BLUE CRANES ~ in the news
(chronological order. click on links to see original articles.)
October 31, 2011
The
Oregonian
BARRY JOHNSON
"Weekend Wrap" Live Review
The Blue Cranes showed up at The Woods, the little Sellwood/Moreland club that used to be a funeral home, with their basic five-musician unit — saxophonists Reed Wallsmith and Joe Cunningham, keyboardist Rebecca Sanborn, drummer Ji Tanzer and stand-up bass player Keith Brush — and a set of mostly new music.
The Woods was pretty well full, mostly with fans in their 30s, though I’m not especially good at drive-by demographic analysis. And those fans were appreciative of the set by Allison Miller and her band from Brooklyn (I mean Brooklyn in New York not Brooklyn up Milwaukie Ave. from Westmoreland), who opened the proceedings with some sonic idiosyncrasies driven by Miller’s drumwork and fine playing from the rest of the band (keyboard, violin, bass).
One thing struck me right off. People quieted down while the Blue Cranes played. Not everyone, sure, but nearly. It wasn’t a hard-drinking, pre-Halloween party scene with the band reduced to blurts of sound that somehow made it through the din. They listened to the songs. My kind of crowd.
What did we hear? Well, Blue Cranes is built on the creative, symbiotic partnership of Wallsmith’s alto sax and Cunningham’s tenor sax. Sometimes they sounded like a bagpipe, all throaty harmonies delivered forcefully in long breaths. Sometimes their careful composition delivered some finely filigreed musical figures that darted in and around each other. Sometimes one signalled the chord changes while the other sounded the melody, and occasionally they each took a solo turn. And often this stuff was all going on in the same song, along with Sanborn’s chordal piano work, Brush’s bowed bass and Tanzer’s percussion, which sometimes marked time as insistently and fervidly as an old rock band but could dive into deeper water when called upon.
Most of the songs (and I’d give you the names of the new ones, except the microphone wasn’t that great: The only one I heard definitively, “That song for now is called ‘Great Dane, Small Horse,’ ” Wallsmith said after one of them) had a clear musical “idea” that the band elaborated on, departed from and returned to, and that idea could be a simple little riff that sounds like a '60s pop tune, a jazzier chord progression, a modal experiment, almost anything. But yeah, constructed “songs” of various structures and textures.
The improvised moments weren’t ever very long. Cunningham’s tended to be more in the hard-bop tradition, while Wallsmith was keener on exploring subtle streams of sound that mixed with his own columns of air, a breathy effect poised somewhere between exhales and actual notes.
The point, I suppose, is that for sax players, Wallsmith and Cunningham
are remarkably self-effacing. They aren’t “colossuses,”
saxophone or otherwise (though Wallsmith has mentioned Sonny Rollins,
the original Saxophone Colossus, as an early influence). They work together
and together with the rest of the band; they enjoy each other’s
work; they sublimate themselves to the composition; their relationship
with the audience was casual, easy, and you wouldn’t be THAT surprised
if someone walked up and struck up a conversation with them during the
set, except that everyone wanted to hear what they had to say, musically.
I wish our politics worked this way.
June 23, 2011
Just
Out
AMANDA SCHURR
"Portland’s improv renegades"
June 17, 2011
Portland
Mercury
NED LANNAMANN
The Filmusik ensemble have always had talented musicians performing the live score for their presentations, and for their current production of Planet of Dinosaurs, they've enlisted the jazz/not-really-jazz ensemble Blue Cranes to create the music as the film plays overhead. Planet of Dinosaurs is a 1978 sci-fi schlockfest with a incredibly low productions; its hilarious stop-motion special effects actually won a Saturn Award for "Best Film Produced for Under $1,000,000." A crew of space travelers crash-lands on a distant planet populated by nothing but dinosaurs and terrible acting, the former of which will be on full display and the latter of which will be replaced with live dubbing and foley from the Filmusik crew.
As far as I know, Filmusik are doing something quite unique right here in Portland: providing live actors and music for old, campy films that quite frankly could do with the improvement. And with the enlistment of Blue Cranes, this current show seems particularly special, not to mention that next week they'll even be doing a special Spanish-language version of the movie, with the talent of actor Enrique Andrade (you might know him as the Spanish voice of the MAX).
June 15, 2011
Willamette
Week (Portland,
Oregon)
BRETT CAMPBELL
(cartoon by ADAM KRUEGER)
The city’s hottest original-jazz ensemble supplies the live soundtrack for the latest installment in Filmusik’s pairing of cool, new music with kitschy, old movies. The sound design also includes live voice actors and Foley artists—16 including the Cranes. The culprit this time: The 1978 science-fiction film Planet of Dinosaurs, concerning the heart-wrenching plight of astronauts who crash on a…well, you get the idea.
May 11, 2011
Willamette
Week (Portland, Oregon)
BRETT CAMPBELL
"incomparable improvisers."
April 23, 2011
Los
Angeles Times
CHRIS BARTON
"Portland's Blue Cranes take wing on the rails"
With gas prices headed into orbit, launching a cross-country tour is more difficult than ever for an up-and-coming band. In a move that's as consistent with jazz tradition as it is a departure from 21st century practices, Portland's Blue Cranes set aside the musty Econoline cliché and instead turned to the rails in organizing its first national tour, which swings into the Townhouse in Venice on Sunday.
Helped by a recent fund-raising campaign on Kickstarter, the group purchased a 30-day rail pass on Amtrak that allowed for 12 stops across the country, which took the band to hotbeds such as Chicago, New York and New Orleans before winding back to the West Coast. Though the band intended to highlight train travel as a viable transportation option for bands and vacationers alike, it had to make some compromises to allow for Amtrak's luggage restrictions.
"We actually had to make some modifications to instruments," said tenor saxophonist Joe "Sly Pig" Cunningham. "Ji [Tanzer], our drummer, built a new set where he can put all his toms into his bass drum, sort of like one of those Russian dolls. It's working out."
Though its mode of transportation may be a throwback, the Blue Cranes isn't a group otherwise concerned with tradition. A self-described "jazz/not jazz" band, the group's 2010 album "Observatories" mixes two saxophonists, keyboards and a propulsive rhythm section that together emphasize rich melodies and dynamic interplay over acrobatic soloing. The group released an EP earlier this year with covers of indie rock groups such as the Red House Painters and Blonde Redhead, exposing roots that lay well outside of "Take the 'A' Train."
After the jump, a conversation with Sly Pig about the Blue Cranes' experience on the rails and blurring the lines between jazz and indie rock.
How did this idea of touring by train come about?
You know, we keep trying to figure that out. It was a combination of things. We brought it up a couple years ago sort of jokingly, and then a friend of Reed’s [Wallsmith, the band's alto saxophonist] brought it up again and then we started to seriously look at the possibilities. [The question] was mostly just about the gear, whether we could get the gear on the train and what the weight restrictions were and how much it was going to be. But, yeah, it’s been great so far.
Are you covering more ground by rail than if you were touring by van?
Not necessarily. Ultimately I think we decided to do it because we didn’t want to drive. We’ve all done it, and we’re older and realize what a pain it is. People falling asleep in the middle of the night trying to get home or trying to get to the next gig, it’s dangerous, you know? That was sort of the beginning of the idea: Rather than hiring a driver, we thought we’d just jump on the train. I guess that’s kind of like hiring a driver.
You guys are hitting a lot of generally indie-rock-oriented venues; has it been tough to find a place to play with what you do?
No, actually, kind of the opposite. Because we sort of cover so many genres, we can play in a jazz club, we can play in a rock club, we can play in a punk club. So it’s actually a little easier for us because we’re not limited to jazz clubs. ... [read more]
April 22, 2011
Austin
Chronicle (Austin, TX)
ROBERT FAIRES
For some time, music has been steadily becoming a major component of Fusebox, and that continues with this year's debut of the Free Range Music Series, offering concerts in nontraditional spaces. The kickoff with Mother Falcon and 100 string players inside the Seaholm Power Plant has passed, but you can still catch Portland, Ore., jazz quintet Blue Cranes performing at one of the "Play Me, I'm Yours" public piano project sites.
April 16, 2011
Philadelphia Weekly (Philadelphia, PA)
DAVID ADLER
On recent discs Observatories and Homing Patterns as well as the new EP Cantus Firmus, the Blue Cranes corral influences from Bill Frisell and Wayne Horvitz to Sufjan Stevens and Blonde Redhead. Having embarked on a fan-funded, eco-friendly Amtrak tour, the Portland-based quintet is headed to Philly for an evening of tuneful, biting, hard-to-classify instrumental music. Call 'em a jazz group with an art-rock heart, featuring two saxophones (Reed Wallsmith, Joe Cunningham), keyboards (Rebecca Sanborn), bass (Keith Brush) and drums (Ji Tanzer). Serving up mournful melody, avant-garde bombast and tight-knit rhythmic displacement--often in the same song--the group tells us much about the eclectic winds blowing through the Pacific Northwest.
April 14, 2011
The New Yorker (New York, NY)
A new-jazz triple bill brings together the Honey Ear Trio, the Blue Cranes and Ben Perowsky's Moodswing Orchestra.
April 14, 2011
WYNC / NPR Music News (New York, NY)
"Gig Alert / Show profile"
A trip though Observatories, the 2010 album by the Portland instrumental quintet Blue Cranes, is full of surprises. The band is led by two saxophones, but the tracks are blanketed with textures not commonly associated with jazz--twee glockenspiels and toy pianos, roaring electric guitars, four-on-the-floor bass drum beats and sweeping strings among them. Since blooming out of the fertile soils of the Pacific Northwest, The Blue Cranes has won fans up-and-down the west coast for its truly unconventional approach to improvised music that puts other third-streamers to shame. This track, "Ritchie Bros," sets the mood by opening with its robotic saxophone fugue before taking some jarring turns over the course of its four and a half minutes of music.
April 14, 2011
New York Magazine (New York, NY)
Critics' Pick
Rollicking Portland indie-jazz ensemble Blue Cranes.
April 13, 2011
Time Out New York (New York, NY)
Smart Portland, OR, outfit Blue Cranes combines a downtown-jazz aesthetic with overtones of arty indie rock.
April 14, 2011
Lament for a Straight Line (New York, NY)
JIM MACNIE
"Blue Cranes: Vivid, Voluptuous, Vital"
Saw the Blue Cranes last night. The Portland, Oregon quintet is bouncing around the country right now, and they just slid out of New England and hit NYC. Using a two-reed front line to essay all sorts of provocative tunes, the fascinating jazzstrumental band stresses melody and mood just as much as they do improv and solos. That's refreshing. On Observatories they balance gorgeous themes with experimental extrapolations. Some pieces sound like forlorn Ornette Coleman ballads; some sound like muscular Philip Glass explosions. Lots of their stuff is cinematic; I can see "These Are My People" working well behind a bravura scene in a bull ring.
