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October 2-8, 2008
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United ways
Boulder-based sax player Aakash Mittal uses jazz to explore his Indian roots
by Elliott Johnston
A Stern look
Mike Stern blows through town with a swarm of Yellowjackets
by Dave Kirby
United ways
Boulder-based sax player Aakash Mittal uses jazz to explore his Indian roots
by Elliott Johnston
Aakash Mittal admits to being a chai tea snob. But he isn’t, really. Most people who exercise the kind of aggressive opinionating that calls for snobbery classification don’t dabble in Mittal’s humble exuberance. Indeed, if Mittal is a snob, he is a subtle one: His symmetrical, infectious smile takes the edge off any condescension.
While preparing a pot of masala chai, he argues for a better American understanding of traditional chai, one that doesn’t suppose spin-offs like Oregon Chai to be the original recipe.
“I always like to say that, nowadays, because most of the time it’s just really sweet, and you can’t taste the tea or anything,” he says. “Masala chai is just what they call it in India, which is basically black tea with spices.”
Not that there is a strict blueprint for masala chai. In India, many families have their own special version. Mittal says he and his sister are constantly competing to brew a better mix. Indeed, like jazz, Mittal’s first musical love, improvisation is part of the tradition.
Once Mittal’s chai is poured, it is certainly different than the Starbuckian breed. It isn’t masked with vanilla or a mountain of milk froth. His chai has a bold, earthy taste, highlighted by ginger; it takes on a sandy, tan color that tints the walls of a white cup.
While Mittal freely serves up his Indian culture, he equally mines his American roots. A 23-year-old alto sax, flute and clarinet player, whose father is of Indian descent and whose mother is Caucasian, Mittal sees his music — a regionally unique blend of American jazz and classical Indian music — as much a genealogical interrogation as an aesthetic adventure.
Mittal grew up in Texas, and moved to Loveland at the age of 14. Soon after, he was turned on to jazz during a camp held at CU, where he went on to earn a degree in saxophone performance a year ago. He first met his father’s side of the family, many of whom are Indian musicians, in Chicago, just before he started college. Getting to know them was a transformative experience.
“My cousin is a classically trained Hindustani singer,” Mittal explains. “My uncle plays a classical Indian hand drum. They are friends with Ravi Shankar. Like Ravi Shankar has dinner with them when he comes to Chicago. So I got to jam with them. And before that I had just been playing jazz and listening to Indian music, and then all of a sudden I got to meet all these people that I was related to. So after that, I knew that was the direction I wanted to go in.”
Mittal’s debut album, last spring’s Possible Beginnings, enlists a jazz quartet, which includes University of Northern Colorado music professor Matt Fuller on guitar, Denver-based Jean-Luc Davis on bass, and Boulderite Josh Moore on drums. On tracks like “Funktational Corruption” the four sound like an arty, modern jazz group, with Mittal squawking and blaring a manic sax lead over a thunderous groove. On others, Mittal’s classical Indian influence is salient.
Without using any Indian instruments (besides an electronic box that imitates the drone of a tambura) the quartet use their jazz setup to incorporate Indian ideas.
“Billu” is a particularly intoxicating fusion: Moore provides a trance-inducing Eastern backbeat, over which Davis bows his bass, Mittal yanks snake-charming melodies out of his sax, and Fuller adds some cinematically low guitar notes. Then, in true jazz fashion, the listener is slapped out of his daze by a frenetic rollercoaster of notes.
Mittal’s first project since Possible Beginnings is a suite he’s been adding to his quartet’s live repertoire called “Videsh” (a hindu word meaning “foreign” or “abroad”). The piece is based on a trip he took to India last winter that “tries to capture the intensity of the streets of New Delhi.” And while the theme of “Videsh” is steeped in India, the music is primarily obsessed with modern jazz.
When philosophizing on his musical approach, Mittal likes to use the word “acculturation.” While his argument is compelling, inspiring even, it adds an interesting complexity to his disdain for Oregon Chai, which, like his music, is a uniquely American mashup.
“I think a lot about heritage,” he says. “I really feel, the more I get into the stuff, the more and more [I feel] strongly American. And one thing about jazz is it’s definitely considered by most authorities one of the truly original American art forms that has not come before. And it only has developed in America from American culture. So, that’s kind of cool.
“Really, our whole culture here is a blend of all these other different cultures, whether we realize it or not. Whether it is really obvious or not. I think, for me, it’s a little more obvious in some sense, because I go to one family reunion. and it’s like Indian food — Hindu chai and stuff like that. And another family reunion is like small-town Nebraska, you know. And they are both great. They bring out different things.”
On the Bill
The Aakash Mittal Quartet will perform at 9 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 5, at The b.side Lounge, 2017 13th St., Boulder, 303-473-9463.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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A Stern look
Mike Stern blows through town with a swarm of Yellowjackets
by Dave Kirby
Even had Mike Stern’s manager given us a couple of hours on the phone with the guitarist, we suspect it still wouldn’t have been long enough to ramble through the entirety of his three-decade career as a downtown fretboard monster.
