JD Allen Trio, tonight, at the Jazz Standard

"I Am I Am" comes out April 22 on Sunnyside Records. JD Allen Trio plays TONIGHT at the Jazz Standard

ENJOY THIS WEEK’S MUSIC FEATURE IN TIME OUT NY (on newsstands today!) AND HOPE YOU CAN JOIN US TONIGHT AT JAZZ STANDARD!

Jazz Standard
116 E 27th St (between Park Ave South and Lexington Ave) Gramercy/Flatiron Map
212-576-2232
Subway: 6 to 28th St Directions
http://www.jazzstandard.net
Prices
Tickets: $15
Description
See “All the things I Am,” page 117. [Skip to user comments]
Tonight 9:30pm.

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http://www.timeout.com/newyork/articles/music/28215/all-the-things-i-am

· Music
Time Out New York / Issue 653 : Apr 2–8, 2008

All the things I Am
Saxist JD Allen’s career gets a shot in the arm with the dynamic new "I Am I Am"
By K. Leander Williams

HORN OF PLENTY Things are picking up for saxist Allen.

JD Allen hasn’t lived in his native Detroit since 1993, when he moved to New York at the invitation of famed singer Betty Carter. In conversation, however, it’s clear that the tenor saxist keeps up with the goings-on in the Motor City. “Be on the lookout,” he begins, his voice casually animated. Apparently, the legendary music town is still breeding more fine musicians than it can sustain. “There are about eight cats I know from Detroit who’ll be making the move up here soon,” he says, “because economically it’s gotten really bad down there. It’s not just that there are no music gigs, either. Years ago you could go work for Chrysler, but now that’s not even an option.”

The irony in Allen encouraging his homies to relocate is that by his own admission, his stay in New York had been difficult until fairly recently. Allen’s superb new trio album, I Am I Am—only his third during his time in Gotham—is the work of a driven 35-year-old determined to keep his career on the right track. The saxist says that, among other things, the fallout from a failed early marriage made it none too easy for him to grow up on the bandstand. “Looking back, I learned that I can take a punch,” he laughs, remembering his earliest days on the scene. “Once, onstage at the Village Vanguard, Betty screamed at me for not swinging hard enough. She had a reputation as a hard-core taskmaster, but it seemed to me like the whole jazz world was in the audience watching her get in my face. Of course, I’m absolutely certain that New York is the best school, even when you’re young and taking your lumps.”

Allen’s mature sax sound is characterized by idiosyncrasy and charm. John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter are obvious influences, but Allen builds upon each icon’s recognized elegance by using clever accents culled from throughout the jazz diaspora and making seductive use of space. The melody for “Hajile,” for instance, is stated in a buttery tone toughened up by avant-garde maverick Albert Ayler’s hymnlike straightforwardness, while “id” and “Louisada” (the latter a conflation of Loisaida and Louis 649, the bar near Avenue C that was Allen’s Saturday-night workshop) find him riding excellent drummer Rudy Royston’s catalog of rhythms with the fluidity of Joe Henderson. (Gregg August is on bass.) Allen credits another saxist with showing him that it was possible to bring all of jazz’s identities together. “I got a chance to see John Gilmore with the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1988, when I was a teenager,” he remembers. “[Sax star] James Carter took me; we both went to Northwestern High School. I followed him in the sax chair in the school band. So we get there and Gilmore is killin’ it on ‘Body and Soul.’ First, he interpreted it really old-school, like Coleman Hawkins might have, but with his own sound. Then he did the ’60s avant vibe, and then he took it way into outer space—it was a Sun Ra gig, after all. The whole time, though, he kept the form of the tune. That’s where I realized that all these branches come from the same tree.”

Recently, Allen revisited music he might have heard Gilmore play, fronting a two-sax quartet downtown at the Living Theatre with rising alto star Matana Roberts. The result was woollier, but no less engaging, than the original tunes on his album. Allen is at his linear best with a driving rhythm section, so the way in which Roberts’s rugged blues cries blended with Royston’s off-kilter interplay of mallets and brushes clearly challenged Allen just as Carter, his onetime mentor, must have done in the late ’80s. “Initially, JD had the vocabulary of so-called avant-garde techniques—the squeaks and what have you,” says Carter. “But they weren’t placed with what I’d call informed conviction. That came later.” Thinking back on the Living Theatre show, Allen spoke as if he’d found a new direction. “I don’t normally play without a specific set of parameters in mind,” he says. “But the idea here was to take small phrases and get as far out as we could. My trio feels so solid now that it’s time to shake things up again.”