At Barbes last night, waxing vivid at every turn, Reed Wallsmith and company tilted toward the high water marks made by such bands as Curlew and the Muffins. And they showed their scope, covering Wayne Horvitz and Blonde Redhead, too. It's time they started getting the kind dap reserved for Marco Benevento and associates, or maybe gigging with outfits like the Low Anthem. They'd not only fit right in, they'd add to the bill. Their current tour is being done by train, so don't forget to ask them how their travel has been going. And recommend a righteous place in New Orleans for them to eat on the cheap.
NYC'ers can see 'em tonight at Littlefield, on a bill with the Honey Ear Trio and Ben Perowsky's Moodswing Orchestra.
April 8, 2011
New
York Times
NATE CHINEN
"[Honey Ear Trio] has a headlining role in this album-release show, which will also feature the rock-informed band Blue Cranes, from Portland, Ore., and the deeply ambient Moodswing Orchestra, led by the drummer Ben Perowsky.
April 7, 2011
Providence Phoenix (Providence, RI)
JIM MACNIE
Reed Walsmith won’t get lost while leading the Blue Cranes to AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence. The saxophonist, who has been the prime mover of the Oregon outfit for several years, was once a member of Rhode Island’s Grüvus Malt and a La Prov resident. Since hightailing to the great Northwest, he’s shaped the Cranes into a fascinating jazzstrumental band that uses a two-reed front line to essay all sorts of provocative tunes. On Observatories (Blue Cranes), the group balances gorgeous melodies with experimental extrapolations. Some pieces sound like forlorn Ornette Coleman ballads; some sound like muscular Philip Glass explosions. Lots of their stuff is cinematic; I can see “These Are My People” working well behind a bravura scene in a bull ring. Waxing vivid at every turn, Wallsmith and company tilt toward the high water marks made by such bands as Curlew and the Muffins. Their current tour is being done by train, so don’t forget to ask them how their travel has been going. (Full disclosure: I helped the Cranes on their most recent CD’s packaging efforts.) Sharing the bill is their Northwest neighbor, Rebecca Gates. The former Spinanes singer knows a few things about vivid music herself. Her reedy voice and eerie tunes have often been fetching. The Rice Cakes share the bill.
April 7, 2011
City Newspaper (Rochester, NY)
RON NETSKY
There is something wonderfully odd and off-kilter about the music of Blue Cranes, so it's no surprise to find that the Portland, Oregon-based group is in the midst of a tour - across the entire country - by train. With two saxophones (tenor played by a man named Sly Pig), keyboards, bass, and drums, Blue Cranes' sound can range from sublime subtlety to full-throttle, frenetic freak-out. The music verges on avant-garde and yet manages to be not only engaging, but also downright catchy.
March 29, 2011
Chicago
Reader (Chicago, IL)
PETER MARGASAK
On their new self-released EP, Cantus Firmus, Portland instrumental quintet BLUE CRANES tackle tunes by Blonde Redhead, Red House Painters, and David Bazan without a whiff of the crossover crassness or postmodern cleverness that typically infect jazz versions of indie-rock songs. They're a jazz band in name, but the indie rock they grew up with defines their sensibilities; the original tunes on last year's Observatories have hooky melodies and strong backbeats all over them. Saxophonists Reed Wallsmith and Joe "Sly Pig" Cunningham handle the lion's share of the melodic exposition and improvisation, but soloing isn't Blue Cranes' focus. They prefer an ensemble approach that relies on carefully charted arrangements—three of which include a string trio. For this U.S. tour Blue Cranes are traveling by rail, a choice sure to bolster their indie bona fides.
March 22, 2011
Field
Hymns (Portland, OR)
"Blue Cranes - The Interview"
I first became aware of Blue Cranes through a handful of circumstances too involved to be mentioned here but suffice to say I didn’t really become aware of them until I observed them live – and then they are truly something to behold. I am not saying that because I am submitting this interview – I am submitting this interview because they are one of the most exciting live bands in this town. No slouches in the studio, they have released five excellent albums in four years. I just happened to track down one of their sax players (and ringleader) Reed Wallsmith and berated him with my rookie questions. Remarkably he said yes to the interview.
My first jazz record was Sonny Rollin’s score for the film Alfie – what was yours?
I haven’t heard that! Did you like it?
Oh yes..
The first full jazz album I ever had was alto saxophonist Sonny Stitt’s “Stitt plays Bird.” That was soon followed by Sonny Rollin’s “Saxophone Colossus.” I listened to both of those tapes so much. They are so good.
Tell me about the “Tour By Train”. You guys started a Kickstarter campaign pay for a train tour – does that mean no shows in Hawaii?
Our original thinking was to figure out a way to do a national tour that would be cost-effective and also allow those of us who can work our day jobs remotely via laptop to still do work while traveling. Then we started thinking about the environmental (and relaxational) benefits of train travel vs. automobile travel, and realized what a unique opportunity this tour could be, not just to promote our music, but to also promote a more logical, sustainable mode of intercity transport. We ended up getting the support of NARP (National Association of Railroad Passengers), a great national organization that is working to improve intercity rail travel. They are helping to promote what we’re doing. It is thanks to the generosity of so many of our friends that we were able to raise the necessary funds to be ready to embark on this tour. [read more]
March 16, 2011
Willamette
Week (Portland, OR)
AP KRYZA
Portland quintet Blue Cranes is a jazz band. But what makes the Cranes such a great jazz band isn't the idea that jazz permeates most modern music—it's the idea that most forms of modern music have the ability to penetrate jazz. At once experimental and innovative, the Cranes burst out with a sound laced with tweaked time signatures and an impulse to go from lucid and abstract to straight-up rocking with razor precision. The band is the embodiment of the breathless, reckless foundations of jazz, a collection of master musicians that hasn’t forgotten to let its freak flag fly.
March 4, 2011
A
Blog Supreme / NPR Jazz (New York, NY)
ALEX W. RODRIGUEZ
"At The Portland Jazz Festival, Delicate Issues And Joyful Audiences"
"...only one Portland band, the Blue Cranes, received top billing (which they shared on a double bill with Nik Bartsch, from Switzerland)."
March 4, 2011
Echoes
From The Bin
"Blue Cranes - Observatories"
Stumbling on a band like this, I felt no reservations about jumping in blind and taking a risk. I make zero claims to being a jazz aficionado, I'm not. Enthusiast? that's probably more realistic, I could rattle off the names of jazz players I admire, most of them are the standard bearers of the music itself, the more well known innovators and maybe a few obscure ones on the side, some vocalists here and there for good measure, all of them from the eras in which jazz was a force to be reckoned with, and often, took more formidable risks than the infant "rock" genre of the time. What I'm getting at is this: writing about jazz is an entirely different monster in many ways, attempting to deconstruct music that can lend itself to being both fluid and simultaneously staunchly grounded in its principles and values while rooting itself deeply and penetrating straight to the mind and heart and latching on could impose some degree of intimidation...luckily I don't take myself or what I do seriously enough to worry , so I have nothing to sweat.I know what catches my attention and charges my pulse, and after hearing a sample of their work, I knew I found the charge i was looking for. In some ways I was reminded of what Miles Davis' classic "On The Corner" achieved. It was a dense and jaw dropping mixture of jazz cool; the well thought, carefully planned and precise musical attacks merged wtih the more wide eyed and cocky swagger of funk. Davis blended, minced and smashed them together as if it were no big deal and the end result was one of the greatest two headed monsters to be birthed. How does that relate to Blue Cranes? The underlying principle. The band arm themselves with both old and new school jazz sensibilities and combine them with the more prickly edged energy of rock 'n' roll, focusing on the improvisation aesthetic. The biggest difference of course is the band avoids straying into territory of self indulgent wankfests or meandering, senile noodling jams in hopes of hitting the vein.
One of the true gems laid out here is tenor saxophonist Sly Pig's composition "Broken Windmills" which I read was written for his grandmother. Even before learning that small but important fact, the track struck a chord with me the first time I heard it. It's a deeply moving and emotionally effecting peice. Both Sly Pig and alto Reed Wallsmith play off one another and connect in an emotional cortex that bursts with pride, longing and sentiment. Ji Tanzer's explosions midway through the piece are vivid and bold, often resembling artillery fire or bursts of thunder without taking anything away from the heart of the song. If anything, his touches only catapult the emotions to an almost uncontrollable urgency before it gradually fades away and passes, leaving only an impression. And I can't help but wonder how close to the mark that metaphor hits.
"Maddie Mae (Was A Good Girl)" is a lurching, slow burning jam. The gradual unfolding of the piece is intoxicating, Keith Brush's bass work winds in and out while guest guitarist Timothy Young lays out what sounds like water meeting an electrical current. it's the type of jamming that has a purpose but lacks an ego. "These People Are My People" serves as almost a buffer between the emotional ebb and flow of the album. The opening jams on the drums is just damn funky and when the entire band kicks in, the piece is given an exotic sort of cool.
"Yellow Ochre" is cut from the same bolt as "Broken Windmills" but with a major difference: there's not flurry of percussion to drive and electrify the piece, no sudden bursts of sheet metal chords or wild eyed wailings of the saxes. It's a slow moving piece, Timothy Young's guitar shimmers and slides, reminding me of Santo and Johnny's classic instrumental "Sleep Walk" in some subconscious context. It's the end of a late night, the return to an empty and dark room where walls and pictures keep company with time and contemplation. I swear there's an uplifting sensibility lurking beneath it, even if there is though, it's still emotionally gripping and tugs the heart strings firmly. Touches of yesterdays, regrets, memories and empty hands flash like an old home movie on a reel to reel in the dead of the night while passing time, I think this stands as one of my all time favorites. The album ends on a slightly higher not with "Here Is You, Here Is me." which wastes little time in kicking up the pace to a more hip swaggering groove, courtesy of a solid and bouncing backbeat. The entire band come alive in this one, cutting loose and playfully jamming but all the while coloring in the lines without sounding dull. All in all it's a brilliant way to end an amazing album. Jazz not your bag? There's enough rock in this one to appeal to both sides of the hipster spectrum, and not willing to expand perimeters and broaden horizons is a shame enough, but it's a bigger shame if an amazing album like this gets lost as a result.
March 3, 2011
Audiophile
Audition
JEFF KROS, ROBBIE GERSON, JOHN HENRY
"The 2011 Portland Jazz Festival"
"Blue Cranes, Portland’s own indie jazz ensemble, delighted their exuberant fan base with a vibrant performance. Relying on the clout of double saxophones (tenor and alto), the ensemble combined their muscled, orchestral themes with a crowd pleasing hard rock downbeat. Continuing in their repertoire, the group added a string trio (cello, viola and violin) on a moving opus, “Soldier”. Eventually the band swelled to a four horn soul chorus on the closing number. The Blue Cranes will be embarking on a month long cross country train tour in March."
