Blake Angelos at the Bellwether

Blake Angelos at the Bellwether



It is a typical Tuesday night at the Bellwether: Blake Angelos is playing an achingly beautiful interpretation of the jazz standard, "I'm Through With Love". Accompanying him is bassist, Rene Worst, and his usual partner in jazz, drummer Julian MacDonough. It is one of those happy instances of music here in Bellingham where you feel privileged and fortunate to be in the audience. Here in the richly appointed lounge, listening to the Blake Angelos play through the standards, you know you have found a hidden gem in the weekly music scene.

Blake has been in Bellingham for over 14 years, playing solo or as The Blake Angelos Trio. Recently, he has been performing at the Whatcom Jazz Music Arts Center. He has also performed and recorded with local singer Havilah Rand among others. He tells me, ""Jud Sherwood has me on some of his concerts as well with his Jazz Project which continues to be a great program for jazz musicians in Bellingham.  I have one coming up with him in the fall with a great vocalist from Seattle named Gail Pettis with my friend and great bassist Jeff Johnson. Just think - we have two vibrant nonprofits for creative music in Bellingham.  How cool is that?  I also regularly play with my great friend, vocalist Rane Nogales."

He tells me that one of the challenges of playing jazz regularly is to find a way to make it accessible to everyone. "It's a great gift to have the opportunity to play solo piano as much as I do and I don't take that for granted. I am always adding new songs to my repertoire from jazz standards to classic pop like the Beatles, and more contemporary stuff Radiohead, Soundgarden, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel." Regardless of the song, there is always a lovely subtlety, a quiet complexity, to Blake's playing: jazz runs curling back into blues voicings that just break the heart.

I ask him about his early experiences with jazz. "My Dad played lots of music like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, the Mills Brothers, so I grew up listening to the music but growing up in Billings, Montana wasn't super conducive to studying jazz. I did take piano lessons, played and sang in rock bands and was in choir in high school but I really started playing jazz when I went to college in Wyoming and studied with the jazz band director there, a great educator named Neil Hansen."

It was at Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming that Blake says, "that is where I first really dove into jazz." In between semesters of studying music theory and composition, he played in the summers with a trio at Glacier National Park. He adds, "the cool thing about Northwest College is its right next to Yellowstone Park and attracts lots of people who retire and move out there. One of the guys who retired was a swinging drummer named Ronnie Bedford who moved out to Wyoming from NYC.  He was really instrumental in hipping me to lots of music and the stylistic elements of Jazz."

He moved to Seattle in the early 90s. "I was working in a music store there and played a lot of gigs with a bunch of Seattle jazz artists for a few years." In 1994, Blake started working for Yamaha. He says, "I found the Yamaha work really engaging and fun and decided to leave college, moved back to Seattle, worked at Microsoft for about a year and a half, then became full time with Yamaha where I have been ever since.  All this time I have played and studied jazz primarily but really everything else as well. My job at Yamaha keeps me dialed in to all sorts of different musical genres."

Attracted by the music scene, Blake moved to Bellingham in 2000. "There are some great venues around - like Wild Buffalo, the Red Light, the Green Frog to name a few - and Jim Haupt, the manager at the Bellwether hotel, has been amazingly supportive to live jazz in Bellingham.  The fan base and support of this community is amazing.  It is awesome to live in this town for that reason. I travel constantly all over the U.S. and it is exceptional in that regard compared to other places around the country."

Every Friday and Saturday night, you can hear Blake Angelos play solo jazz piano at the Bellwether from 6 to 9 pm. And every Tuesday as a trio featuring Julian MacDonough from 5 to 8 pm.

http://blakeangelos.com/


This article originally appeared in What's Up!

WJMAC Presents Trumpeter Oliver Groenewald with the Miles Black Trio - Wednesday, December 10

Oliver Groenewald with the Miles Black Trio at WJAMC - The Majestic on Forest

Wednesday, December 10

It has been 20 years since Trumpeter Oliver Groenewald has performed in Bellingham. Influential and admired when he was here at Western, Groenewald now lives on Orcas Island and performs regularly in Seattle. Accompanying him tonight is the Miles Black Trio: Miles Black on piano, Michael Glynn on bass and Julian MacDonough on drums. 

