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1. Jazz Grammys: business as usual?

   • Alex Webb
   • 14 Feb 07, 11:53 AM

   In recent years there has been a lot of discussion about the centre of Jazz gravity moving from the United States to Europe. Indeed, in 2005 journalist Stuart Nicholson wrote a whole book on the subject - Is Jazz Dead (Or Has it Moved to a New Address)? and has frequently returned to the subject in his regular columns for Jazzwise. Of course, it’s a subject about which views tend to vary depending on which side of the pond you live. But few listeners (or critics) would argue that there has been a new confidence and freedom in European jazz in the last decade or so which – significantly – has coincided with the passing of many of the great American jazz giants of the 1940s and 1950s.
   

   It’s as if, with festival staples like Miles Davis, Elvin Jones and Sarah Vaughan no longer around, European promoters have been forced to look harder at what home-grown acts there are. And it also feels as if, with fewer of the formative influences of Jazz casting living shadows, European musicians have acquired a new unselfconsciousness about expressing their own, hybrid jazz identities.

   Now a number of Jazz’s most bankable acts – EST, Jan Garbarek, Jamie Cullum – are European, as are many of the freshest, musically – Arve Henriksen, Nils Petter Molvaer, Julien Lourau and Acoustic Ladyland come to mind straightaway.

   So is all this activity reflected in the recently-announced Grammy Awards? Not a bit of it. Out of 25 nominations in five categories, only one – Italian singer Roberta Gambarini – is not a US musician. And she’s now based there. Which is not to gripe about worthy nominees and winners like Nancy Wilson, Branford Marsalis, Ornette Coleman, Joe Lovano and the late Michael Brecker – who picked up two posthumous awards.

   But it is a reminder that the US doesn’t see things Stuart Nicolson’s way. And a couple of the younger artists in the Grammys list do deserve to be better-known in Europe – such as trumpeter Christian Scott and pianist Taylor Eigsti.

   All of this is hot on the heels of a Jazz on 3 special from New York, which reported that, despite high rents and commercial pressures, the jazz scene in the Apple is still thrillingly vital and competitive. Could it be that the US jazz scene is in better health than some of us thought? And if so, who’s complaining?
   

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