February 18, 2011
The
Oregonian
BETH NAKAMURA
February 11, 2011
National
Association of Railroad Passengers Blog (Washington DC)
MALCOLM KENTON
"Musicians Hit the Rails"
Before paved highways were common, and a vast network of frequent passenger trains served the country, performing ensembles of all stripes toured the country by train. Nowadays, most musical groups pile themselves, their instruments and equipment into a van or truck and go on the road. But some bands have proven that it’s still possible to turn a road tour into a rail tour.
Arlo Guthrie, Willie Nelson and others played in towns along the Amtrak City of New Orleans route in 2007 to raise money to help struggling New Orleans musicians in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Guthrie recorded the best-known version of Steve Goodman’s song that bears the train’s name.
Now, the Blue Cranes—an indie jazz quintet, has made a name for itself in the Portland, Oregon, music scene—will become the next band to take its show on the rails.
During the month of April, the band will go all the way to the East Coast and back, stopping to perform in towns along the way. While entertaining audiences, they will also educate them about the pleasures—and the economic and social benefits—of train travel and encourage them to support NARP.
The Blue Cranes are still forming their itinerary, which is being financed through individual contributions solicited online. Each bandmember will probably buy a 30-day USA Rail Pass, which covers coach fare for an unlimited number of Amtrak rides over the period during which it is valid. However, it may wind up being less expensive for them to buy individual tickets for each leg of the trip.
Of course, the biggest challenge facing traveling musicians is how to carry all their instruments and equipment. Most bands just pile into a van or truck for a road tour. A rail tour, while it requires more logistical coordination, can be done. Amtrak can take most instruments as checked baggage so long as they are packaged securely. For stations and trains without checked baggage, instruments can be stored in on-board luggage racks. For certain large instruments with irregularly-shaped carrying cases, such as upright basses, Amtrak does require passengers to buy an extra seat for the instrument.
A second problem is getting everything from the train station to the concert venue and the hotel. If both are within walking distance of the train station, it would be easy. But, unfortunately, most US cities aren’t laid out that way. Bands traveling by rail have to rely on taxi or limousine companies with large enough vehicles, or on friends to give them a lift. Of course, there is the option of having things shipped to a given location.
American railroads, from the early days to the Amtrak era, have almost always been able to accommodate the myriad needs of many types of travelers, including touring performers who’d rather not spend long hours on the blacktop. And musicians have returned the favor by penning volumes of songs extolling the virtues of train travel.
January 19, 2011
Willamette
Week (Portland, OR)
CASEY JARMAN
"Blue Cranes, Gavin Castleton, Gulls / J.P Jenkins Duo, Doug Theriault"
[POST-JAZZ] Tonight marks the release of not one, but two Blue Cranes albums—neither of which is a conventional "jazz" release. The first, Cantus Firmus, is an EP that finds the Cranes covering (downright masterfully, in fact) three giants of understated indie rock in David Bazan, Blonde Redhead and the Red House Painters. The second is a broad remix album called Oversea Orbits that features everything from 8-bit reworkings with new lyrics (Jonny Classic's version of "Grandpa's Hands") to droning soundscapes (Ethan Rose's take on "Here Is You, Here Is Me"). Both releases provide yet more evidence that Blue Cranes is Portland's risk-takingest post-jazz combo.
December 29th, 2010
Willamette
Week (Portland, OR)
"WW Scoop"
JAZZMATAZZ: If there was any lingering doubt about Blue Cranes being the hippest jazz outfit in Portland, the forthcoming Oversea Orbits—a nine-track remix album featuring local artists like experimental composer Ethan Rose, electronic music producer Jesse Munro Johnson (Gulls) and singer/songwriter/producer Gavin Castleton—ought to seal the deal. The album—a reworking of the Cranes’ 2010 album Observatories—also includes three videos, one of which is a welcome addition to the popular “Shredz” YouTube meme. The disc drops on Friday, Jan. 21, at a Secret Society Ballroom show featuring many of the artists from the remix album. Then, in April, Blue Cranes will tour the entire country via train and blog their trip for wweek.com—at which point the Cranes will probably cash in their massive stash of cool points for some travel mugs and lava lamps.
December 17th, 2010
Willamette
Week (Portland, OR)
HEATHER WISNER
"LIVE REVIEW: Northwest Dance Project Celebrates Cool Yule with Blue
Cranes"
So what’s cool about the Northwest Dance Project’s Cool Yule show? Its collaboration with Portland jazz collective Blue Cranes. Each of the six choreographers who contributed to the show chose a piece from the Cranes catalog and set work to it, which the band accompanies live onstage. Variations on this theme are not unusual in the dance world—a single choreographer choosing a suite of music by a band, or a band creating a score for a company to use—but this is an interesting and less-traveled direction to take.
It’s also cool to have a break from Christmas music and décor. Cool Yule is held in the company’s airy, white-walled studio, with paper globes hung from the ceiling and tea lights lining the windowsills. The dancers are simply costumed in earth tones—green short shorts, black turtlenecks and the like.
Despite the simple setting, musical mood and movement vary in the show, which zips along briskly. Minh Tran’s Evanescence opens it with two duos set to the propulsive “Ritchie Bros.” There is a compact muscularity to the work, with push-pull partnerships and the occasional group entanglement. On the flip side, Carla Mann turns in a lyrical duo, Dovetail, warmly performed by Samantha Campbell and Patrick Kilbane on opening night.
Company member Andrea Parson, a 2010 Princess Grace Award winner for her dancing, demonstrates a facility for choreography as well with The Wall, set to the Sufjan Stevens cover “Seven Swans.” Here, the back of the studio becomes a climbing wall, an immovable obstacle, a support for upended balances and a reinforcement for the company as Kilbane dashes backward and leaps into their waiting arms. In Sarah Slipper’s Snow, Parson is a white parka-shrouded gremlin with twitchy legs who deposits a snowball on the head of a mute, wide-eyed Elijah Labay as a prelude to their duet.
In Tracey Durbin’s Broken Muse, Ching Ching Wong actually interacts with a Cranes saxophonist before melting slowly into the floor on the first notes of “Maddie Mae.” The evening concludes with Kemba Shannon’s ensemble number Why Me?, in which the dancers, wearing festive knee socks, jump, slide and shout in a kind of house party led by a most excellent good house band. “I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to have live music,” said Slipper in a post-show address. Agreed—it’s a cool Christmas gift for dancers and viewers alike.
December 15, 2010
Willamette
Week (Portland, OR)
HEATHER WISNER
"Northwest Dance Project"
Jazz is the thread tying together the dances at Northwest Dance Project’s Cool Yule show; specifically, jazz from Portland’s Blue Cranes, who will see their work take shape (literally) as they play live. The choreographers on the bill have set new pieces to Cranes compositions: Carla Mann followed the jazz impulse for improvisation in a duet set to “Crane,” Minh Tran chose “Ritchie Bros.” for his twin duets, and company member Andrea Parson’s avant-garde ensemble number was inspired by the Sufjan Stevens cover “Seven Swans.” NWDP artistic director Sarah Slipper has crafted a male-female duet to “Crane Reprise”; Kemba Shannon made what she has dubbed a “high-energy, jazzy snazzy” ensemble work against “Returning to Portland”; and to “Maddie Mae,” Tracey Durbin offers a lyrical jazz solo. Wassail and other seasonal treats will be served. 833 N Shaver St., 421-7434. 7 pm Thursday, 7 and 9 pm Friday-Saturday, Dec. 16-18. $33-$50.
December 13, 2010
DIY
Musician Blog (CD Baby)
"Top Three Touring Tactics: Lessons from Portland, Oregon"
Everybody loves End-Of-Year Best-Of lists, right? And those of you who say you don’t still like to complain about them, which means you really DO love them! ... For CD Baby’s bit, we’ll be looking at three Portland bands who are touring smart in very different ways. ... Without tour support from a label, DIY artists have to make sure they’re getting maximum return on their time, financial investment, and effort when they go out on the road. After all, touring is one of the main ways musicians grow their fan base. And for the following bands, it is working!
1. Blue Cranes Go By Train-
In one swift move, Portland’s favorite jazz rock collective teaches us 3 valuable lessons: garner massive press attention by embarking upon an environmentally & economically conscious national tour and have your fans pay for it all. Blue Cranes is a busy band. They gig often. They’ve toured often. But when it came time to consider a national tour, the cost of the undertaking was tough to wrap their heads around. But rather than be deterred, they took the challenge to their fans, successfully using crowdfunding site Kickstarter.com to raise enough money to mount the tour.
Oh, and this wasn’t just any tour. Blue Cranes is going by train, coast to coast and back again. The unusual mode of transportation makes for good camaraderie, a good story for press coverage, and good Green thinking (both in terms of the environment and the almighty dollar.)
December 1, 2010
Willamette
Week (Portland, OR)
CASEY JARMAN
"Blue Cranes, The Youngs, Why I Must Be Careful"
[JAZZ AND FRIENDS!] Blue Cranes’ latest disc, Observatories, isn’t just one of the best jazz releases out of Portland this year, it’s one of the best releases out of Portland this year—or any year, for that matter. A deep, beautifully composed and then radically deconstructed effort, it rocks harder than most rock albums and says more than most singer-songwriters—without any words at all. I realize that, for some people, “jazz” is a dirty word—even the Blue Cranes themselves avoid throwing it around—but the Cranes’ music throws back to an envelope-pushing era when “jazz” could mean just about anything. There’s Mingus and Coltrane in here—even if there’s also a bit of Bazan and Kozelek, two songwriters the Cranes cover (the Bazan cut, “Harmless Sparks,” is especially full of life) on their new EP, Cantus Firmus. There’s nothing forced about these pop covers—they seem to flow out of the Cranes just as easily as their epic original tunes.
November 13, 2010
The
Big City
GTRA1N
"Genre Confusion"
And the Blue Cranes . . . Where Miles Davis made jazz that knew Hendrix and Sly Stone, this band makes music that is rock in style and jazz in spirit, a dish whose ingredients include The Bad Plus, Bill Frisell’s take on Americana, Henry Threadgill’s Very Very Circus and the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Or, try this; imagine doo-wop played by a traveling carnival band’s saxophone section, with a strong back-beat and solos. Observatories is nothing but pleasure, track to track (listen to selections here). The band plays all original material, except for Wayne Horvitz’s take on Satie, “Love, Love, Love,” and everything works. The sound and style are unique, and one they’ve clearly developed through a lot of thought and practice. They may make music like you’ve never heard before, but every note and gesture sounds so lived-in, so purposeful and confident. The opening “Grandpa’s Hands” has some of the most deliciously velvety sax playing you’ll hear, from leader Craig Wallsmith and Joe “Sly Pig” Cunningham, while the standout track is “Maddie Mae (Was A Good Girl),” seven minutes of everything that makes this band so remarkable; lyrical, country blues, driving drums from Ji Tanzer, a crunchy guitar solo by Timothy Young, all coming together into an achingly wistful and rousing expression. The following “Broken Windmills,” with it’s hint of “You’re Nobody TIll Somebody Loves You,” is forceful and poignant. And there’s more wonderful music after that. The Blue Cranes have come out the other end of prog- and jazz-rock and are making something new, progressive jazz, anyone?
