Noah Howard

The NYC Jazz Record’s Ken Waxman reviews ‘Live at Glenn Miller Café’

florian — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 20:57:13 +0000

“More than a typical nightclub set, the untitled tracks that make up this passionate and high-quality performance from 2000 also serve as an inadvertent retrospective of saxophonist Noah Howard’s long career. This CD captures Howard in the prime of his life and is a fitting memorial for a jazz survivor.” Read more

To order the ‘Live at Glenn Miller Café’ CD by Noah Howard Quartet (JaZt TAPES) please email howard.noah@gmail.com

Live radio broadcast from 1975 finally sees the light of day: The Bremen Concert

florian — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 02:31:20 +0000

A live radio broadcast in Bremen, Germany on January 1, 1975 now sees the light of day, thanks to Jan Ström and Noah’s wife Lieve.

“This CD is a worthy addition, not only to Howard’s discography, but to the catalogue of all excellent jazz as well.” writes all about jazz.
Read more .

Track Listing: Ole Negro; Pearl Stream; New Arrival; Ziki.

Personnel: Noah Howard: alto saxophone; Kakashi Kako: piano; Kent Carter: bass; Oliver Johnson: drums.

To order please send an email to howard.noah@gmail.com

So far unreleased ‘Live at the Glenn Miller Cafe’ now available!

florian — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 02:22:36 +0000

“Noah is no more. But his music lives on. An interesting, previously unreleased quartet performance can be had as Live at the Glenn Miller Cafe (JaZt Tapes 030). It features Noah on alto and tenor in good form from 2000 with the always lively Bobby Few on piano and a game rhythm section of Ulf Akerhjelm on bass and Gilbert Matthews, drums.” More

Order here at Jan Strom’s JaZt Tapes.

CHASING THE ARK – June Tune Of The Month

florian — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 16:36:39 +0000

The June Tune of the Month chasing the ark is from Noah’s Live in Paris album. For the five tracks Music in my Soul, Kanpai, Chasing the Ark, Domino and Soul Shadows Noah worked with Boulou Ferret (guitar), Joe Lee Wilson (vocals), François Tusque (piano), Jack Greg (bass), Armando (percussion) and Daniel Berchet (drums).

Read more about Noah’s time in Paris in his autobiography MUSIC IN MY SOUL which you can order here.

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Noah was a true citizen of the universe

florian — Mon, 14 May 2012 00:03:09 +0000

Speech given by Vrij Nederland journalist Rudie Kagie at the occasion of Noah’s birthday on April 6

“I am a journalist from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and I write for the Dutch weekly magazine Vrij Nederland. What do you want to know more about me? I have blue eyes and I am 61 years old. I am a jazz lover since I was a teenager, I loved the avant garde back in the sixties, because I thought the New Thing was the voice of my generation. Not everybody would agree with that, but at that time Albert Ayler meant a lot more to me than The Rolling Stones or the Beatles. So, forty years ago I knew exactly who Noah Howard was. I bought his records and I went to his concerts. It took many years, until September 11 1997, until I met Howard for an interview for my paper. After that, I thought I knew the answers, but that was only because I hadn’t read Music In My Soul at that time.

Many books have been written about jazz and the icons of jazz and improvised music. Some musicians worked together with a writer, telling them the stories of their life, like Miles Davis did with Quincy Troupe. But a very personal, autobiographical book written by a jazz musician, is really rare. Charles Mingus did so in his famous Beneath the Underdog. And so did Noah Howard in this extremely interesting memoir Music In My Soul.

A few days before his death in September 2010, he completed this book that he unfortunately would never see in print. I think, it’s an honest and an important book, because we not only learn a lot about the author and his views on life, but especially about the roots of jazz, what the sources are of energy and creativity where it all comes from, the development of his music, the connections between music and what was going on in society. This is the story of an exceptional life of an American musician from New Orleans, the heartland of jazz; a man who moved to New York in the late sixties and became involved in the so called New Thing; then moved on to France, where he immediately felt he got the recognition that he did not get in his homeland; later on dividing his time between the US and Europe, living in Kenia for a period of time, moving to Belgian, to Brussels… Performing in India or the Arab world… Noah was a true citizen of the universe. This attitude was reflected in his music. The title of one of his last records says it all: Voyage. He was a traveler.