Not that this is a guy who plasters his resume on his guitar case. You pick it up right away; Stern is a player’s player, steaming with the zeal of a just-graduated music student amongst giants, squinting off the spotlights in East Village bistros on rainy NY nights, equal parts fuse lighter and awestruck acolyte.
So rather than shortcut our way through all the groups and all the gigs with legends living and deceased, we dialed back to a warm, breezy night in September of 1981, perched high up in the Red Rocks’ nosebleed district, watching Stern powdering the sandstone towers with brawling and brazen electric solos as part of Miles Davis’ comeback tour band. Putatively the star, Davis himself was weezy and tentative, stooped over his horn and meandering around stage, mostly playing the role of voodoo-master and looming sinister presence with colored spots glinting off his trumpet.
Stern remembered that tour fondly.
“I loved it; it was a great band. Bill Evans, Marcus Miller, Al Foster. There was always such a great vibe with Miles’ bands. And he played from the heart. To me, that’s what makes the great players great. David Sanborn, Mike Brecker, Ron Carter, Jaco… all these cats play from the heart.
“I remember when Miles asked me to join up for that tour. I walked in and looked around, and I said to myself, ‘Oh, shit’... and asked him who was playing keys. He just said (Stern affected the notorious Davis rasp) ‘No keys, just you.’ That was when I knew this was going to be a wide-open thing. But it was great.”
Stern comes to town this weekend as a guest with the Yellowjackets, the multiple Grammy-nominated contemporary jazz group based out of New York. Founded by bassist Jimmy Haslip and keyboardist Russ Ferrante, the Jax originally started as a session outfit for another long ball guitarist, Robben Ford, in the late ’70s. Ford, in fact, was the last guitarist the band worked with, in 1981, as the band has relied during the intervening years on Ferrante’s broadstroke keys and, by the mid-’90s, reedman Bob Mintzer’s marksman tenor and soprano lines, to define the group’s sound.
Stern and Mintzer have both been New York jazz scene fixtures for years, a fairly close-knit brotherhood, so it was only a matter of time before the forces teamed up, finally finding its legs last year at the Montreal Jazz Festival.
“I’ve known Bob for years, all the way to when he was in that great Word Of Mouth band. We’d see each other all the time in the city. And I’ve known Russ for years also.
“I’ve been artist-in-residence at the Montreal Jazz Festival for about five years, doing workshops and seminars, and they were invited to play last year, and we just got to jamming together. It felt so natural; seriously, I felt like I’d been playing with these guys for years. We eventually did five nights, and it was great, so we decided to go in and make a record.”
The result, Lifecycle, was released early this past summer, and Stern’s presence, unlike so many guest-star cut-and-paste gigs, provided both texture and spark beneath the Jax’s clean and slippery delivery, but also seamlessly integrated itself into the band’s sound.
Stern’s presence is felt immediately, plucking smeared blue notes beneath the sax head on the lead-off Mintzer composition, “Falken’s Maze,” coaxing and teasing the melody with volume swells and muted single note murmuring, before eventually opening up into a rubber-burning solo — here and elsewhere, Stern revels in the subtle craft of coil and release, a neglected stylistic virtue amongst guitarists who have come up since the days when ’70s jazz fusion tended to reward sheer chops over nuance.
“I went in there wanting to make a band record, while leaving my own stamp on the music. That’s a delicate balance sometimes, but it felt like we’d been playing together for years. I owe a lot of that to Russ and Bob, both of whom are just ridiculously amazing musicians.”
The guitarist also contributed a couple of originals, including the poised heartland ballad “Dreams Go” and the greased post-bop blues of “Double Nickel,” a fiendish, whiplash lead framed around his own scampering and loosely-hinged solo.
“I brought that one in. It was a tune I had hanging around that I never got to record with my own band. They had a couple of blues tunes also, but wanted to use mine. They really wanted something they could stretch out on.
“That’s the thing about these guys. I think there’s a perception that they’re a ‘smooth jazz’ band or something, but shit, these guys can play hard. They do it all — melodic stuff, blues, latin, R&B, bop, anything. I mean, the sessions were just amazing. We were going off in all sorts of different directions — Bob writing things in 5… and 11. He actually had a piece he wrote in 11! I mean, I don’t play in 11 very much,” Stern laughed.
After this leg of the tour, Stern brings his own band, including bassist Richard Bona and drummer Kim Thompson, over to Europe for a few dates, before rejoining the Jax for more dates on the continent.
But despite the globetrotting, Stern still finds his energy playing smaller setting shows, back in New York City.
“There’s a place downtown called The Club 55 where I go as often as I can when I’m not out of town, just bring my trio down there and play until they kick us out. That’s the thing about me — I just fucking love to play.
“Even as long as I’ve been doing this, there’s still so much to learn, and the only way to do it is go out and play, and study, and play some more.”
In the Box:
The Yellowjackets and Mike Stern will perform at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 4, at the Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., Boulder, 303-786-7030.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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