November 12, 2010
Cover
Me
GREG DUNCAN
"Blonde Redhead gets Kind of Blue"
When did people start to view jazz as safe? Most of the great jazz musicians lived on the edges of society, succumbing to heroin addiction, like Charlie Parker, or dying in other unnatural ways, like Chet Baker’s mysterious plunge from a hotel window. These artists explored the limits of music, at first by using standard, well-known Broadway tunes as platforms for their adventures and later bursting beyond form altogether—think Miles Davis with Bitches Brew or John Coltrane with Interstellar Space. Now jazz is simply something your crazy, half-deaf grandfather rants on about or—worse—elevator music. Personally I blame Kenny G for destroying the reputation of jazz, but I tend to prefer simple explanations for complex societal and cultural changes.
Thankfully, a few folks under the age of 65 still carry the torch for real jazz. Blue Cranes, a quintet from Portland, Oregon, play jazz infused with an indie aesthetic. Their latest EP, Cantus Firmus, features covers of three decidedly non-jazz tunes, including Blonde Redhead’s “Hated Because of Great Qualities.” The band preserves the contemplative feel of the original and uses the open space to explore the melody with solos and harmonized saxophones. You won’t be hearing this version when you’re put on hold calling the Buy More and that brings a warm glow to my heart. Download the track below.
October 1, 2010
Utne
Reader (Minneapolis, MN)
KEITH GOETZMAN
Featured in October music sampler
A jazz quintet centered around two saxophones, Portland’s Blue Cranes have a sensibility that draws equally from old and new wells. You don’t have to count the tricky beats to enjoy their joyous interplay on this song from Observatories, their third album.
October 1, 2010
Berkshire
Living (Pittsfield, MA)
SETH ROGOVOY
Portland, Ore.-based quintet Blue Cranes calls its music “jazz/not jazz,” a surprising coinage as jazz seems the least of what’s going on here. The group’s front line of saxophones reminds one of East Coast groups including the Ordinaires or even Morphine, and the other signifying characteristic seems to be a fondness for the repetitive ostinatos of minimalism and an aggressive rhythmic pulse drawn from indie-rock and other beat-based music. Not that I begrudge the group’s jazz cred; there’s plenty of swing and apparent improv going on here, on mostly original compositions plus a cover of Wayne Horvitz’s “Love, Love, Love.” Observatories should appeal to the more adventurous fans of the Bad Plus, as well as to followers of Bill Frisell and John Hollenbeck.
September 29, 2010
Willamette
Week (Portland, OR)
RUTH BROWN
"A Kick In The Arts"
...BLUE CRANES TOUR BY TRAIN
Goal: $6,145
Raised: $6,732
Portland alt-jazz band Blue Cranes has played seven tours since forming in 2007, but has never made it beyond the West Coast. The five-piece wanted to take its experimental sounds east, but in order to avoid the physically and environmentally taxing method of driving a van from coast to coast, decided to tour the country via train. Realizing the tour itself wouldn’t generate enough revenue to pay for train tickets, the band decided to draw on the support it has at home to fund the trip through Kickstarter.
“We tried to add little things in to make it special,” says the band’s alto-sax player, Reed Wallsmith. They created a three-song EP ... and offered a range of unique personalized rewards, from limited-edition silkscreened tour posters and T-shirts to a bowling lesson with the band’s tenor-sax player, Sly Pig, and a Blue Cranes concert at your house.
“There’s a strong ‘buy local’ movement in Portland, and Kickstarter is sort of an extension of that. You can have a direct connection with the group or person you’re giving money to,” says Wallsmith. The band plans to head off in spring next year.
September 21, 2010
Philadelphia
Daily News (Philadelphia, PA)
JONATHAN TAKIFF
Also working the jazz/rock crossover circuit with sweet success are the Bad Plus on their most varied, all-originals "Never Stop" (E1, B+) and Blue Cranes with "Observatories" (Blue Cranes, B).
September 20, 2010
Oregon
Music News (Portland)
"Blue Cranes successfully Raises Over $6,500 Via Kickstarter.com
to ride the rails on their tour in Spring 2011"
Blue Cranes successfully funded the basic costs of the Blue Cranes Tour by Train, which will take the band into markets they have never played before (namely some combination of Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Boston, Providence, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake City, Santa Fe). For a complete breakdown of costs and planned routing, see the Blue Cranes Tour By Train Kickstarter project page. Specific details of this tour should be announced by February 2011.
September 18, 2010
Something
Else! (Plano, TX)
PICO
Although we don't really cover indie rock on our little corner of the blogzine world, I'm often intrigued by musicians who approach jazz from the indie angle. They don't swing and they usually don't try to dazzle with labored technique. Most times the compositions aren't these tedious, multi-sectioned pieces with the intricacies of classical music (otherwise, it would be prog rock). What the indie-inclined crowd do bring to the table is a group collective disposition, an attention to melody and harmony, and a belief in textures and mood.
That could aptly describe the Portland, Ore. quintet Blue Cranes.
Blue Cranes, led by alto sax player and composer Reed Wallsmith, has made fans from Wayne Horvitz to Claudia Quintet leader John Hollenbeck. The reason for this is rooted in playing a kind of music that's probing but is easy to embrace. Last Tuesday, Blue Cranes introduced their 3rd album, Observatories, a self-released undertaking.
Joining Wallsmith is Joe "Sly Pig" Cunningham on tenor sax, Rebecca Sanborn on keyboards, Keith Brush on bass and Ji Tanzer on drums. A dual sax front line isn't quite what you'd expect from a band that doesn't swing. It's not just about the band configuration, however, it's how it's exploited. I'd even go on to say that how they capitalize on the two-sax front is the very thing that defines the character of this album.
This band is really good at coming up with circular melodies, layering on it, modulating the sonic space, and tossing in countering lines. The cyclical melodies are evident in Hortvitz's "Love, Love, Love" (video below) and the punchy "Ritchie Bros.," but is executed most masterfully on the melancholy "Maddie Mae (Was A Good Girl)." On this piece, a lone sax states the beautiful melody, joined on the second bar by a harmonizing sax, and then more layers of saxes are added with contrapuntal lines. A violin, viola and cello section comes in, before the acoustic bass and drums finally enter. The layers are washed aside, leaving only the rhythm section, Timothy Young (Horvitz's guitarist), and Sly Pig. Both Pig and Young take turns at solos, with Young's guitar sounding appropriately tortured.
"Yellow Ochre" is a quiet, Americana type tune that Bill Frisell would be rather proud to call his own. Not only does guest guitarist Young sounds a little like Bill, but Wallsmith is just singing the lyrical line on his sax instead of improvising. And for this song, that works just fine. The closing track "Here Is You, Here Is Me" might be the most imaginative track of the whole set. Starting off with some nifty delicate percussion, Wallsmith launches the choral theme with Sly Pig chiming in with a countering line and all seems to be rolling along predictably when the songs stops on a dime and Wallsmith goes berserk with an Ayler-esque freakout. Pig soon re-enters with the theme and the drummer Tanzer and the rest of the band is swayed to follow him back to the song. Wallsmith, meanwhile, manages to get his lines in while he continues to play skronk jazz in the gaps!
It's just that kind sense of adventure that makes Blue Cranes a lot of fun to listen to as they strike the right balance of seriousness---but not too much seriousness---when they get experimental. Best of all, their experimentation is the kind that serves the songs, which is a good strategy, since they are pretty strong in the songwriting department. Blue Cranes' Observatories is one of those records that can get the indie crowd into jazz. Or the jazz crowd into indie rock? Or more likely, a place in the middle where both crowds can come together.
September 14, 2010
Alarm
Press (Philadelphia)
"Best Albums of the Week - honorable mention"
September 14, 2010
Classical
TV (NYC)
CHRIS KOMPANEK
"Strange Yet Seductive: Blue Cranes' Observatories"
Blue Cranes’ Observatories is full of strange yet seductive melodies that push the boundaries of the prog-jazz sphere. It’s the kind of album that perplexes before it enthralls and takes a few listens to embrace the many sonic jumps between tracks. “Grandpa’s Hands” begins with a toy piano melody reminiscent in tone of Sigur Ros with a Steve Reichian precision. Then double saxophones join in on top, providing a rich, lingering counterpoint that takes over the piece midway through with dynamic solos before finishing up with the original piano melody.
The Portland quintet (supported by a handful of additional musicians for the recording) quickly shift gears in Wayne Horvitz’s “Love, Love, Love”, an expansive piece that feels like a slightly atonal klezmer waltz. The notes bend around each other, preferring often to fight rather than groove together. It could easily find itself at home in a Tim Burton film during a decadently macabre ball. The group never stays in one mood very long, but the shifts aren’t so much jarring as thrilling. On one song, they’re sounding like hard-hitting partiers Slavic Soul Party, then an old country band, and then all of a sudden, they’re interrupted by a baby declaring, “I don’t like the music. Don’t like the music. It’s noisy. It’s noisy. Don’t like it.” Where does that come from? It’s so out of place that it almost feels like a subliminal message that only a lucky few get to hear. It’s a welcome whimsy for “serious music.”
Alto Saxophonist and the group’s main composer Reed Wallsmith has played in a number of jazz groups while tenor saxophonist Joe “Sly Pig” Cunningham did time with indie royalty the Decemberists, who have explored the boundaries of a rock group with intricate compositions including the epic concept album, Hazards of Love. Cunningham and Wallsmith have great chemistry and often seamlessly blend their two lines together to form one lush sound. This is highlighted best on “Maddie Mae was a Good Girl”, which opens with a heartbreaking double sax melody the pulls minor sounds through major ones, forming a strained beauty that keeps looping back over itself, weaving through the remaining spaces until it’s filled with a complementary violin and later an electric guitar, giving it a solid fusion vibe. They aren’t afraid of distortion, and this really pays off at the end of the song as all the different parts coalesce.
They’re planning to release an EP cover album of songs by indie artists Blonde Redhead, Red House Painters, and David Bazan, which sounds intriguing but also got me thinking how much I’d love to here them cover some dirty jazz like Charles Mingus’ Moanin’ with Sly Fox {sic} switching down from tenor to bari sax. It would make a great encore for their upcoming train tour (an eco-friendlier take on the traditional bus or van trip) that’s tentatively scheduled to hit twenty cities over the course of a month, hopefully giving the band the wider exposure they deserve.
