http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/arts/music/jazzs-year-of-complaint-citing-whiplash-and-the-new-yorker.html 2014-12-30 22:59:08 Jazz’s Year of Complaint, Citing ‘Whiplash’ and The New Yorker Frustration with “Whiplash,” anger at The New Yorker, dueling takes on prominent recordings: The jazz world had an all-year season of discontent. === In the I’ve been reminded of that setup recently, whenever my thoughts turned to the past year in jazz. Not just because “Whiplash” achieved the rare feat of putting “jazz drummer” and “Oscar buzz” into Jazz in 2014 — or more accurately, the discourse around jazz in 2014 — often resembled a crescendo of gibes and gripes, with each new affront calling forth a fresh wave of umbrage. In the end it wasn’t any single skirmish that led to my air of weary resignation, but rather a brisk accumulation of them, quickening into a blur. And what surprised me was the exasperation I felt not only with jazz’s cynical assailants, but also with its gallant defenders, some of whom could seem as starchy and reflexively scandalized as Jazz’s Year of Complaint (as I’ve taken to calling it) actually began with that single-stroke drumroll back in January, when “Whiplash” opened the It was only months later, when Mr. Chazelle’s film reached theaters, that jazz partisans began to At issue was a problem of representation — and the tendency, on the part of many jazz fans, to regard every turn in the spotlight as a chance for outreach. (By this light, “Low Down” had its own faults: It’s a tale of heroin addiction, based on a memoir by Mr. Albany’s daughter.) Misrepresentation took on a more literal form in late summer, when The New Yorker magazine’s Shouts & Murmurs blog posted a humor piece, Mr. Rollins, the tenor saxophonist who at 84 is upheld as one of jazz’s greatest improvisers and a living embodiment of its ideals, comes across as rueful and cowed in the piece. “If I could do it all over again,” he says, “I’d probably be an accountant or a process server.” Absurd on its face, the piece was taken seriously by many in the jazz realm, prompting The New Yorker to tag on an editor’s note describing it as satire — and goading Mr. Rollins into a Speaking from a book-lined study at his home in Woodstock, N.Y., he noted that his initial response to Mr. Gold’s piece had been wry amusement; he took it to be a stunt worthy of Mad magazine (to which, he said, he subscribed). Then he realized that the farce was being misconstrued as fact. “Jazz has been mocked, minimized and marginalized throughout its whole history,” he said. Given that legacy, he added, what’s the point of kicking jazz around? There are fair answers to that rhetorical question — among them, that jazz has clawed its way into the precincts of high culture and presents an easy target — but they were mostly drowned out by surface noise. An Maybe it’s true that the media has succumbed to a surge in “jazz bashing,” to use the term There’s evidence for this mind-set even within jazz’s ranks, judging by the response to an album released this fall by Mostly Other People Do the Killing. The recording, “Blue” (Hot Cup), is a note-for-note reconstruction of Miles Davis’s 1959 album “Kind of Blue,” with an influential essay by Jorge Luis Borges reprinted in the liner notes. A The closest thing to a consensus jazz album this year, according to the What’s worth remembering, against this backdrop, is that jazz still has its common truths. To that end, the movie I hope to be rooting for this Oscar season is Directed by Alan Hicks, it’s a stirring portrait of perseverance, positivity and service. And in Mr. Terry, who maintains his dignity and genial sense of humor in the most trying circumstances, there’s a durable jazz ideal, at once in the mix and above the fray.