Like most heroes in jazz & improvised music, his melodies, his playing, the ways he expressed what came up in his mind were constantly evolving. For example, people who say they don’t like John Coltrane or they don’t like Miles Davis should be more specific. What period of Trane or Miles are they talking about? The music they played in the late fifties was very different from the music they played in the sixties or, in the case of Miles, late eighties. You can’t compare the sound and the impact of a romantic Coltrane ballad from 1958 with for example Interstellar Space from 1967. Very much the same is the case with Noah Howard. His playing on the alto saxophone can be heard on more than fifty records, but in his music he was as much always on the way as he was in his personal life. Like I said, he was a traveler! He started out as a pioneer in the avant garde, but he also explored more traditional jazz, blues, funk, world music or whatever. Listen to the result of his wonderful collaboration with Omar Al Faqir, a piano player and jazz composer who was the first jazz student from Jordan at Berklee College of Music. Noah described this record as “a representation of the magnificent brotherhood of musicians in our world”. You wonder if the Noah Howard you could hear at the album Desert Harmony is the very same Noah Howard who was recording with Archie Shepp or the European avant garde. I can assure you that he really was the same artist. He just did not want to repeat himself and was always looking for ways to expand his horizons.

Since we have the book now we can read where his fascination for the different kinds of music comes from. Howard played music from childhood in his church. In the gospel and the blues singers and pop stars like Fats Domino he found the inspiration to go deeper into music. At about six Noah first learned trumpet. In the book, he describes the big meaning of the trumpeter Dewey Johnson on his education as a musician. ‘Dewey was responsible for my real and full entry into the jazz world. We talked and practiced every day.’ They lived together in San Francisco under one roof with a crowd of young revolutionary musicians. The house was filled from 11 o’clock in the morning to late at night with a constantly fluctuating musician population, and Howard underwent the total musical experience. ‘I just became increasingly more engrossed in music’, he recalled. He was dissatisfied with the trumpet and began taking lessons on the alto saxophone. The more he played, the more difficult it became, the more he dug it. He became possessed by this metal thing, as he puts it. He discovered that the more he pursued the saxophone, the more was there to learn. For Howard, it was the first time he had not been bored with a new toy. Although he wanted to play the instrument, he didn’t want to play it the way that other saxophonists played it. In order to play the instrument, you become impressed by other saxophonists, but if you have something deep down inside the core of you, then eventually this thing starts coming out. It’s something inside a person that will make him play a series of notes one way rather than five or six ways that other people have played them.

In the beginning of the 60’s Noah got a call from his teacher Dewey, telling him he should leave San Francisco and come over to New York City, to play with the expressionistic free jazz drummer Rashied Ali who was putting a new band together. So he did. And actually that’s the moment that his musical career really started. Living in East Third Street at the Lower East Side of New York meant living in the middle of where it was all happening. The famous jazz club Slugs was just one block away. The great pianist Dave Burrell lived across the street, as did guitarist Sonny Sharock and his singing wife Linda, Archie Shepp, the poet Amiri Baraka, Sun Ra with the members of his Arkestra, Pharoah Sanders, Marion Brown among many others.

During his early days in New York, Noah met Albert Ayler, the legendary legend who would become, together with John Coltrane, the most influential power on his musical career. Albert and I were very close and he was like a brother and mentor to me, Noah writes. He sometimes called me at night when I was really down and encouraged me to not give up and just keep on believing in the music and things would go better. Ayler was already a star who made two highly acclaimed albums for the ESP-label at that time. As a result, Noah recorded his very first album in 1964 for ESP when he was just 21 years old. The second album was also on ESP, Live at the Judson Hall in New York; both LP’s were released in 1966. Great music, although they found little critical acclaim in the USA. I listened to that music recently again and I found it striking how fresh it still sounds today. Those albums could have been recorded yesterday, however his playing is so energetic, so powerful, like he is full with anger. In that respect, I quote what he told Valerie Wilmer, the British writer of the important book As Serious As Your Life, published in 1977 as ‘the story of the new jazz’. It’s not true to say that every musician involved in the new music was especially politicized, Noah pointed out there. He said: ‘Undoubtedly, living in America, I am influenced by what’s going on here. But I don’t stand up on stage, put my saxophone in my mouth and think about bullets and destroying the government.’