The evening starts off nicely with a relaxed interpretation of Thelonious Monk's "Straight No Chaser". Oliver Groenewald performs with a kind of effortlessness and natural grace. Playing the trumpet like breathing. With the echoes of Sunday's stellar performance by Steve Davis and Josh Bruneau still in the air, there is a natural comparison. 

I am reminded of a quote by either Waits or Eliot about how time equals memory plus desire. And it strikes me that this is the essential difference between Josh Bruneau and Oliver Groenwald. Josh was electric desire, burning up the air with his sound. Oliver is reflective memory, inhabiting the songs like a favorite hat or broken in pair of boots. It is a striking juxtaposition which only deepens as the performance goes on. 

Miles Black is, as usual, just mesmerizing and astonishing, a pure joy to listen to. His piano seems to spin hot molten notes into delicate figures of glass, then break them and have them fall into a dizzying array of kaleidoscope patterns and newly deconstructed, reconstructed melodies. A fluidity of performance mixed with poetic stops and challenging chords phrasings that almost gets lost in a solipsistic ecstasy. 

Time and again, Michael Glynn follows Miles with a inspired response, the bass singing about as high as it can, at times sounding closer to Oliver's trumpet, with quick fluttering blasts of melodic riffs before returning to the core time signatures of the piece.  

It is fascinating week after week, to see the interpersonal dynamics of the musician's personalities. Julian has such grace and courtesy as a musician, you almost don't recognize him as the de facto leader, coordinating the sonic space and time for each of the other musician's performances. His own playing gets more interesting each week. He and Michael match the complex interchange of tone and tempo between Oliver and Miles with authoritative ease. Oliver, meanwhile, invests every note with memory and the beauty of detached desire, making it all look as effortless as being.

http://www.milesblack.com/
http://www.wjmac.org/

WJAMC Presents Steve Davis and Josh Bruneau - Sunday, December 7th

WJAMC Presents Steve Davis and Josh Bruneau at WJMAC - The Majestic on Forest

Sunday, December 7th, 2014


On the stage at WJMAC is Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers alum, trombonist Steve Davis. Beside him, a former student from the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz, Josh Bruneau, who just put out a new CD, "Bright Idea" on the amazing Cellar Live label. Tony Foster is on piano, Adam Thomas is on bass and Julian McDonough is on the drums. It's a good crowd here. More and more people each time. The word is getting out: you want to hear great Jazz in Bellingham? Go see a WJMAC show. Really, any of them. But this one, today, this one is going to be a great one. It is in the air.

The band starts into the first number. We all have an expectation that it will take a song or two for them to get their footing. You sense the musicians giving each other sonic space they each need - each courteously defining his territory. The rhythm section of Adam and Julian is purring like well-oiled motor. Tony sparkling across the ivories. Steve steps out in front first, the trombone singing with its muted eloquence. And they are all there of a sudden: together and as tight as can be. Steve's trombone works through such lyrical melodic lines, cutting a groove right through the center of the audience.

Then Josh steps in. It's like a sudden blast of lightning, which hangs over the audience for a moment until it is transformed into rippling ribbonlike riffs of brassified melody. It's a revelatory contrast from Steve. Each of them complimenting and not taking away from either in comparison. Josh's playing is electric, vibrant, pulsing with the energy of youth. Even how he stands on stage, trumpet help up, leaning back, arms tightly coiled as the music explodes out of him. Steve, on the other hand, elegant, balancing lyricism and volume, knowing the interior architecture of the music that only time can illuminate. Josh steps back from his solo and you can almost feel the crowd un-grip their chairs from the roller coaster beauty of that sound.

