Don Byron

In her autobiography I Put a Spell on You, Nina Simone recalled the Greenwich Village of the '50s and '60s as a scene where beboppers, folkies, blues devotees and bohemians of all stripes would seek out their music in close proximity. Decades later, Winter Jazzfest takes stock of a new historical moment, presenting several dozen bands in six venues located in or near the very area Simone described. By now it's become an inspiring ritual to kick off the year: a marathon display of monster talent, with players spanning several generations and sounding absolutely nothing alike.

Is it all "jazz"? The term itself is enough to spark heated debate among the initiated, but this festival seems to say: never mind all that. Just listen. What you'll hear is new, experimental, global in scope. Catching every act over the two nights is a tall order, so here are five suggested pairings to get you started.

See also:
- The Ten Best Jazz Shows in NYC This Month
- Charles Mingus' Secret Eggnog Recipe Will Knock You on Your Ass
- In Praise of David S. Ware: Remembering the Saxophone Pioneer

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Coltrane totally slays on this

So last week, our fearless and/or hapless panel of rock critics finally knocked one out of the park, proving a whopping 68 percent of writers can name all three members of Sleater-Kinney. Our seven-week parade of humiliation finally turned to a brief moment of joy as our nationwide panel rose up and shouted, "Yes! We actually know something (as long it was made by white people in the last 10 years)!" So as not to rest on our laurels, I figured we should bring it back to the ritual bloodbaths of shaming. So this week, we asked our panel of 15 music critics:

How many musicians can you name that played on Miles Davis's Bitches Brew?

That's right, it's jazz, you fuckers! It's the stuff that every rock critic swears he or she listens to but secretly fears you'll ask for even a modicum of elaboration. We figured we'd give our panel a leg up by picking what is probably the most important jazz record of the last 45 years (sorry, A Taste of Bublé). It's pretty much one of the most visible influences on your Flaming Lips and your Oneidas and your Mars Voltas, and probably even some jazz people, too, if we could name any. So we cobbled a consortium of 16 professional and semi-professional rock critics, all given the usual rules:

1. I will not identify you AT ALL, so it is OK to be wrong. [We will say that our esteemed panel edits magazines, websites, and alt-weeklies. They have written for pretty much every outlet you've ever heard of, from Rolling Stone to Spin to Billboard.]

2. You can't use Google.

Will our panel run the voodoo down, or will they be feeling kind of blue?

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Vernon Reid, up to something

Without a guide, Winter Jazzfest can make you pretty crazy. On Friday and Saturday night, five venues -- Le Poisson Rouge, Zinc Bar, Kenny's Castaways, Sullivan Hall, and the Bitter End -- will feature a total of 68 short sets (new performers take the stage every hour) by long-running groups, brand-new ensembles, and even a solo set or two, all for the low all-access ticket price of $25 per day or $35 for a two-day pass. The music can kick off as early as 5:45 p.m., and the closing performance, by trumpeter David Weiss's Point of Departure quintet, will end after 3 a.m. Here are ten groups you should try to catch.

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Roswell Rudd has my favorite of the snapshots collected here

Early January's Winter Jazzfest, a two-night, multi-venue fete that lured thousands of folks into Greenwich Village to see dozens of downtown-jazz stalwarts (Voice poll darlings Vijay Iyer and Darcy James Argue were among the star attractions) was a huge success, so much so that the organizers are reprising it in June. The Undead Jazzfest brings 30-plus artists to Le Poisson Rouge, Kenny's Castaways, and Sullivan Hall June 12-13, including Bernie Worrell, Matthew Shipp, Greg Tate's own Burnt Sugar, Ben Allison, and Roswell Rudd. Full schedule is here and below. One of the only real disadvantages to Winter Jazzfest was the bone-rattling dead-of-winter setting; that will hopefully not be a problem this time.

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Our Dylan, in action.

So this is making the rounds lately, and aside from that first quote (the first line of the piece, following a please-young-people-don't-kill-me disclaimer), key sentiments include:

* "Three stages were surrounded by hipsters, and for a short while I actually hung out with Devendra Banhart, the Bob Dylan heir apparent of this age."

* "Indie music rose during the great rock famine that stretched between Nirvana's demise and the sudden explosion of garage bands like The Hives, The Vines, and the White Stripes."

* "For some reason, there's often a banjo involved..."

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So sayeth Himanshu's Twitter. The mind reels as to what up-and-coming novelist New York will hire to write something like "the last thing anyone expects at age 38 is to become a fan of something called 'fast-food rap.'" Oooh oooh, pick Ron Currie Jr.!