September 9, 2010
CD
Baby - Editor's Pick
"Blue Cranes – Observatories"
Portland, Oregon’s favorite double saxophone-fronted collective works “a thin line between prog-jazz improvisation and indie rock catchiness.” Hip enough for hipsters, cool and accesible enough for the casual jazz listener, and funky enough for the folks who just wanna get their freak on, Blue Cranes have achieved, on their 3rd album, a sound where each individual member’s contribution is vital to the whole. After frequent touring in their current incarnation, the compositions on Observatories have grown up organically around the players, greatly influenced by their unique strengths and attitudes, as well as their comraderie and shared vision. With a vast repertoire and eclectic range of interests, Blue Cranes veer from pop to fusion to avant-garde with natural skill, from soft to jagged to aggressive with grace. If their goal is to “make exploration seem like the most enjoyable process around” then they have succeeded on Observatories.
August 29, 2010
Arts
Dispatch
BARRY JOHNSON
Live Review: "Entering the ether with the Blue Cranes"
At several points during the Blue Cranes CD release concert Saturday night band leader Reed Wallsmith seemed to enter a transition state between body and spirit, hovering in the limbo world between the two. Which makes sense because that's a reasonable description of music, too, I suppose. It wouldn't have been much of a surprise if he'd left us altogether -- his presence seemed that ethereal.
The music itself, the stage full of engaged collaborators (at one point 10 musicians joined together in the Alberta Rose Theatre), the happy crowd -- it's easy to see why Wallsmith might have left his human form behind for, well, something else.
The music of Blue Cranes on the new CD, "Observatories," isn't easy to convey because it's difficult to categorize. Both Wallsmith on alto sax and drummer Ji Tanzer employ experimental, free jazz techniques, and occasionally the sound of the band dips in that direction, but soon it has migrated to lush harmonies and simple, sweet melodies. Sometimes Blue Cranes sounds like the back-up band for a rhythm and blues singer, sometimes like a chamber orchestra, sometimes like those wind-swept post-rock Euro bands such as Sigur Ros. And sometimes they sound like a "where the spirit takes me" jazz band, most often when Wallsmith is soloing.
The heart of the band is the sax duet of Wallsmith and Sly Pig, who can get the creamiest tone from his tenor sax when he wants to or let go with one of those whipsaw blues riffs that we know so well. Their individual playing can be moving, but together they are uncanny, how they insinuate themselves into each other's musical thoughts, the rhythmic lock they have on each other's tempo, their sense of when to enter and when to depart, when to occupy and when to give ground. I watch them and want to be a better partner in all my enterprises.
I'm not going to get into the details of the new CD (Wayne Horvitz's "Love, Love, Love," above is the only cover on the album) beyond what I've already said. It takes me a while to get a fix on new music under the best of circumstances, let alone these, in which the approach is so eclectic. It's hard to talk about the contribution of keyboardist Rebecca Sanborn, for example, which sometimes seems limited to providing a chordal bedrock for the songs but then suddenly evolves into a winsome little duet with Tanzer's percussion. Or Keith Brush's bass, which is similarly submerged much of the time, but then steps out, especially when the band invites a string trio onstage (Kyleen King, Anna Fritz and Marilee Hord played on the CD and I'm presuming they were also the musicians on stage). I guess I'm simply saying that my impressions at this point are pretty superficial, so I'll spare you.
I've written about the Blue Cranes once before, a little piece I originally intended as my first column in The Oregonian two Januaries ago. It was too long and maybe too "expansive" for a daily newspaper I suppose, and I substituted a different subject. The column wasn't about the Blue Cranes, really, they just make an appearance at the beginning and then it starts to wander, to deal with the idea of noise, David Schiff's idea of composers as "differently eared," Charles Ives, the city and its sounds. I'm not sure how many people ever read that column, but I liked it, and if you want to take a little side trip, I've just posted it on Arts Dispatch.
Ah, side trips. The Blue Cranes want to tour the continent by train, and they've started a Kickstarter campaign to do just that. Really, American should give a listen, right? If you want to help, here's the link.
I should also mention that Rebecca Gates (Spinanes!) and the Consortium and electronically enhanced sax soloist Jonathan Sielaff were delightful openers for Blue Cranes, and I'll be looking for them in the future.
August 27, 2010
The
Oregonian
ROBERT HAM
"Blue Cranes adds variety to PDX Pop Now! festival's indie rock and
hip hop scene"
The lineup for the PDX Pop Now! festival is often chock-full of acts that hover around the world of indie rock and hip-hop. But the organizers do like to throw in a few bands from outside the spectrum to stir the pot and expose the attendees to scenes they might be ignoring, such as the city's vibrant jazz culture. And often, as was the case with the Saturday evening set by the electrifying quintet known as Blue Cranes, it can inspire awe and rock-star responses from the young audience.
"Two kids came up to us after the set and they were so pumped about it," says drummer Ji Tanzer, winding down at Produce Row Cafe after the band's PDX Pop set. "If I saw them on the street, I would think, 'Wow, they would hate what we do.' But they told me, 'You made me want to get a drum set and practice 9 to 5.'"
It's an entirely appropriate response to what Tanzer and his band mates -- saxophonists Reed Wallsmith and Joe "Sly Pig" Cunningham, keyboardist Rebecca Sanborn and bassist Keith Brush -- do on stage and on the CDs they've released to date. They all grew up playing, studying and appreciating jazz, but Blue Cranes aims for a more accessible and exciting sound that owes as much to the scene that surrounds clubs such as Jimmy Mak's as it does to what is going on at the Doug Fir Lounge or Holocene.
"We've taken some of the things that we like about jazz music, the interaction and playing from an emotional depth, stolen that and applied it to other music that we like," Sanborn says. "I don't see us as a jazz band but our instrumentation dictates that we are considered a jazz group."
This idea comes out most strongly in the band's recorded work. Their latest album, "Observatories," forgoes long flights of instrumental fancy in favor of clean, intertwining melodies played by the two horns, bolstered by Sanborn's wandering keyboards and Tanzer's sometimes steady, sometimes manic percussion work. Throw in the addition of a string trio and the emotions expressed in these songs soar.
There's a playfulness to the band, too, as can be heard on the new album by the small child's voice between songs complaining how noisy the band is, and in their current live staple: a wry take on David Bowie's "Oh! You Pretty Things." And that playfulness is at the heart of the relationship of a bunch of friends who seem to spend as much time laughing with each other as they do worrying over their compositions. For Wallsmith, who started the project six years ago, that's all he's ever wanted.
"My biggest goal is to have more fun than I've ever had playing music and always do that. This band should become more fun every year."
August 26, 2010
Portland
Mercury
NL
"Blue Cranes, Rebecca Gates and the Consortium, Jonathan Sielaff"
Yes, Blue Cranes have a couple horns in their lineup, and sure, their instrumental pieces are largely improvised. But to pigeonhole them as "jazz" is not exactly accurate; the Portland five-piece makes use of Ji Tanzer's powerful drumming to pack its punchy swing full of gravity, and the chord progressions recall soul and R&B classics more than fake-book charts. On their third album, the brand new Observatories, Blue Cranes trade heavy math grooves with airy melodies, straying far from the scholarly museum pieces or schmaltzy elevator muzak that make up today's contemporary jazz. (Which raises the question, how did jazz end up there anyway?) If anything, Blue Cranes hearken back to jazz's exploratory days, when anything was fair game except for setting rules. And they do so without sounding at all retro—instead, the music of Blue Cranes is informed by a very vital, of-the-moment Northwest indie mentality.
August 25th, 2010
Willamette
Week
CASEY JARMAN
"Jazz’s Not Dead: Blue Cranes buck expectations and make music
for the people"
Reed Wallsmith, Blue Cranes’ alto sax player, is still a little foggy. Last night his band played a house show in Ashland, and at 10 am, he hasn’t quite woken up yet. He talks about the show as if he’s describing a dream. “There were a whole bunch of new parents with their little kids running around,” he says over the phone from the backyard of a friend’s house, where he laid out a sleeping bag and crashed beneath the stars. “It was pretty fun to have that background noise going on behind our music.”
While one would expect a punk or indie rock musician to embark on a half-booked couch-crashing (indeed, yard-crashing) tour toward Santa Cruz, it’s not generally a tactic associated with jazz musicians. But Wallsmith, whose Blue Cranes have shared basements and festivals with punk rock groups more often than they’ve played stiff, upholstered clubs with other jazz acts, will take a house gig any day. “I kinda like the atmosphere better, because it’s not based around making money for a venue,” he says. “It’s based around people being with their friends.”
For a jazz group (and, while Wallsmith shows some trepidation about overusing that word, “jazz,” the wide confines of the genre certainly allow room for the Cranes’ exciting, experimental music), playing uncompromising music for non-enthusiasts is a bold, even radical, move. There was a time, of course, when jazz was America’s popular music. But these days—though die-hard fans hate to admit it—jazz is a four-letter-word for a lot of mainstream music fans. It stays alive primarily through the support of academic institutions, private trusts and corporate-sponsored festivals. With some notable fresh-faced exceptions, this music—once a refuge for wild-eyed, weed-smoking rebels and stylish eccentrics—owes its life to the establishment.
“We’re not coming from that background,” Wallsmith says. “I mean, we all went to school, but in terms of where we want our music to live, it’s not in that environment.” So instead of playing clubs to jazz insiders, the Cranes—seven-year vets of the Portland music scene—have played the PDX Pop Now! Festival two years running, where they’re often the first exposure to jazz that young people have ever gotten. “People have told us that, that we’ve been their first live jazz band,” Wallsmith says. The players don’t see that as a burden. “I don’t feel like we have the responsibility to uphold jazz—we don’t want to be in a position where we have to make sure jazz reaches a younger audience.”
The music certainly isn’t kid stuff—that’s clear from Rebecca Sanborn’s delicate opening keyboard flourishes on “Grandpa’s Hands,” the first track of the Cranes’ new disc, Observatories. The tune, penned by Wallsmith about the muscles in his piano-playing grandfather’s hands locking up until he could no longer play, is a fitting introduction for the group: Funky with a hint of math-nerd obsessive compulsiveness, it splits wide open in the middle to allow Wallsmith and tenor sax player Joe Cunningham some deeply soulful, moaning solos that eventually twist around drummer Ji Tanzer’s nods towards hip-hop breakbeats and complex, Max Roach-esque patterns.