Tony's piano is perfectly subdued, as if it is making quiet commentary on the slides, charges and bright riffs that just preceded it. And there is always that solid rolling rumble of percussion from Adam and Julian that anchors it all. The first song was not a tune-up for the musicians, it was a tune-up for the crowd.

Steve lets us know the next tune will be by the incomparable trombonist, J. J. Johnson - who he calls "our Charlie Parker". They launch into "Kenya", Josh's trumpet just soaring out over the crowd, bright platinum spools unwinding with these trill-like riffs of astonishing speed. Man, is that a trumpet making that sound? Steve follows and somehow takes the groove even deeper. And we all just sit there with the simple joy of listening to a trombone sing like we have never heard it. Tony's plays as gracefully as ever, Steve and Josh to one of the stage adding soft musical commentary. Adam performs a bass solo that has that seems to let time seep in between the notes and dissolve the tune. Then at the most precarious moment, he cuts right back to the heart of the melody. Julian's percussion, as always, adds just that extra bit of temporal complexity while at the same time complimenting and giving room for the others to stretch out. As Steve says after the song, "Jazz music is one of the purest forms of Democracy."

Towards the end, Adam and Julian performed a mind-blowing percussive interplay, Adam slapping parts of his stand-up bass and Julian hitting complex rim skin cymbal combinations. It was such a virtuoso display of talent. I felt like I could listen to an entire show of just that - and how often do you hear that about a bass and drum solo section?

It was absolutely beautiful to experience such world-class jazz on a Sunday afternoon in Bellingham. At the end there was a rousing standing ovation and the musicians indulged us in an sweet encore of White Christmas. Tony Foster's piano notes making some of the sweetest sounds I've ever heard, happily reminding me of Earl Garner. And for the first time, I thought: right here and right at this moment, Christmas begins for me.

http://www.stevedavis.info/

http://www.wjmac.org/

This review originally appeared in What's Up!

Whatcom Jazz Music Arts Center: Blake Angelos with Michael Glynn and Julian MacDonough - Wednesday, November 12th, 2014

Blake Angelos with Cory Weeds
Photo by Rev Meredith Ann Murray

WJMAC: Blake Angelos with Michael Glynn and Julian MacDonough

Wednesday, November 12th

This is the third performance I have seen at the new Whatcom Jazz Music Arts Center a.k.a. Downstairs at the Majestic. The common element in each performance has been drummer and founder of WJMAC, Julian MacDonough. Julian is always excellent. He is easily one of the, if not the, most talented drummers in town. He also has a great sense of humor that often comes though in performance. However, up until now, perhaps wanting to convey the importance of WJMAC, he hasn’t entirely shown it up on the new stage. Until tonight.

Blake Angelos and Julian have played together for many years, most notably as the Blake Angelos Trio at the now defunct Chuckanut Ridge Winery/Ridge (today, the Redlight). In the time since, Blake has been performing an excellent solo gig at the the Bellwether on Friday and Saturday nights. It has been a couple of years since he and Julian have played together.

What is immediately apparent is how comfortable they are with each other. Blake and Julian seem to have a sort of weird twin language constructed out of slight nods, the raising of an eyebrow, winces, smirks and smiles. Michael Glynn is so quick and talented that he apparently needs no translation. The resulting music has a certain ineffable quality of lightness, of mastered ease, of effortlessness. It flows out and back in to the trio of musicians like breathing, the most natural thing in the world for each of these beings to be doing. Like watching a great dancer dance with abandonment and unconscious grace.

I couldn’t tell you what the names of most of the songs where. I really wasn’t listening to write anything like this review. And it has been a couple of weeks since, but the performance was haunting. It was good. What music is meant for. I do remember marking in my mind the aching and poignant piano playing by Blake on Lament by J. J. Johnson and then, the entire trio on Herbie Hancock’s Drifting.