New York magazine is good for one absolutely maddening piece about music every month or so, whether it be the much reviled "Jukebox" feature, once described in this space as "a shame, and a perpetually bad omen," or the mag's Mountain Goats feature in March, about which the name-- "God & Worshipper: A Rock-and-Roll Love Story, of Sorts: The complex bond between the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle and his sensitive fans."--says it all, although at the time we then tried to say even more. One reason for this is the magazine's inexplicable preference for writers (or worse, "citizen critics") who don't usually write about music--by no means a dealbreaker, as Peter Terzian's upcoming Heavy Rotation anthology amply demonstrates, but often one. Among other things, the practice tends to lead to startling and dispiriting ledes like the one below:

The last thing anyone expects at age 38 is to become a fan of something called "doom metal." But one evening I asked a friend--a perfectly reasonable 42-year-old, gainfully employed with a nice family--what kind of music he enjoyed, and his fateful answer dropped like an anvil: "Metal." Professional curiosity led me to join him one night at the Knitting Factory, where I bore witness to the work of a Japanese doom-metal band called Boris: four silhouetted figures on a fog-choked stage, laser lights shooting from behind their heads, playing the absolute loudest music I had ever heard in my life.

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In a weird convocation of mid-nineties California hardcore, the Swing Kids and Unbroken are apparently reuniting to play a May 9, 2009 benefit show in Pomona, CA. The leap from Unbroken--a muscular, stalwart, straight-edging grim outfit playing out the last of Black Flag's punk-rock string--to the frenetic, fashionable, jazz-quoting Swing Kids (with whom Unbroken shared a guitarist, Eric Allen) is as clear an illustration of the moment "hardcore" became "post-hardcore" as any other. One day, in other words, kids were being kicked out of the scene for being insufficiently committed to not smoking cigarettes, and the next, those same kids were rolling around the floor, covering Joy Division songs and experimenting with guitar feedback and black clothing. Swing Kids frontman Justin Pearson would go on to found the Locust and Three One G records and, as Wikipedia helpfully reminds us, to participate in the "unintentional creation of the fad "Spock Rock" during the mid 1990s," largely due to fans "emulating Pearson's fashion sense and hair style." Like punk rockers, spock rockers still exist today.

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Hank Jones appears at Dizzy's Coca-Cola Club, part of Jazz at Lincoln Center, from tomorrow November 12 through the 16.

"I have yet to do my best performance."

Hank Jones, backstage at Birdland this summer, by Rob Trucks

On July 31, 2008, NEA Jazzmaster Hank Jones celebrated his 90th birthday. Born in Mississippi, raised in Michigan and now a resident of upstate New York, the pianist and elder brother of renowned trumpeter Thad and drummer Elvin, Jones has appeared on something close to 1000 albums. And through those performances and a 17-year stint with the CBS Orchestra, the nonagenarian has played with nearly every iconic figure in jazz: Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Coleman Hawkins, Miles Davis.

The week after his birthday the extraordinarily humble Jones, alongside a trio including longtime bassist George Mraz, played two sets a night over a four-night run at New York City's Birdland. We spoke backstage in between sets on the final night of that engagement following a surprise first-set appearance by saxophonist Joe Lovano, and while Stanley Jordan and Chick Corea, jazz legends themselves, waited to pay their respects. --Rob Trucks

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Marcus Miller performs as part of S.M.V. with Stanley Clarke and Victor Wooten this Saturday at Times Square's Nokia Theater. Tickets available here.

Five days before the release of Thunder, the debut album by a unique gathering of three accomplished bassists, Marcus Miller (the "M" of S.M.V.) answers his cell phone from the front porch of his Los Angeles home.

The Brooklyn-born and Queens-raised Miller is something of a studio rat. His producing, engineering, arranging and performing skills are in evidence on well over 400 albums by such artists as Miles Davis, David Sanborn, Luther Vandross, Grover Washington Jr, Elton John, Paul Simon, Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Billy Idol, Kenny Garrett, Stanley Jordan, Dr. John, Mariah Carey, Al Jarreau and R.E.M. Now a dozen albums into his solo career (he won a Best Contemporary Jazz Grammy for 2001's M2), Miller's current project places him onstage alongside Stanley Clarke and Victor Wooten. The group will appear at Times Square's Nokia Theater on Saturday night.

Ever the professional, Miller performs an unrequested mic check--"check one, two; check one, two"--when he returns the call, just to make sure the speaker phone is at the proper volume for the recorder. But then he moves again, further inside his house, and the call is dropped. Just like in the cell phone ads.

Take three of our conversation follows.

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