4VF News – Daily News Channel

When acclaimed American Joshua Redman blows into his saxophone in the Wellington Jazz Festival tonight, it won’t be the first time he has played in the capital.

The big difference this time is that it will be in public. This is because in 2006 Redman came to Wellington to record a saxophone concerto composed by New Zealander John Psathas.

The piece was to have been played by saxophonist Michael Brecker, but Redman stepped in when Brecker had to curtail playing after being diagnosed with blood disorder MDS.

“I filled in for him for the recording. I was in Wellington for a few days and had a blast but I haven’t been there since, so I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to finally get to play,” says Redman.

Tonight’s performance is as Joshua Redman Quartet, with pianist Aaron Goldberg, bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Gregory Hutchinson. Like Redman, each are highly rated musicians in their own right. But the quartet, founded in 1998, has been one of Redman’s longest lasting projects and inspired him to write and record his first long form composition Passage of Time, released in 2001.

“There’s a really long and rich history of us playing together and I think we’re really tight and really close on the bandstand and off,” Redman says.

“They are three of my favourite musicians in the world. It’s fun now to have gotten back together and in a way we’ve picked up where we left off. We are all better musicians and more mature musicians.”

And Redman knows a thing or two about working with other musicians. In a career spanning more than 20 years he’s not only worked with some of jazz’s biggest names (Pat Metheny, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, Brad Mehldau, Branford Marsalis, Herbie Hancock, Dave Brubeck and fellow Jazz Festival guest Chick Corea, to name a few), but some of popular music’s biggest including The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, BB King, The Roots, Quincy Jones and classical’s Yo Yo Ma and Simon Rattle.

There are so many, if he was put on the spot and asked to name them all off the top of his head, could he do it “No, absolutely not,” he replies, then laughs. “Once in a while someone will be introducing us or I’ll happen to glance at some bio in a programme and I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah – I did play with him. Like, wow – that’s cool’. I used to remember everything, but now in my mid-40s the memory ain’t what it used to be.”

What makes it all the more remarkable is that Redman didn’t seriously consider becoming a professional musician, despite being raised in a musical family in Berkeley, California. Redman’s father, Dewey Redman, who died in 2006, was a respected saxophonist and band leader who played with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett. Redman played lots of instruments from an early age, including recorder, piano, guitar and the exotic gatham and gamelan. And while listening to jazz he also enjoyed soul and rock. He cites Aretha Franklin, Earth, Wind and Fire, The Temptations, The Beatles, The Police, Prince and Led Zeppelin as early influences as much as jazz greats and his father.

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At age 9 he tried clarinet, switched to saxophone a year later and played in Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble and Combo. After graduating with a BA in social studies, Redman in 1991 was accepted by Yale Law School. But friends invited him to New York to play jazz. Redman went, thinking it would be for just one year and then he’d go to Yale. Instead he became immersed in the jazz scene.

Within five months he won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition and got to tour with the likes of Metheny.

His debut album in 1993 got nominated for a Grammy Award.

“It wasn’t part of my plan. I loved music. I was a serious listener but I wasn’t a serious player growing up. I went to school expecting that I was going to do something else – so this life has been a big accident for me. But it’s the best accident I’ve ever been involved in.”

Redman says winning the competition and the Grammy nomination while still his early 20s did boost his confidence – but he was, and still is, a big critic of himself. “I am highly critical of my own music. I love to play and I love the experience of playing, but I have a tendency to focus on, after the fact, what I didn’t do well and what my weaknesses are. But that’s [also] been the engine for improvement over the years.”

What’s clear – and coming to Wellington to record Psathas is one example – is that Redman has regularly gone outside his comfort zone. Among his projects has been the groove-orientated The Elastic Band with Sam Yahel and drummer Brian Blade and in 2000, after becoming artistic director for San Francisco jazz organisation SFJAZZ, founding the SFJAZZ Collective, an eight piece ensemble that mixed generations of jazz musicians and performed commissioned works and new arrangements of modern jazz compositions.

Another ensemble, James Farm, features New Zealand bassist Matt Penman. “He is one of the finest bass players of his generation and also an exceptional composer,” says Redman.

“That I’ve learned anything or grown or gotten in any way better as a musician, it’s almost exclusively from basically putting myself in situations where I was way over my head.”

THE DETAILS

Joshua Redman Quartet, Wellington’s Opera House, tonight, 8pm. For more on Wellington Jazz Festival go to jazzfestival.co.nz

The St James Theatre has just become the temporary home to the new exhibition Our View, showcasing the work of some of New Zealand’s most talented editorial illustrators and cartoonists. Fairfax graphic artist Richard Parker joined The Dominion Post in 2002 and was a finalist in the best artwork category at this year’s Canon Media Awards.

Beyonc

US actor Jonah Hill has apologised for using a homophobic slur with a paparazzo in an encounter caught on video.

TMZ obtained a video of Hill

Justin Bieber supposedly sings about joining the Ku Klux Klan in a new scandalous video clip.

Footage surfaced over the weekend of the singer using the N-word when he was just 15 years old and the musician subsequently apologised for the offensive language.

And now British newspaper The Sun is reporting Justin is involved in a second racism scandal. The outlet claims it has viewed another video of the pop star “changing the lyrics of his song One Less Lonely Girl to crack a vile joke about killing black people”.

It is claimed Justin was laughing and joking about joining the Ku Klux Klan in the altered track, which he retitled “One Less Lonely N*****” in the footage, according to the publication.