The whole disc—from the sepia-toned Wayne Horvitz waltz, “Love, Love, Love” to Tanzer’s epic first composition for the group, the slow-building “Maddie Mae (Was a Good Girl)” and Wallsmith’s video game-inspired closer “Here Is You, Here Is Me”—walks that line between carefully constructed jazz composition and wild, indie-rock abandon. The Horvitz track is the album’s only cover, a testament to the quintet’s resistance to pandering, even after it gained interest by playing a pair of Elliott Smith tunes earlier in its career. That said, the band’s next EP will feature three cover songs—the Cranes will take on David Bazan, the Red House Painters and Blonde Redhead. “We’re just trying to play whatever music comes from our heart,” Wallsmith says. Who knew such a simple approach could feel so revolutionary?
August 24, 2010
Oregon
Music News
TOM D'ANTONI
"Reed Wallsmith on the Blue Cranes’ new album ‘Observatories’"
Portland’s Blue Cranes are almost ready to make the leap to national recognition. This will not be news to those of us here who have marveled at their playing for several years. They are: Reed Wallsmith, alto sax, Sly Pig, tenor sax, Rebecca Sanborn, keyboards, Keith Brush, bass, Ji Tanzer, drums.
Their Observatories CD release is Saturday, August 28, Alberta Rose Theatre, doors 8pm, show 9pm, $10 advance (or $20 advance w/ cd). $12 at the door, 21+. Rebecca Gates and the Consortium and Jonathan Sielaff will open the show.
I sat with Reed Wallsmith and found I had to get into the now-somewhat-tiresome question of what exactly are they. Note: When Reed talks about Joe, he is talking about Joe Cunningham who is known in the band as Sly Pig because there is another Joe Cunningham who used the name first. A friend said he was a “cunning ham” and therefore a “Sly Pig.”
I started using the term “Indie Jazz” a while back. What’s interesting about the Cranes is that you play PDX Pop Now! and Holocene and places where you might think a Jazz band wouldn’t go.
I wanted to play in front of our peers. I wanted to play at shows that people at the house I lived in would go to…with bands that we were all listening to. That’s who I wanted to play for. Since then we’ve expanded to play for a lot of different audiences. We still don’t know what to call it. Last time we went on tour we had a sheet of paper and people could write what they thought it was…someone sent an email said you were not-Jazz/not-not-Jazz.
On their website, they call it Jazz/not-Jazz.
It’s hard because people want to categorize you…so people know what it is. So people innocently ask, “What kind of music do you play?” And we go, “Uhhhhhhhhhh….sorry we didn’t mean to bring you into this. It’s not your fault.”
It could all be defined very well as Jazz because Jazz is always changing.
This is an old fight. I got a phone call at KMHD while I was playing a tune by Monk telling me that wasn’t Jazz. People bring different sets of ears to everything.
Let’s go through the tunes on the album. Is “Grandpa’s Hands – for Frank Wall” about a real grandpa?
It’s funny when I write a song, it’s notes…it’s a feeling…but it’s about my grandpa who is really the only one in my family who is a musician. When I was young he gave me a keyboard. When I had written that song, it was right at the time when he and my grandma were moving out of an apartment and she made me take his keyboard because he has this thing where your fingers curl up and you can’t open up. It was so sad. He can’t play it anymore. It was so sad to watch that he knew that he couldn’t….it was just heart-wrenching to me.
So it’s about him and what that was like. It’s a very piano-intensive part (sings it). I was thinking about the agility of hands when I wrote it.
Do you write at the piano?
I do. My favorite way to write is at an acoustic piano.
Ever written any other way?
Some of the string parts I wrote using Finale software. Especially with counterpoint lines, it’s nice to be able to have a computer play them. I’ll work it out on the piano and then when it gets to hard to play all at once, I’ll transfer over to computer. Then I’ll hand write it out on to a chart. It’s easier to communicate stuff if it’s handwritten.
I feel like I should say that this is the first album I feel like has been a really collaborative compositional process. I think we’re going to get even more for the next one. Some of the songs are mine and some are Joe’s and Ji wrote one for the first time. It varies a little between us all how that works. Generally, we’ll bring a melody.
“These Are My People” (by Ji Tanzer), Ji woke up with this melody in his head and he sang it into his phone right away…and that’s the melody (sings it). We were at this lodge outside of Grant’s Pass and there was an old piano there and he figured out what it was on the piano. That really started as a sketch.
Someone might bring in a head and we’ll work with it and then they’ll take it back and add another part to it. “Broken Windmills,” Joe pretty much had an idea of what he wanted it to be. But all of these songs, they end up…one of us will write and then they completely metamorphosize once we’re working with it as a band…we Blue Cranify it. Whether it’s something one of us wrote or whether it’s a cover of someone else’s song, that group process of making it ours happen. ... [read more]
April 20, 2010
Circle
Into Square
HIRAM LUCKE
"Not Quite 20 Questions with Blue Cranes"
Portland, Oregon's, jazz-based instrumentalists Blue Cranes were kind enough to answer a few questions while they were on the road. Keep an eye out for their upcoming release 'Observatories' this summer. If it's anything like their earlier releases, it'll be stupifyingly beautiful.
HL: Can you introduce the band members and talk about how the Blue Cranes started?
Reed: Blue Cranes started as a trio in 2004. Ji and I had been playing
together since 1994, and we got together with Keith, who I had played
with in a few different groups, to perform some songs I had written on
a four-track. Becca joined in 2006, and Sly Pig in 2007. I think from
the beginning our goal has been to play honestly from our hearts, pulling
from the variety of places we draw musical inspiration, but without really
trying to "be" something in particular.
HL: Since you're on the road, where are you headed? What sort of places
do you find Blue Cranes playing in?
Reed: We are headed down the coast to Los Angeles and back. This tour we are playing a lot of house shows. House concerts have become an intimate and fulfilling way for us play for the first time in a city. We're also playing at more traditional venues, which vary from rock clubs to jazz clubs to coffee houses. Last tour we played at a punk festival on an organic goat farm outside of Ashland, which was amazing.
HL: Do you find yourself playing with jazz bands? Does that matter to you?
Rebecca: We do play with jazz bands, but I like it best when we play shows with other kinds of music. It gives the audience something different for their ears. Too many similar bands on a bill can be exhausting to listen to. Also, when we play with rock/punk/noise bands, it tends to give us all permission to push every boundary and, as they say, "go for it."
HL: Who do you think will be the first to crack from the pressure of touring and how will it manifest?
Rebecca: The person who will crack under the pressure of tour will be ME! And I think it will manifest in the delightful form of double pneumonia.... Also, keep the pita bread away from me.
HL: Can you talk a bit about your composing style? Does someone usually bring in the melody/chord progression? Do you all contribute? Is it a mixed bag?
Reed: The way it usually works right now is that one of us will bring a song that is somewhere between a sketch and a finished composition to a rehearsal, and we will work it over and come up with an arrangement as a group. Lately we've been moving more and more towards a collaborative approach to composition. We recorded a song for a split 7" with the Davis, CA post-punk band Elders last year. Sly Pig had a beautiful sketch of a song, and we took it to the nine person double group and everyone contributed parts and melodies to bring it to completion. On the horizon for us is a band retreat to focus on composing together for a few days.
HL: I really like the mix of traditional elements with noise skronk and rock/fusion beats as well as some post-rock leanings. Could you talk about what influences you in terms of music?
Rebecca: These aren't albums or anything, but I feel like a huge musical influence on the band has been the acquisition of both the toy piano and especially "The Baldwin Discoverer." When we started using the little analog synth on a lot of the tunes, it was impossible to go back. The Discoverer really defined how we hear the chords swell, and it provides textures that the soloists can use as another kind of springboard. Plus, it's so damn cute. I'm serious, it has the best color scheme of any keyboard I've seen.
Reed: It's hard to make a master list of our influences for the whole band—we all have different tastes in music that we gravitate towards. I think this variety is nice-- everyone brings something different and unique to the table.
HL: How do you see the Portland jazz experience [I really don't want to use the word scene, but that's what I'm getting at] as compared to other cities?
Reed: Speaking in broad terms, I think there is a lot of collaborative energy in Portland, including in the music world. There are many people here that are down to get together and work on songs or on a new project that someone has an idea for. This isn't unique to Portland, but I do think it is one of this city's strong points.
HL: What are you passing right now?
Ritchie Bros. large equipment auctioneers.
HL: Who would you defend more, Wayne Shorter or Wayne Horvitz? Philly Joe Jones or Spike Jones/Jonze [I'll let you pick between the band leader and director]?
Ji: Defend? I'd fight all of them... at once.
HL: Any other tours/projects you'd like the readers to know about?
Reed: We are releasing our new album, 'Observatories,' late this summer, and will be doing regional and national touring to promote it. It features some great guest musicians, including Timothy Young on guitar from Wayne Horvitz's groups, Anna Fritz from the Portland Cello Project, Kyleen King (viola), Marilee Hord (violin), and Mary Sue Tobin (alto sax) / Chad Hensel (bass clarinet) from the avant-jazz group Paxselin. We've been working on this for so long-- I'm excited to bring it to completion.
March 16, 2010
Oregon Music News
TOM D'ANTONI
Jimmy Mak’s was standing-room only when the Blue Cranes took to the stage ... The power and beauty (and majesty) of the Cranes filled the room...
...Blue Cranes news: Their new album, due this summer their new album will feature long-time Wayne Horvitz band mate, guitarist Timothy Young, a string section of Marilee Hord on violin, Kyleen King on viola, Anna Fritz on cello, and the Paxselin horns (Mary Sue Tobin on alto sax and Chad Hensel on bass clarinet). That was your mouth going “WOW!”
March 12, 2010
Ashland
Daily Tidings (Ashland, OR)
MANDY VALENCIA
The Portland jazz band Blue Cranes not only has an improvisational sound but spontaneous touring tactics to boot.
"One thing I'm really psyched about on this tour is that we're playing three or four house shows," said founder Reed Wallsmith during a recent stop in Ashland. The band agreed to play for a Tidings Café (see www.dailytidings.com) and plans to return for a show during its summer CD release tour.
Popular in New York and L.A., house shows are concerts played for free at people's homes. Concertgoers don't have to pay cover charges, can bring their own beverages and donate to the band's tour fund or buy band merchandise.
"Especially if you're going into a town where you don't know a whole lot of people, it's been way better shows when it's a friend or a friend of a friend that wants to invite people into their home," said Wallsmith.
As band members put it, they don't want to play to an empty room, even if it is a paid gig. House shows provide a more intimate setting and guarantee a crowd. And the audience members feel they have been let in on a special happening.
Founding members Ji Tanzer and Wallsmith went to high school together, then reconnected in 2003 to perform. Self-proclaimed jazz band geeks, they've played at the Portland Jazz Festival twice.
On keyboards is Rebecca Sanborn, Tanzer's wife, who started playing piano and composing her own music when she was 5. Reminiscent of her early playing is her use of a toy piano.
