a chord with me, so to speak.  This is because of my personal experience with both jazz and nerddom, each of which had a deep impact on my childhood and adolescence.

Growing up, I was no stranger to geek culture.  My parents signed me up for Portland Public Schools’ TAG (Talented and Gifted) program in first grade, so I got out of school early once a week to play math games and conduct chemistry experiments.  My older cousins read fantasy and sci-fi novels voraciously, and turned me onto Magic: the Gathering by age 10.  The first CD I bought was “Bad Hair Day” by Weird Al Yankovic.  I wore bright yellow sweat pants to my first day of middle school.  That should give you an idea of my status at the time: big-time, card-carrying DORK.

Slowly Taking Over the Internet

As mentioned previously, I have been asked to join in with Patrick Jarenwattananon at NPR’s A Blog Supreme (and some other fine young jazz aficionados) to suggest five new jazz albums to check out.  The choices are geared toward new music that could be a starting-point for young listeners who have, for whatever reason, decided that jazz isn’t for them.  If you’re one of those people, stop reading this now and go check out my picks for A Blog Supreme’s Jazz Now series!

Is Jazz Finally Over Ken Burns?

Last spring at Rutgers, I took a course entitled “Jazz and Film.”  In it, we discussed the historical relationship between the two American art forms, analyzing critical and popular responses along the way.

One of the most interesting classes came towards the end, when we dug into the widely-watched PBS documentary Jazz by filmmaker Ken Burns.  I remember when the series came out on PBS — I was in high school at the time — but I didn’t watch it.  I remember my jazz band director expressing both fascination (with the detailed storytelling) and disappointment (with the over-reliance on Armstrong and the dismissal of jazz after 1960.)

Revisiting those controversies proved to be an enlightening exercise.  Eight years after the fact, the conversation spurred more impassioned discussion than anything else that we covered in class.  The debate even spilled over onto the Jazz MA program’s listserv, with many other students chiming in.  Generally, reactions fell into one of two camps: “Jazz” was good, because it exposed a lot of people to the music’s tradition; or “Jazz” was bad because it twisted and misrepresented the music’s history to conform to the Albert Murray/Wynton Marsalis political agenda. 

Poblogamy at OneWorkingMusician

Since starting Lubricity, I have had the pleasure of reading and interacting with a number of other jazz musicians and enthusiasts.  Among the first was Seattle-based trumpet player/entrepreneur Jason Parker (left), whose blog OneWorkingMusician sheds a light on the nuts and bolts of being a professional musician in the 21st century.

Jason just got married this month, so he asked a number of fellow bloggers to contribute to his site during his absence.  I was honored to be asked — after all, I’m keeping pretty good company.  Other guest-posters include Cory Huff, Andrew Durkin, David J. Hahn and Art Brown.

My post just went live — in it, I offer advice to young musicians looking to start their careers in a new city.  Enjoy!

Jazz Now at A Blog Supreme

This week at A Blog Supreme, Patrick Jarenwattananon has brought together a few of the jazz youngsters writing about the music online to recommend recent releases to the listening public.  He’s calling it Jazz Now, and I’m honored to be on the list of contributors.  They include:

–Patrick Jarenwattananon, NPR Music
–Lucas Gillan, AccuJazz
–Sebastian Helary and Justin Wee, Nextbop
–Dean Christesen, RVAJazz
–Alex Rodriguez, Lubricity (look at me!  I’m famous on the Internet!)
–Adam Schatz and James Donahue, Search and Restore
–Lars Gotrich, NPR Music
–Mike Katzif, NPR Music
–Josh Jackson, WBGO

Some other bloggers are already joining the fun: Secret Society and Jazzblog.ca are the first I’ve seen to catch this, but I’m sure many more will follow.  This is great company to be keeping — all of these guys really know their stuff.

Like Patrick, I’ll add links as they go live.  Again, I’m really excited to be a part of this, and I hope that you take a listen to some of these things.  If anything stands out, please let me know in the comments.  And if you’re finding Lubricity for the first time, be sure to add me to your RSS reader!

Ambrose Akinmusire Quintet @ Jazz Gallery

I added this review to the tail end of my last post, but realized that it probably belongs here as its own entry.  If all goes according to plan, music reviews will become a more common occurrence at Lubricity.  If I’m going to write about jazz, after all, I can only avoid writing about the actual music for so long.  So here it is, the first of many more musical musings to come:

First off, I’ll say that I had a great time.  I had forgotten how rewarding it can be to check out a show with other people who enjoy the music.  The hour-long trip back to New Jersey certainly went faster than usual, with so much to talk about after the show. 

Live Jazz — From the Sidelines

This guy is really, really good

I had the pleasure of attending a show at the Jazz Gallery last night.  Yesterday morning, I received a text from the Blogger Supreme that he’d be in the city checking out Ambrose Akinmusire’s quintet there (Gerald Clayton, right, played especially well — more on that later.)  The suggestion couldn’t have come at a better time, because I was in need of an excuse to get out of my apartment.  So I rounded up a couple of friends and met him at the show.

I’ve lived in the New York City area for over eight months now, but I’ve only made it out to hear live jazz a couple of times in that span.  Part of it has to do with the fact that I’m a cash-deprived graduate student, part of it has to do with the fact that I didn’t have a group of jazz-loving friends to see shows with at first, but I think most of it has to do with my own unwillingness to experience jazz from the perspective of the audience member.  Slowly, that’s starting to change.

New Header!

When I started this blog, I chose the title Lubricity for a variety of reasons.  Most important among those was that I felt that it aptly described the ever-shifting state of the music today.  Well, jazz isn’t the only thing going through some changes this month!

Last week, I had the privilege of working with Institute of Jazz Studies Assistant Director (and master photographer) Ed Berger on a new header image for the site.  He graciously allowed me to borrow Jack Teagarden’s trombone from the rare items room for the shoot:

If you look closely, you’ll see that my mouthpiece barely fits into the end of the instrument — definitely the smallest trombone I’ve ever held that wasn’t an alto horn.  He even let me toot a couple of notes on the instrument, although the slide was in such bad shape that it could barely move, so I wasn’t able to get much music out of the thing.  Still, I felt so close to his spirit blowing through that instrument — even though he’s been dead for over 40 years.

But I wasn’t there just to hang out with the horn — my idea was to use it for the new header image for Lubricity.  Ed and I tried a bunch of things but settled on the window of the Dana Room, across the hall from the IJS.

The final photo appears above as the new header image for Lubricity: me playing the Teagarden trombone with a Rutgers-Newark dorm looking on in approval.  Think of it as a symbol of the newer, shinier things to come!