It was in the Hancock piece that I saw Julian MacDonough perform laughter and joy on the drums. Listening, you could not help but smile. Through several solo drum breaks, he evoked a world of inventive rhythm: crickets chirping, hands playing fast patty cake, children jumping rope Double Dutch, the sound of Charlie Chaplin’s dancing rolls in the Gold Rush, the warped ticking of the clocks in a Dali painting. I could see Julian smiling, glancing over at Blake, each of them trading clever musical one-liners, inside jokes, knock-knock riddles and the shared simple experience of the joy of performing with the other. Certainly a privilege and a pleasure to witness. And, in my estimation, the most convincing argument to support the truly wonderful experience that is being brought to life downstairs at the Majestic.

The Whatcom Jazz Music Arts Center: New York Saxophonist Eric Alexander and Pianist David Hazeltine with Michael Glynn and Julian MacDonough - Sunday, October 26, 2014

The Whatcom Jazz Music Arts Center: New York Saxophonist Eric Alexander and Pianist David Hazeltine with Michael Glynn and Julian MacDonough

Sunday, October 26, 2014


Downstairs at the Majestic on North Forest is the elegant new space for The Whatcom Jazz Music Arts Center (WJMAC), a project under the guidance of Bellingham drummer, Julian MacDonough. The Center is set up as an all ages, non-profit (much needed) performance space for local and national jazz acts. In addition, there will also be weekly jazz instruction and education by Bellingham jazz musicians. This is a welcome development for jazz performance and education in Bellingham and deserves the widest community support. More information about upcoming events and membership can be found at wjmac.org

Julian tells us the event today is a “soft opening”. What better way to break in the new space than with saxophonist Eric Alexander, pianist David Hazeltine, Michael Glynn on bass and Julian on drums. They start things off with “Blues for David” a lively upbeat interpretation of a tune by pianist Buddy Montgomery. The room, which seats about 100, is intimate and open. The sound is excellent. Alexander and Hazeltine, who are touring together, are well complemented by the tight rhythmic backing of Glynn and MacDonough.

Next up is the standard “Sweet and Lovely.” Alexander peels off lush rolls from his sax as Hazeltine compliments with rich counterpoint. The saxophone starts off front and center but the piano keeps commenting until it steps in. Likewise, Michael Glynn lays down the bones of the bass in subtle rearrangements as Julian marks the time in complex percussive phrases.

Alexander says the next tune will “hopefully transport you out of this rainy day”. It is “The Island” by Brazilian jazz artist Ivan Lins. Alexander’s playing on this piece reminds me of Ben Webster in the manner in which he is taking a basically upbeat melody line and infusing it with a latent ache of sorrow and longing. A beautiful piece.

Alexander steps away for the trio to perform. Hazeltine’s piano playing unfolds the melody, opening up hidden complexities and, at the same time, playfully exploring the flexibility of the music. Each musician takes obvious delight in the reaction, response, and reiteration of each other’s performance. Glynn’s playing is a thing of sweet bass beauty. Phrase and counter-phrase breaking down and restructuring the possibilities of a song, building fractal architectures in the mind.

Next up is a tune by Chicago saxophonist, Eddie Harris. Ultra-cool and smooth, Alexander’s playing is so on the beam, as controlled as Miles Davis, then spiraling out Coltrane-esque but contained in the limits of the song. Hazeltine’s playing on this piece is percussive with lightning fast runs.

The last song, Eric tells us after a quick conference with the other musicians, reflects an understanding of jazz as having an illusion of polish on the outside while the interior is completely helter-skelter. What follows is a beautiful crazy sax and drum exchange. Soaring saxophone trills and dynamic percussive breaks. Moments of balanced silence when you fear it might all fall apart - an acrobat spinning in the air with no net - and the graceful accomplished recovery of the dynamic Pulse of the song. Julian’s drum solo here is outstanding: eerily melodic and expressive.

There is a standing ovation. It is just pure joy to hear music performed at with such passion and skill. I look forward with great anticipation to the grand opening of the space with Seattle trumpeter Thomas Marriott and saxophonist Mark Taylor pianist Tony Foster bassist Michael Glynn and drummer Julian MacDonough on Wednesday November 5th. Highly recommended.