Tag Archives: bobby shew

Embracing the Mystery

Your host. Photo by Don James.
An old jazz bassist is busking on the street. He’s totally seasoned, been around, and he’s just playing one note. Just one note over and over, and he’s feeling that one note, finding different ways to say something with that one note. A young guy, just out of college, comes up and says, “Hey, man, you know, I play bass, too. Just got my jazz performance degree. Can I play your bass?” The old man gives him his bass and says, “Sure.” So the kid takes the bass, and he starts shredding, playing as fast as he can, as many notes as he can, a total showoff. When the guy finally stops, the old man looks at him and says, “Still searching, huh?”

This joke, passed on to me by my friend Jacqueline Ultan, a superlative cellist, helped crystallize an aggravation about the misuse of jazz that has pestered me for some time. Jazz, the music of freedom and liberation, offers players a unique opportunity to express their feelings, their personal point of view, with no holds barred, but too often, it seems to me, this freedom becomes a platform not for self-expression, but for self-indulgence, for self-congratulation, for showing off.

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Something Brand-New from Pianist Markus Gottschlich and Something Brand-Old from Pianist Edward Simon

  • Markus Gottschlich
  • Edward Simon. Photo by Ramin Rahimia.

Markus Gottschlich’s keen mind, lively imagination, and positive energy helped rejuvenate the New Mexico Jazz Workshop during his all too brief residence as its executive director in 2019. Those same qualities inform his compositional skills, and his dazzling pianism gives full rein to his expressive spirit, as heard on his latest recording, Found Sounds (available November 27). With 25 Years, Edward Simon treats us to a self-curated tour through some of the high points of his two and a half decades of recorded work, reminding us that he deserves to be ranked among the foremost practitioners of his art.

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An Evening with Bobby Shew and the NM Philharmonic

Bobby Shew

Bobby Shew. Photo by Victoria Rogers.

Internationally renowned trumpeter, Albuquerque native, and Corrales resident Bobby Shew will be front and center Saturday evening, backed by the sterling rhythm section of pianist Jim Ahrend, bassist Colin Deuble, drummer Cal Haines—and the New Mexico Philharmonic Orchestra—in a concert that will reprise the material on Shew’s favorite album of his, Metropole Orchestra. The album features 10 tracks, including 8 standards, an original by Shew, and an original written for him by Lex Jasper, who arranged all the tunes on the album.

The Metropole Orchestra, founded in 1945 and based in the Netherlands, has held a lofty position in the European jazz world for over 70 years. The New Mexico Philharmonic will play the Metropole’s original arrangements.

I had the opportunity to chat with Bobby—no disrespect intended; he’s my neighbor, and everybody here calls him Bobby, and when I type “Shew,” I’m wondering who that is—about the album, the concert, and how he once jumped off a 35-foot windmill with a surplus parachute, and lived to tell about it. Continue reading →