Sorry for being so detailed about Noah’s life, but I like all those stories in the book so much. Because I think they matter. A book like Music in my soul helps us to listen better, not only to Noah’s music, but to music in general. Because especially jazz and improvised music has a lot to do with attitude. The jazzman has something to say; in his music he expresses what he stands for, his thoughts about beauty and love, he wants to comfort you or to wake you up.

Nowadays it’s very common that a jazz musician releases his own music on his own label; it’s a way to keep control over the product. But in 1971, when Noah founded his label AltSax, is was not usual at all for a musician to have his own label. All the answers are in the book! It’s clear that the young Noah Howard was paid badly or was not paid at all for his work for labels like ESP or BYG. If things went that way, he much better off taking care of his own business.

What I liked from the beginning, when I was in my early twenties and started buying jazz records, was the kind of mystery that would make you read the liner notes and look for the credits. You had the Frank Wright Quartet that recorded One For John in 1969, with Frank Wright on tenorsax, Noah Howard on altsax, Bobby Few on piano, Muhammad Ali drums. One year later, in 1970, a beautiful record was released with Noah’s name big on the sleeve. Space Dimension was the name of that album. But the line up of the names was almost the same like the one at Frank Wright’s group: again Wright on tenor, Noah at alto, Muhammad Ali on drums, this time together with Art Taylor.

Like I said before, I’m not an expert on jazz. I am just a consumer and a collector. If I understand something about the art of improvisation, it’s because I used to listen to musicians like Noah Howard a lot. I already had his records, now we have the book. More than in any other art form, the documenting of improvisation is extremely important. It’s the art of never repeating yourself. It’s like a great other alto saxophonist once said, I mean Eric Dolphy, who said: “When you hear music, after it’s over, it’s gone, in the air. You can never capture it again.”

BACKSTAGE

florian — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:07:27 +0000

Speech given by Noah’s wife Lieve Fransen at the occasion of Noah’s birthday on April 6

When Noah was writing his autobiography he wanted it to be about the Music in his Soul. Noah ‘s musical legacy is the collection of 200 or so compositions. Noah loved composing in all kind of circumstances and places but putting a new tune together was just the first stage in the much more complex alchemy of creating while performing. Each tune Noah composed was merely intended to serve as the core and as a catalyst for a process of instantaneous re-creation on stage through which the music grows and constantly evolves. The composition was there to provide a basis to improvise on and around and unlike European musical forms there is no divide between the creative responsibility of composer and that of the performer. The tune was the same but what was done with it was depended on the musicians, the occasion, the atmosphere of the venue and was never the same piece twice. Each time a tune was played, a fresh new piece was born and reborn over and over again.

Noah’s improvisations on stage required a deep trust in the collective creativity of his fellow musicians.It was also only made possible because of years of practice and experience. The days around the concerts and the concerts themselves were always exciting occasions, not just for Noah himself but also for me living on a fine edge of creative tension at home. For the musicians I could see how is was not an easy experience to work with Noah because despite having composed the core composition Noah did not provide his musicians with the security of detailed written arrangements. His frameworks were often very loose and obliged his fellow musicians to improvise and to take risks. This placed them under constant pressure. At its most satisfying the result would be a carpet of sound with the individual players melting into one.

Noah used to say that there was no such things as a wrong note just an opportunity for a different take if the musician is able to listen and respond to the moment. Concerts were always special events. Noah and I loved the tension, the anticipation, and then the peace, the realization and the silence after the intense creation. Some of the best live performances created a sort of ‘sonic density’ as the musicians explored ever more deeply the soul and opportunities offered by Noah’s tunes. I have just released two new CDs of Noah’s live concerts where some of his most beautiful compositions are recreated by some of the best musicians with whom Noah loved to play. The first CD is from a concert in Bremen in 1975 with Takashi Kako on piano, Kent carter on bass and Oliver Johnson on drums. The second CD is from a concert in 2000 in the Glenn Miller café in Stockholm with Bobby Few on piano, Gilber Matthews on drums and Ulf Akerhjelm on bass.
More CD’s are to come in the next months.

Noah and I met in Nairobi through an unlikely coincidence. I thought Noah was the gardener cutting a yellow rose for me and Noah thought I was the piano player to play with him on his white baby grand piano he imported all the way from the US to Africa. When Noah was planning to build his Black Ark one African night when the crickets were sleeping, he asked me “ do you want to become the preacher’s wife?” I was puzzled and confused and looked at the moon in the silent night and Noah added “I am the preacher in the church of music “. Only much later would I understand.