"Ji and I were on our way home after our shift and we were at a six-way stop and the car in front of us was a station wagon jam-packed with plastic plants and shoes and a toy piano."
Sanborn stopped the car and bought the piano from the driver and has used it in almost every show since. When Sanborn is not playing with the Blue Cranes, she works at her family's breakfast restaurant in Portland along with her husband.
On tenor saxophone is Joe Cunningham, otherwise known as "Sly Pig," a pun on his last name. Cunningham started out playing alto sax and switched to tenor sax in college after his alto sax was stolen from his locker.
Wallsmith is the alto sax, band promoter and tour manager of the "inside-out jazz" band. Wallsmith became interested in the sax as a high school student. "My dad took me to Fred Meyer and let me pick out any tape I wanted. I asked for a saxophone recommendation and they suggested Kenny G," said Wallsmith.
"When I started listening to it, I just hated it. So we went back and Fred Meyer took it back and I was able to get a saxophone compilation." It was this compilation that introduced him to Charlie Parker, one of Wallsmith's influences.
Keith Brush, who plays upright bass, was inspired when his high school orchestra played at his elementary school in fourth grade. "I remember there were like 9,000 violins, 40 violas, and this one guy in the back playing this big huge instrument," said Brush. Of course he knew he had to find out more about it.
Tanzer also discovered a hugely influential musician through the help of the Fred Meyer music department. The bargain rack is where Tanzer and his father discovered a Max Roach cassette. "I took it home and it blew me away, because I had been listening to a lot of loud rock drumming. There was a lot of mystery in it and it kind of matched my personality," said Tanzer.
One of the songs on the upcoming album sprung from a melody in a dream that Tanzer had while staying in the Applegate. Cunningham explained that inspiration comes from everywhere and that he already had ideas for the next album.
The Blue Cranes' upcoming summer release is its first actual studio recording. The past two albums were recorded in Tanzer and Sanborn's bedroom.
The Blue Cranes just finished mastering its third album at the beginning of March. The album is due out early this summer but is, as of yet, unnamed.
"That's our goal: to come up with a name for the album on this tour," said Brush. Wallsmith remarked that naming the album is the hardest part.
"If we can't think of a name by the time we come home, we're not coming home," Cunningham said...
March 5, 2010
Santa
Barbara News-Press
JOSEF WOODARD
"Jazz Coming Down the Coast — Portland's intriguing indie jazz
band Blue Cranes plays at Mercury Lounge on Monday"
In recent years, Santa Barbara's club scene has been privy to a healthy, steady flow of fine bands passing through town from the indie rock world, and many of them hailing from the fertile Portland scene. Portland band Blue Cranes, making its area debut at Goleta's Mercury Lounge on Monday, is indie at heart, but from the jazz division.
Consider the band a brainier kinfolk to the indie rock scene, and with influences from rock and other areas, but with a solid foundation in the vocabulary of jazz.
Alto saxist Reed Wallsmith shares the front line with tenor saxist Sly Pig, bassist Keith Brush and drummer Ji Tanzer in the rhythm section, along with keyboardist Rebecca Sanborn. Sanborn is the only "non-unplugged" musician in the unit, but she uses her electronics tastefully, sometimes in ways reminiscent of acclaimed Seattle-based jazzer Wayne Horvitz, whom with the band has shared the stage.
Last Saturday, the band performed in the Portland Jazz Festival, which has become one of the more respected American jazz festivals in the several years of its existence.
To date, the band has released two albums — "Lift Music! Flown Music!" in 2006 and "Homing Patterns" in 2008 — and is set to burst forth with a new one. While they have toured down the West Coast and elsewhere, much of the focus has been in the Northwest so far, including the PDX Jazz Fest, Seattle's Sounds Outside and PDX Pop Now!
In an interview the day after their PDX show, Wallsmith effused about his hometown, that "there is a lot of amazing music happening in Portland. In music, and the arts as a whole, there is a strong culture here of collaboration and curiosity. I feel very fortunate to live here and to be able to listen to and collaborate with many open-minded players and bands."
Seeds of the Blue Cranes were sown by Wallsmith and Tanzer, who met and played together in high school in the early '90s. Fast-forward to almost a decade later and a band was ready to be born.
"We originally formed to play some songs I had written for a four-track project," says Wallsmith. "I had just moved back to Portland after playing in a progressive rock group in Rhode Island, and my mind was full of compositional and arrangement ideas. Ji and Keith and I originally played as an alto sax-bass-drums trio and later added Rebecca on keyboards and Sly Pig on tenor sax."
In terms of a stylistic identity, early influences included such flexible
and left-of-center examples as Minnesotan trio Happy Apple — featuring
Bad Plus drummer Dave King — and music by the great drummer-composer-thinker
Paul Motian, whose fluidity of expression can be heard in the Blue Cranes'
sound.
Wallsmith explains that "the main framework that has tied the group
together over the years has been to focus our energy on melody, composition
and working together as a group, rather than on individual virtuosity.
There is a lot of room for expression and improvisation within this."
Along the way, heeding the self-reliant "indie" way has been
critical to the band's achievements so far and on into the future.
As Wallsmith comments, "doing things DIY has been a necessity for
us in order to build an audience for our music. It's been freeing to not
wait around for a record label to do anything or be tied to someone else's
vision for how our music should be produced or how it should be promoted."
From a more purely musical perspective, Wallsmith sees his band as part
of a generational phenomenon among musicians approaching jazz as a rich
and progressively creative genre.
"I think there are many young musicians influenced by the huge breadth
of jazz-improvisational music of the past century and are creating exciting
new stuff, in and out of the jazz genre," Wallsmith says. "Some
people are saying that jazz 'needs' to expand into different musical realms
to attract a larger audience. I'm not so concerned about whether jazz
expands or not. What is exciting to me is people making new music that
is from their heart, whatever it ends up being called."
March 4, 2010
Santa
Barbara Independent
JOSEF WOODARD
For the left-of-jazz-inclined, check out the wily, lyrical, evocative and bright Portland band Blue Cranes, at Mercury Lounge on Monday. Wayne Horvitz has been known to play along. Check ’em out.
February 14, 2010
Crappy
Indie Music
BEN MEYERCORD
Then Blue Cranes played. Oh. My. God. They are so good. They played mostly material that will be coming out on an album this summer (June?). It was beautiful. Every player in the band (two sax players, stand up bass, drummer, and piano/keyboard player) was so expressive in the way they played their instruments. It truly was like the instruments are extensions of themselves. The set seemed way too short, but they ended up playing a quiet encore so as not to upset the neighbors.
November 2009
Jazz
Society of Oregon (Portland, OR)
"Featured musician of the month: Reed Wallsmith"
Click to here to read interview.
October 28, 2009
Willamette
Week (Portland, OR)
"Claudia Quintet, Blue Cranes"
Any Cranes show is a guaranteed delight, but this early-evening double bill with John Hollenbeck’s great New York-based Claudia Quintet (featuring sax great Chris Speed and former Oregonian Gary Versace on piano) is really special—and still leaves you time to make it to late-night Halloween revelry.
October 19, 2009
The
Oregonian (Portland, OR)
Front page of Living section
"A comet in the sky for Portland's jazz scene"
BARRY JOHNSON
Sometimes, even in the confusion of our culture, the signs and portents seem to point in a particular direction.
In the Portland jazz scene, the signs and portents are starting to point up. The historical forces are aligning. A lightning bolt has shattered the stillness. A saxophone cries out in the dark.
In recent weeks, the following phenomena have been reported:
Lynn Darroch, the indefatigable jazz journalist, historian and deejay, interviewed local musicians Darrell Grant and Ben Darwish one week, then Andrew Oliver and Reed Wallsmith the next, on his Friday afternoon jazz show on KMHD-FM.
Those performers then packed Jimmy Mak's jazz club for two consecutive Friday nights. The audience was younger than usual, just like the personnel in the bands.
The Portland Jazz Festival kept its momentum going away from its near-death experience last fall by hiring well-connected jazz veteran Don Lucoff as executive director and announcing a slimmed-down but interesting lineup for the 2010 festival. The festival is in talks with KMHD to figure out ways they can partner.
So, the four ingredients you need for a healthy jazz scene are coming together: Great young players. Good jazz clubs. A radio station that's reaching out to the local community. A jazz festival that brings important jazz artists to town -- and with them jazz tourists, who will spread the word about the scene here.
These things couldn't be more interrelated.
Here's Wallsmith of the Blue Cranes talking about the jazz festival two years ago, the one that featured the free-thinking music of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor: "I have not seen avant/free music promoted on that level in Portland in the whole time I've lived here," he said. "I started crying hearing Ornette perform at the Schnitz and seeing the thousands of people give him a standing ovation. The festival as a whole gave me an emotional/spiritual lift for quite a few months afterwards."
Matt Fleeger, assistant programming director at KMHD, says, "Before I got to Portland, the first thing I had on my radar was the Portland Jazz Festival." Fleeger came to KMHD from San Antonio, where many of the donors to his radio station travel to Portland for the festival.
Darroch, who has always had deep contacts with the Portland scene, says the station is also encouraging him to make use of those contacts to bring local musicians into the studio to talk (along with touring jazz musicians).
For his part, Fleeger is evidently getting out into the local clubs, too. "Those Blue Cranes are ..." -- and I interrupted him, quoting a line from "High Fidelity" where a customer in Rob's record shop listens to the song on the shop audio system, turns to Rob (played by John Cusack) and remarks how good the song is. Rob smiles and says, "I know." Yeah, the Blue Cranes are good.
For the first time I can remember, it seems as though everyone on the local jazz scene is working toward the same thing. "We're at a point where jazz needs to appeal to different audiences in order to survive," Darwish says, which happens to be what the folks at KMHD, the jazz festival, the clubs and the musicians are saying, too.
That's the fifth ingredient of a good jazz scene -- an active, involved, hungry audience. And that's the one we're hoping the other four help create.
Not that more can't be done. Wallsmith suggests that the festival figure out a way to comp local jazz musicians into the festival concerts, which tend to be beyond their means, for example (all we need is a sponsor!). Darwish is hoping that Jimmy Mak's and the jazz festival reach an understanding that allows the festival and the city's most important jazz club to embrace each other. "It's rude not to," he says.
As Darroch points out, the spirit of the scene right now is cooperative. It's collaborative. It's building on the hard work done the past two decades in the jazz programs at local middle and high schools, community colleges and Portland State University.
At the moment, the signs are all good.
October 7, 2009
Willamette
Week (Portland, OR)
"Jazz on the Rise"
BRETT CAMPBELL
"... another of the city’s most torrid and creative young ensembles, Blue Cranes"
October 5, 2009
The
Oregonian (Portland, OR)
"Blue Cranes and Andrew Oliver Kora Band at Jimmy Mak's"
BARRY JOHNSON
We received an email from Reed Wallsmith (OK, it was part of an email blast), who is back from Berlin "in one piece, after having had an amazing time there performing and recording with improvisers from Norway, Denmark and Germany. We are in the process of mixing an album - stay tuned." This means that Blue Cranes are back in full working order for an 8 p.m. performance at Jimmy Mak's.