The Ku Klux Klan is a hate group that originated in the American south around the time of the Civil War in the 1860s. The organisation is associated with lynching and murdering black people, among other atrocities, in the name of white supremacy.

Bieber’s representatives have not yet commented on reports a new video of him spewing hateful language has emerged.

A source tells the newspaper having a second video surface is no surprise.

“Unfortunately this is the devastating reality of how Justin has behaved and reveals his attitude toward such a deeply emotive subject,” the insider said.

“People need to see this. Normal kids in society do not make these kind of jokes. He is protected by a network of staff, but the camera doesn’t lie. This is the real Justin.”

Bieber has apologised for the first video already, claiming he was too young to grasp the gravity of his words at the time.

“I’m very sorry,” he told TMZ. “I take my friendships with people of all cultures very seriously and I apologise for offending or hurting anyone with my childish and inexcusable mistake.”

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– Cover Media

A German writer has issued a cash plea for the return of her laptop, containing chapters of her new novel, stolen from an inner city Wellington writers’ residence while on a cultural exchange.

Maike Wetzel was the Goethe-Institut inaugural writer-in-residence at the Wellington City Council’s Sexton’s Cottage in Thorndon.

Last month on the eve of her return to Berlin she arrived home with her 3-year-old son to find the historic Bolton St cottage’s front door bolted from the inside and one of its windows smashed.

Today Wetzel announced a $500 reward for the return of the files and the stolen laptop or a $250 reward for a copy of the files or the backup copy held on an external drive.

The laptop would be worthless to the thieves or anyone who bought it because it had a German-language keyboard and components.

”It’s useless to them, but it’s invaluable to me,” she said.

The lost work included two film scripts, a book for young adults and chapters from her new novel, a psychological thriller set in Berlin with one chapter set in Wellington.

Wetzel said the ”unwanted invaders” had not coloured her feelings about Wellington, which she said was full of ”overwhelmingly friendly and polite” people.

”It won’t change my view of Wellington or New Zealand in general – in the sleepy small town where I was raised, stuff like that happened, so it’s just bad luck.

”Wetzel’s laptop is a Sony (Vaio) notebook featuring these identifying codes VPC-EE 4M1E/BQP560/4 GB/640G, Serial No: 5015001946B. She can be contacted by email at [email protected]

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– The Dominion Post

Michael Palin has described football superstar David Beckham as a wimp for being afraid of frogs.

Palin was interviewing Beckham about the former England captain’s new documentary, Into the Unknown, which will air in Australia later this month.

In the interview posted on YouTube, Beckham reveals he was afraid of the snakes and frogs in the jungle.

“(The snake was) bigger than it looks on TV, he said.

“The frog was scary. I am not a big frog fan. I was told it was pretty dangerous. I was a little bit nervous about that.”

Palin retorts: “You’re a wimp really!”

Palin’s comment may have been tongue in cheek but it illustrates how manicured and pampered Beckham is.

That’s something the star is trying to change with the documentary, which follows Beckham and three friends for 12 days, travelling 1300 kilometres into the Amazon rainforest to spend the night with a tribe who have no idea who the mega-star is.

Beckham says he was inspired to make the documentary after realising he had never in his life been on an unscheduled trip.

His passports have been carried by other people, his flights pre-arranged and his tour agenda organised months in advance.

Before he leaves, wife Victoria fusses over his hair.

“What will you do about your hair and the humidity It will turn you ugly,” Victoria says.

After flying to Rio de Janeiro the boys continue their journey by motorbike, canoe and plane to meet the remote Yanomami tribe.

There Beckham finds delight in the fact that no-one knows who he is.

“He turns around to me and says ‘what do you do as a job’ I said I was a soccer player and he said ‘what’s that’

“That’s obviously the first time I have had to explain what soccer is to anybody besides Victoria.”

In the jungle Beckham confronts basic challenges like sleeping in a hammock and trying to figure out where to look when a naked man is standing in front of you wearing nothing but body paint.

“I’ve put myself into situations that I have never done before. It excited me. It unnerved me, but it is one thing that me and my friends will never forget.”

It’s an interesting insight into Beckhan and it’s refreshing to see him strip off some of his first world problems during the course of the documentary.

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– AAP

Your head will not explode if it is crushed by a large man called the Mountain.

In Game of Thrones Season 4 episode 8 The Mountain caused Prince Obyren’s head to explode after he dug his fingers into the Prince’s eye sockets and squeezed his skull with the rest of his massive hands.

But according to two experts, that gruesome scenario is not biologically possible.

Cynthia Bir, a biomedical engineer at the University of Southern California, told the Washington Post there was no way a head would explode by applying pressure from the eyes.

“You would need to create pressure inside the cranium. Even if you could generate pressure by squeezing the outside of the head, once the cranium is breached at the orifice where the eye nerves enter, this pressure would be greatly diminished”

Researcher Tobias Mattei, who has examined how children’s bicycle helmets prevent skull crush injuries agrees.

“It would be impossible for even the strongest human to break the skull through compressive forces exerted by any means (either with their hands bilaterally or by stepping (on) it) in any portion of the skull,” he told the US paper.

There is an urban legend about a chess player named Nikolai Titov whose head reportedly exploded when he was playing chess. But a quick fact check shows that this too is a fictional story made up by parody tabloid newspaper Weekly World News in 1994.