Soon after we traveled to Egypt, to the roots of civilization, the home of Oum Koulsoum – the singer Noah listened to on the radio as a child and to the Nubian desert where Noah’s roots were long before the Middle passage took his ancestors to the US. On that trip in 1982 Noah created music on the train while traveling from Cairo to Luxor and Aswan. Not on paper but in his head . He said “I am making those for you”. I never had someone writen a tune for me. These beautiful tunes became “The way she walks “ and “ The lady”. Many more such as “Dr Mambo” and “Sunday afternoon” would follow later.

When we came back to Europe together family and friends found it hard to believe when we said we had a lot in common! They said “oh yes and how is that?”,“You are white and he is black; you are a medical doctor and he is a musician; you are from Europe and he is Afro- American, you are a girl and he is a man.” But in fact it was music that we both shared. Noah and I had music in common!! Noah and I shared music and also a love of freedom and a love of Africa. “Domiambra”, is a composition first recorded on the Black Arc CD. It was inspired by the African unity dream of Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana in the early sixties. Later when I was working in Africa as a doctor while Noah lived in Paris he composed ‘Message to South Africa’” the week that Steve Biko was killed. Noah played this piece with two of the great South African jazz exiles, pianist Chris McGregor & bassist Johnny Dyani, the drummer was Noel McGhee.

Noah’s birthday on the 6th of April was always a special day in our home. We regarded that day as the real start of the New Year and Noah often played “ A new arrival “, one of my very favorite of his pieces to mark the occasion. Each year on his birthday Noah would thank his Mother, Thelma, for having brought him to “this place called earth” where he enjoyed every moment of his life while poised as he called it “between two eternities.” I too was grateful to his Mother for nurturing her gifted first-born son in New Orleans. From her he learned to love and respect women. I later learned that only in New Orleans slaves had been allowed to play the drums on the Congo Square of all places !!Born in an intimate mix of African and European influences. Thelma and I both had the feeling that we shared Noah with the world. She was happy to see him settled far away in Europe where he was respected as a person as an artist and as a musician.

But the winters in Europe where often too cold for you. One of the first winters in Antwerp during a long weekend when most of our friends left for ski holiday we decided to escape the cold and dampness together. We bought a fifteen meter long canvas and lots of oil paints. We painted during three days and nights what would become our winter painting .It had lots of bright colors, the sun, a rainbow and a dancing bear as well as our devils and angels. While painting you also played on the saxophone and composed what would become “ paint the sky, a love so rare” and ‘raising rays of the sun” Each year we would put our winter painting back on the wall when the days became shorter and the nights colder.

I am really excited to see you all here for the launch of Noah ‘s auto-biography “Music in my Soul” and to celebrate together Noah’s music and life. A special thank you to Guido and all the musicians and artists for making this day possible and to all of you who have contributed to Celebrating Noah’s life and music. Noah touched the heart of everyone who knew him, he was a beautiful human being. He left us with the warmth of his smile, lots of music from his Soul; I am sure he will continue to inspire many creative people in this world and I hope this event today is only a beginning to manifest this together.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON – April Tune Of The Month

florian — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:12:44 +0000

This month’s tune Sunday Afternoon (to listen just click on it) is from Noah’s 2002 album Dreamtime.

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Help to further improve Noah’s Wikipedia entry

florian — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 21:45:00 +0000

You probably know that Noah has an article on Wikipedia, but did you also know that you can easily help to improve it? You don’t even have to sign up. Just go here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Howard and add something you feel . . . weiterlesen!

Two new previously unreleased CD’s out now

florian — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:23:27 +0000

Two new previously unreleased CD’s of Noah’s music came out today. Noah would be so happy and we hope you are too. Thanks to Jan Strom.

1) Noah Howard Quartet, the Bremen Concert. Recorded in Bremen in 1975. All compositions by Noah Howard. Noah Howard as, Takashi Kako p, Kent Carter b, Oliver Johnson dr. JaZtTAPES.CD-027.

2) Noah Howard Quartet at the Glenn Miller Cafe, Stockholm. Noah Howard as, ts, vo, Bobby Few p, Ulf Akerhjelm b, Gilebrt Matthews dr. Recorded Sept 2000 by Per Ruthstrom and Jan Strom. JaZt Tapes. . . . weiterlesen!

florian — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 15:51:47 +0000