Black, Brown and Beige
Monterey opens its 69th festival this afternoon, with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra at seven and an all star Eddie Palmieri celebration at eight forty five, and Kiefer's Blue Note debut lands today. Then Sekou takes us to Carnegie Hall in January 1943, where Duke Ellington finally plays a piece he had been talking about for twelve years.
LioraMonterey opens this afternoon. Wynton Marsalis at seven, the Eddie Palmieri Experience at eight forty five. Today's record is a Blue Note debut. And later, Carnegie Hall, 1943. It's Friday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Friday, September 25th. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: The 69th Monterey Jazz Festival opens this afternoon
LioraThe 69th Monterey Jazz Festival opens this afternoon.
Gates at three at the Monterey County Fair and Event Center. Grounds shows from three, the arena from seven.
The Jimmy Lyons Stage has two sets tonight, and only two. At seven, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and special guest Cécile McLorin Salvant. Seven to eight fifteen.
LioraThen at eight forty five, the one to stay for. The Eddie Palmieri Experience: An All-Star Celebration, to ten, simulcast into the Monterey Room for anyone without an arena ticket. Palmieri died in August 2025, at eighty eight. The festival names the band. Louis Fouché on saxophone and Luques Curtis on bass are the musical directors, with Hermán Olivera on lead vocals, Zaccai Curtis on piano, Brian Lynch on trumpet, Conrad Herwig and Jimmy Bosch on trombones. The guests are David Sánchez, Melissa Aldana and Carlos Henriquez.
Aldana works twice. Her own quartet plays the West End Stage at seven fifteen, then she is in Palmieri's band at eight forty five.
All of it as scheduled. The festival prints that line itself.
Two. Listen to This: "Memory Bomb," the pianist Kiefer's Blue Note debut, out today
Liora"Memory Bomb," the pianist Kiefer, out today. It is his Blue Note debut.
He produced it with Shibo and CARRTOONS. Thirteen tracks. The guests include Nate Smith, Walter Smith III and Amber Navran of Moonchild. The lead single was "NewLevels NewDevils." The label's store lists the download at ten ninety nine.
Here is the tip. Kiefer has his own name for what he does. He calls it "Over The Breaks," jazz improvisation and hip-hop beat-making in the same bar. Blue Note quotes Tony Minvielle calling him "one of LA's best kept musical secrets," a musician "who doesn't play keys with his fingers, but with his soul." Play it for the hands.
Now the release desk. Blue Note also put out "Dedicated To You," the Branford Marsalis Quartet with Dianne Reeves, on September 18th.
LioraCarnegie Hall. January 23rd, 1943, a benefit for Russian War Relief. The hall's own catalog flags the New York premiere of "Black, Brown and Beige" in capitals. Duke Ellington talked about the piece for twelve years, wrote it in about six weeks, and played it to a sold out house with almost two hundred people sitting on the stage. Sekou has the story.
Three. The Bridge: Carnegie Hall, January 23rd, 1943. Duke Ellington talked about a piece for twelve years
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Sekou tells it, I ask the questions. Sekou, where are we?
SekouNew York. Carnegie Hall. Saturday night, January 23rd, 1943. Duke Ellington's first concert here. It's a benefit for Russian War Relief. The house is sold out, and almost two hundred more people sit on the stage. Langston Hughes is here. He wrote that the crowd was almost half and half, Black and white.
As early as 1930, Ellington was telling reporters about a piece on the Black experience. Five parts, he said, starting in Africa. In 1933, Fortune magazine said a suite like that might someday earn him a Carnegie Hall debut. He hadn't written it yet. In 1938, Benny Goodman got to Carnegie Hall before him, with three of Ellington's own men in the show. A friend who saw Duke at that concert said, "He was just livid."
Twelve years of talk. Then he wrote the piece in about six weeks.
LioraSix weeks. For how much music?
SekouAbout forty-five minutes. He started in mid-December. Howard Taubman, music editor of The New York Times, visited him and found he had "worked all the previous night, knocking off at 9 a.m." He was still adding finishing touches on the day of the premiere. The night before, the band tried out the whole program at a high school in Rye, New York. About a thousand people paid to hear it.
Tonight the band opens with "The Star-Spangled Banner," Ellington style, then "Black and Tan Fantasy." Before the new piece, Duke speaks to the house. His biographer, Terry Teachout, says the recording catches him audibly nervous.
"We would like to say that this is a parallel to the history of the American Negro. And of course, it tells a long story."
Three movements, "Black," "Brown" and "Beige." Johnny Hodges plays "Come Sunday" on alto. The house claps after every solo.
LioraAnd the critics?
SekouSplit. Time called it one of the "most ambitious pieces of tone painting ever attempted in jazz." Variety said "it never bored." The daily papers' classical critics were harder. Paul Bowles, in the Herald Tribune: "It was formless and meaningless." Robert Bagar, in the World-Telegram: "Mr. Ellington can make some two dozen brief, air-tight compositions out of Black, Brown and Beige. He should."
Ellington's public comment: "Well, I guess they didn't dig it."
LioraDid he ever play it again?
SekouYou'll read that he never played the whole thing again. He did, five days later, at Boston's Symphony Hall. Sold out again. After that winter, it was mostly excerpts.
At Carnegie Hall that December he played two, and told the crowd the piece "represents an awfully long and a very important story." Better, he said, "to wait until that story was a little more familiar."
That was his own reason. Teachout reads it differently. He thinks pride kept the whole piece on the shelf. The scholar Andrew Homzy, who followed the piece from 1943 to 1973, says Ellington "kept returning" to it.
He never made a complete studio recording. The first recording of the complete score came in 1972, from a British band led by Alan Cohen. Without Ellington. The last time we know he played any of it was "Come Sunday," in Berlin, in 1973. He died the next May.
LioraHe told that house it was a long story. Thirty years later, he was still telling it, in pieces. That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Smalls in New York runs four bookings in one night, with E.J
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket first.
If I had one ticket tonight, it's New York. Smalls has four bookings in one night. The Manuel Valera Quartet at six and seven thirty. The David Weiss Sextet at nine and ten thirty, both sold out in advance. E.J. Strickland drums for Valera and for Weiss. Four sets.
Now the sweep. In New Orleans, Preservation Hall has the Preservation All-Stars with Mark Braud. Four seatings of forty five minutes, from five to eight forty five. The seven thirty is gone, and the hall prints no price.
In Seattle, Jazz Alley has Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, night two of four. Seven thirty and nine thirty, seventy five dollars, handling fee included.
In Nashville, Rudy's Jazz Room runs three. The middle one is the Ari and Cecil Alexander Quartet at eight, twenty three dollars in advance.
LioraIn Oakland, Yoshi's is not jazz tonight. Syleena Johnson at seven thirty, from forty five dollars, then the Mary Jane Girls at nine thirty, forty.
One room I cannot call. The Regattabar in Cambridge publishes no calendar on its own site.
Five. One More Note: Sam Rivers is born on September 25th, 1923, in El Reno, Oklahoma
LioraSeptember 25th, 1923. El Reno, Oklahoma. Sam Rivers is born.
He spent part of his boyhood in Little Rock, and learned the tenor saxophone there. He played with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. "Fuchsia Swing Song" came in 1965.
Then he and his wife Beatrice turned a loft in NoHo into Studio Rivbea, and kept it open until 1978.
The paper is in Pittsburgh now. The University of Pittsburgh holds about forty boxes, with more than three hundred unreleased recordings, 1957 to 2007.
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Friday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.