Kevin Sun

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for a guest post! Enjoy pianist Malcolm Campbell on Papo Lucca's approach to montuno playing . Papo Lucca, smiling Puerto Rican pianist Papo Lucca is one of the great salsa pianists of all time.   His father Quique Lucca started the band Sonora Ponceña in 1954, and Papo has directed it for the past 40 years or so.  I transcribed five of his montunos from Explorando, one of my favorite Sonora Ponceña albums, from 1978.  Papo Lucca was 32 at the time. More so than in jazz, the pianist in salsa music is central to the rhythmic drive of the band.  Since the percussion is spread out over a whole section of people, the pianist is much more akin to a jazz drummer in terms of the personal responsibility he has for the groove.  On top of this, he is also the primary (sometimes the only) chordal instrument. Papo basically has three modes of playing on this album: arranged hits, montuno, and ad lib comping/soloing. 

The cover art is rather striking as well In August, I posted a transcription of Charlie Parker's solo on "Cheryl," from a live recording of unknown origin. I had gotten this recording in middle school from a friend of mine: the record was called "Early Bird," and didn't have too much information except that these tracks were from earlier on in Bird's career. When I tried transcribing the solo, I realized that the recording was pitched down a half step from C to B, which suggested that the recording had been slowed down somehow, although the quality of the recording was not noticeably distorted. Michael Griffin left this helpful tip on a previous post: " This was recorded at carnegie hall in 1949.As part of a christmas concert featuring Bud Powell's group, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker's quintet featuring Red Rodney on Trumpet." A bit of Internet searching seems to corroborate this statement, although it appears that the reco

Thelonious Monk (b. October 10, 1917) would have been 95 years old today. In anticipation of and following this year's Monk competition, there was plenty said on the intersection of competitions and jazz—what the increasing trend towards competitions in jazz as a foothold into a career for young musicians means for the music, for the economics of this art form, and for the value of originality and creativity. I'll hopefully have some words to say about this broad topic, probably through a more directed look at specific phenomena in jazz ca. 2012 later on, but in the meantime, I thought I'd share my first Monk solo transcription, "Green Chimneys," in honor of Monk's birthday and also this quote from Robin Kelley's biography of the man, which I highly recommend. (You can find a transcription of Charlie Rouse's solo from the same track here ). As it turns out, Monk almost won a scholarship competition while in high school which would have led to his enr

Coleman Hawkins, ca. 1946 "It's funny about having a big tone… a lot of times I can play the exact same thing as someone else, but they swear it's different, but it's only because my tone is bigger" — Coleman Hawkins in  Down Beat  magazine (1956). * * * * * It took me quite a long time to get into listening to Coleman Hawkins. Having been initially under the spell of Stan Getz and then Lester Young, Hawk's old-school, overtly romantic delivery sounded to me a bit corny and overdone in comparison.  Then, one day I stumbled upon At Ease With Coleman Hawkins  (1960) on Amazon—I think it had to do with someone's "Top 10 Tenor Saxophone Ballad Albums" on Listmania or something like that. The list-maker's description of the opening to the first track of the record, "For You, For Me, For Evermore" claimed that you could actually hear Hawk "swooping" through the musical ether, as it were. Naturally, I had to check it

Robert Glasper at Newport Robert Glasper came to Harvard today to give an open talk moderated by 9th Wonder. The event was partially sponsored by Red Bull, which explains why there was a strange illuminated case of Red Bull cans sitting conspicuously behind Glasper and 9th Wonder during the conversation. They covered a lot of ground; Glasper dropped plenty of great lines in concise CliffNotes form about his thoughts on jazz, the creative process, and things that have been on his mind lately.  Glasper's probably been asked about his top five records a million times, but his answers seem really consistent with his playing, since they're records that  personally  affected him the most.  His top five jazz records were: Now He Sings, Now He Sobs , Chick Corea Live at the Blue Note , Oscar Peterson ("The one with 'Billie's Bounce' on it,' he said) Speak No Evil , Wayne Shorter Still Life , Keith Jarrett A Love Supreme , John Coltrane For top fi