August 15, 2009
Murfins
and Burglars (San Francisco)
"Blue Cranes at Bluesix"
Oh, man, this band. Blue Cranes is an experimental sax-fronted quintet out of Portland. And they rule. Seriously. Sam Howard, an old friend of mine from UMiami, subs on bass with them quite a bit, and has actually been down this way on tour before, but I hadn’t seen them until Wednesday night. Before the show, I was asking him what they sound like, what the term “Indie Jazz,” which he’d used to explain their sound to me in the past, really meant.
“You know when Britney Spears shaved her head? It sounds like that.”
So... pretty much like this?
Blue Cranes’ setup involves a fairly standard jazz rhythm section – upright bass, drum kit and keyboards (both standard piano sounds and a synthesizer) played by Sam, Ji Tanzer and Rebecca Sanborn, and fronted by Joe Cunningham (”Sly Pig”) and Reed Wallsmith on the tenor and alto saxes, respectively.
What is less than standard about the band is the music they play, and the way they play it. Basically, they play inside, triumphant pop melodies mixed with free-jazz explorations. It’s not the template of all of their tunes, but several times, I was struck at how effectively the band would pivot from a driving, lyrical section of ones and fours and fives straight into a wide-open free-blowing situation, bringing things sometimes to an utter standstill before building them back up. It was incredibly well implemented, particularly on their second tune of the night, “Love, Love, Love,” (by Seattle composer Wayne Horvitz), which came down to an almost impossibly sparse improvisation by Sly Pig and the band before building its way back to a ferocious ending. You can see a video of them performing the tune here:
What’s more, by adding Sanborn’s Hanne Hukkelberg-esque synth (or, if you prefer, Napoleon Dynamite-ish), they really do get a sort of “Indie” sound that, when combined with the strong saxophone melodies, makes for a listening experience that is quite unique. Other highlights from the set included an inspired cover of Sufjan’s “Seven Swans,” a punk-rock tune that played like an exercise in rhythmic displacement (Drums and bass on two and four! Now one and three! Now two and four! Now back!) Sam mentioned to me that they’ve been doing a lot of shows with punk bands, and that when they do a lot of this material, it’s about 200% louder than it was at Bluesix.
Which is cool, but man, as much as I dug the playing, and the writing, perhaps the thing I enjoyed most of all was the dynamic contrast that Blue Cranes brought. From the quietest whisper to the loudest, fullest saxophone roar, it was just so engaging to listen to music that displayed so much contrast. A good deal of this owes to the great room – I’ve never been to Bluesix before, but it is an absolutely fantastic place to see live music. It’s quite a bit like the Red Poppy, actually – a listening room/art gallery with a small wine bar and a close, warm vibe that encourages focused listening. I have never been to a bar where Pig’s solo on “Love Love Love” would have been possible.
Bluesix is run by bassist/rennaissance man Joe Lewis, a big, super-nice guy who plays around town with a ton of groups. His dedication to music, and to running a room where great, uncommon music is possible, really shows – I really loved the club, and hope to play there soon.
I am, of course, not really doing either of these groups justice with my writing, but I hope that by telling you a few of my thoughts and impressions that you’ll check them out. Spaceheater plays all over the city and features really groovy writing and some amazing horn arrangements. Blue Cranes comes to town not infrequently and are doing some of the most interesting, rewarding, and exciting acoustic jazz I’ve seen in a long time. Check them out, support them, and go see ‘em live!
August 13, 2009
Chico
News & Review (Chico, CA)
"Player's Night"
Portland, Oregon's Blue Cranes (pictured) create works of experimental jazz that one press clipping likened to "some David Lynch style basement jazz hallucination." The Cranes go live at Cafe Coda Thursday, Aug. 13.
August 7, 2009
Sacramento
News and Review (Sacramento)
"Blue Cranes say ‘Eff you, elevator jazz'"
JOSH FERNANDEZ
Maybe jazz, in the context of contemporary music, has been relegated to
the confines of hip-hop samples, public radio and elevators for a reason.
Perhaps it’s being punished for stubbornness—for keeping to
tradition for almost 100 years without much room to wiggle. But as the
punishment subsides, new jazz acts with something different to say are
emerging. Take into account “Broken Windmills,” from the Portland,
Ore., quintet Blue Cranes: Drums exist within the natural
momentum of wildly interesting orchestration, rather than simply to dictate
a pace. Yet there’s a sense of excitement and urgency within the
band’s strangely arranged melodies, which is not always the case
when discussing experimental jazz. Rock critics are even using words like
“polished,” “unique” and “innovative”
to describe the band’s textured sound. But the band also conveys
a certain old-time romance, reaching middle ground between structure and
playfulness. Whether it’s the jarring Latin polyrhythm of “Awesome
Hawk” or the punk rock bassline on “X,” Blue
Cranes provide a new amplification of jazz, allowing listeners
to hear a stream of water pass through a storm drain thick with sediment.
"That was the best fucking music I've ever heard in my whole goddamn life... and I'm including Mozart and Brahms in that. I thought you guys were going to be crappy and boring." - Leb's dad
August 5, 2009
Willamette Week
(Portland, OR)
"Beat Off feat. Blue Cranes"
CASEY JARMAN
[JAZZ BEAT] Tonight, the popular Beat Off beat battle—wherein, to remind you, fledgling producers must work with a handful of samples to quickly churn out an earth-shatteringly cool beat—gets sophisticated. This time around, the beat doctors will use samples from local jazz institution Blue Cranes’ recent studio visit, making for instrumentals we hope fall into the Premier/Dilla category rather than that of Us3’s “Cantaloop.” The Cranes themselves will also make an appearance. It's good to see Portland’s jazz set embracing sampling rather than taking its practitioners to court.
July 31, 2009
Portland
Mercury (Portland, OR)
"Beat It"
PG
Rather than battling with their own selection of juicy samples, the DJs at Holocene's Beat Off competition will be using studio samples from the Blue Cranes' latest album-who also happen to be kicking off their national tour and playing a live set while beatmasters oil everyone up with sexy tunes. It'll make you so excited you'll wanna... you know.
June 26, 2009
Oregonian
A&E (Portland, OR)
Five Live Top Pick #1: "Blue Cranes"
This jazz combo, led by sax player Reed Wallsmith, has the moxie to cover songs by indie icons such as Elliott Smith as well as crank out bristling noir-ish originals.
June 24, 1009
Willamette
Week (Portland, OR)
"Blue Cranes, Gojogo, Walking Home"
"One of the Northwest’s most fascinating progressive jazz bands
will present new material."
February 18, 2009
The
Oregonian (Portland, OR)
"Lessons Learned From The Portland Jazz Festival"
BARRY JOHNSON
[on "Crane," a piece arranged for the Portland Jazz Composer's Ensemble by R. Wallsmith]: "Crane" by Reed Wallsmith of Blue Cranes fame was the most polished piece of music on the program, especially for this setting and this band. (I've written about the Blue Cranes before.) It started with a low saxophone note and a murmur of Paul Mazzio's trumpet joined in, which would swell into a lonesome theme. Then, he created a dynamic change to a swift, swinging little section with a very cute tune, before taking it back down for orchestral chords and solo passages, which continued that plaintive idea. It was all very noir-ish, very "LA Confidential." And Wallsmith at the podium kept shushing the band so the individual strands could be distinguished. Smart.
January 28, 2009
Willamette
Week (Portland, OR)
BRETT CAMPBELL
"Portland’s most exciting neo-jazz band"
January 13, 2009
Art
Scatter
"Looking At Noise, Or Why We Love the Blue Cranes"
BARRY JOHNSON (Oregonian arts editor)
We walk or drive around Portland, and we are bombarded – by signs, buildings, sound, traffic, information of all sorts, every possible corner filled with the cultural stuff of the modern city, the air a battlefield of warring noises. We rush by it and through it all quickly because we couldn’t possibly pay attention to all of it, maybe any of it, if we want to focus on things that matter.
Which is all another way of saying: The city sometimes sings out to us in unexpected ways.
A few days before the Great Christmas Whiteout of 2008, I found myself listening to the new CD by the Portland jazz band Blue Cranes, “Homing Patterns,” as I walked to work. I like the energy of the band, the collage of blues, rock and noise, and I like the melodies Reed Wallsmith and Sly Pig wander through on their saxophones. Every now and then, the horns in the band collide, often in a chord, an interesting chord, that expands into another chord and then another, each one pushed to the limit of breath, to the point of honking.
Anyway, I had reached the pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks on Portland’s east side (about where the photo above was taken), right before you get to the Esplanade and the Steel Bridge. The rail line at that place curves deeply, and as I approached a long freight train, with graffiti-embellished boxcars and flatcars, lumbered underneath. They do not do this silently. They grumble along, of course, but because of the curve, they also squeal sometimes, a teeth-gnashing vibration that makes your fillings hurt.
But here, at this particular intersection, something happened: The screech of that train finished off one of those bleating Blue Cranes chords. Slid up the scale a little and finished it off. It was exactly the right note, somehow, and it pulled me up short as the delight of it all dawned on me. Amazing. The perfect sonic accident.
I crossed the Steel Bridge, the chord still in my head, and started walking along the Willamette River, passing the new Mercy Corps headquarters, where construction was underway and a jack hammer was at its business. But now the song had changed, and the hammer’s staccato picked up the tempo of the new tune, the chattering in time to the snare on the CD, on and between the beats. And then I noticed that the two trucks chugging along Naito Parkway created a deeper, more rhythmic bass line.
My ears were on fire. And I wondered, idealistically, is this always the way it is when you’re truly attuned to the outside world? It becomes something “symphonic”? But then it all fell apart as the CD and random noises took different paths; the city stopped playing along with Blue Cranes.
I didn’t know quite to make of it, this moment of alignment, of private meaning, my city and its jazz band united in my head,and my head only, to make something special...
...
January 8, 2009
Willamette
Week (Portland, OR)
ROBERT HAM
[BURGEONING JAZZ STARS] If you've not familiarized yourself with the work of Blue Cranes, you'd better get on board quickly. This arch and artful jazz combo already has listed on its website shows with keyboardist extraordinaire Wayne Horvitz and a showcase at this year's Portland Jazz Festival. My point is that you can pay a nominal fee to see them in a small venue like the Doug Fir now or, once the jazzheads that descend on our city once a year get ahold of them, end up losing half your paycheck to see them on a big stage in six months' time. The choice is yours.
....[click here to read older Blue Cranes press]