Last week an unlikely candidate leaped to the highest tier of Billboard's jazz albums chart. It's called "Bug Music" (Nonesuch), and it features clarinetist Don Byron and an all-star ensemble performing the music of Duke Ellington, Raymond Scott and John Kirby. The tunes are brisk, energetic and rhythmic, filled with catchy melodies and virtuosic instrumental playing.
Although the album has been in release since last year, in the last three weeks it has risen from 16th to fourth place, just behind Pat Metheny, Cassandra Wilson and Diana Krall. The achievement would be remarkable for any performer, and is even more so for Byron, who has been best known, at least to the wider audience, for his even more unlikely exploration of Jewish klezmer in "The Music of Mickey Katz."
Add to that the fact that the music of Scott and Kirby has always been among the most eccentric of jazz products. Scott's compositions, for example, did not include improvisation and many of his works made whimsical reference to classical forms. Ironically, it is at least subliminally familiar to many via its inclusion in several Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig cartoons created by Carl Stallings for Warner Bros. Kirby's brisk, small-ensemble numbers featured players such as Charlie Shavers and Ben Webster in arrangements that clearly flowed from the sophisticated compositional premises laid down by Duke Ellington in the late '20s and early '30s.
"I don't know why the album is selling so well," said Byron in a telephone interview, "but I hope it continues, because it seems to be reaching a wide audience. People who have no connection to contemporary music are buying it, and people who just like the way it sounds are buying it."
But Byron also is quick to add that the CD only represents one part of a musical persona that has been described by the Boston Herald as "one of jazz's most successful risk-takers."
"I just hope," he says, "that some of the people who buy this record will check out some of the other things I've done, which are not about jazz in just one mode. Doing repertory projects like this is part of what I do. But it's not a forsaking of contemporary concerns. I still do my other projects."
Awards: It's a bit hard to think of keyboardist Keiko Matsui, a slender, somewhat shy Japanese woman, as a contemporary jazz powerhouse, but the evidence all points in that direction.
Well into the New Year, the Countdown Records/Unity Label Group's artist has been hitting the charts in a big way. Matsui's current album, "Dream Walk," an enhanced CD, hit the No. 1 spot--with the single "Bridge Over the Stars"--in Radio & Records' listings; it was reportedly No. 2 in sales within its genre at Borders stores; and it hit No. 3 in Billboard's contemporary jazz chart, bested only by Kenny G and Grover Washington Jr.
On Tuesday night, Matsui will receive a 1997 Essence Award from the American Society of Young Musicians, honoring musicians whose vitality "captures the very spirit and soul" of audiences around the world. The award will be presented at the society's pre-Grammy celebration at Billboard Live. Other recipients include Kenny G, Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick.
Festival Time: Lionel Hampton, apparently in good shape following the fire in his New York City apartment, will be a prominent participant in the festival that bears his name--the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival--next week in Moscow, Idaho, from Wednesday through Feb. 22.
The event, which takes place on the grounds of the University of Idaho, has an unusually top-drawer lineup, featuring saxophonists Joe Lovano, Joshua Redman and Benny Golson; singers Dianne Reeves and Diana Krall; pianists Hank Jones, Cedar Walton and Monty Alexander; trombonists Bill Watrous and Al Grey; and trumpeters Wallace Roney, Claudio Roditi, and Pete and Conte Candoli. Information: (888) 8UIDAHO.
Pick of the Week: The B Sharp Jazz Quartet, whose third album, "Searching for the One" (MAMA Records), was recently released, is one of the Southland's finest young jazz ensembles. It appears tonight, in concert, in the Campus Theatre at El Camino College Center for the Arts. In addition to the performance, the quartet will also conduct a master class for the college's music students. Tickets for the concert are $15, (310) 329-5345.
