Resolved: Fresh Musical Starts

OK, I know that New Year’s resolutions are supposed to have been locked in on the first of the year. (I am also well aware that many of them already have been, shall we say, set aside.)

But it occurred to me that there were a few resolutions which--if they weren’t set aside--could generate some productive results for jazz and for the jazz community. So, even though no one has asked me, here are some of my off-the-cuff recommendations:

* Diana Krall and Tommy LiPuma. Resolution: To make the next one a jazz album.

* Quincy Jones. Resolution: Ditto. The autobiography is finished, the boxed collection of career overview recordings has been released. So ... time for another jazz outing. Please, Q?

* Wynton Marsalis. Resolution: To keep on keeping on. No matter what your critics (including this one) have to say.

* The International Assn. for Jazz Education. Resolutions: To continue to support and encourage the education and the appreciation of jazz. To not allow the big picture to overshadow the fine points, especially the fundamental dilemma that the number of academically trained jazz musicians vastly exceeds the number of jobs available for them. To make sure that the mentorship, in-the-trenches learning style that produced most of the great jazz artists of the 20th century continues to hold a vital position in the lexicon of jazz education.

* Jazz record companies. Resolutions: To do a better job of supporting your product. To realize that simply tossing CDs into a market overflowing with albums will most likely mean that they will quickly sink beneath the surface of visibility. To work more empathetically with managers and publicists to create the best possible awareness for artists’ work.

* Film documentarians (perhaps Ric Burns?). Resolutions: To document the 40 years of jazz history minimized or omitted in the Ken Burns “Jazz” series. To acknowledge that anyone who thinks it’s not possible to find a historical perspective for the period either hasn’t been paying attention to the music or has been listening to the wrong advisors.

* The L.A. Philharmonic and the Music Center. Resolutions: To realize the importance of jazz in the cultural life of the city, the country and the world. To recognize that Los Angeles is home to a community of jazz artists rivaled only by New York City’s. To understand that this combination of circumstances creates extraordinary opportunities comparable--if different in style and substance--to what Wynton Marsalis encountered when he initiated Jazz at Lincoln Center. To do something with those opportunities.

* UCLA Live. Resolution: To become aware that jazz is perfectly capable of standing on its own, without pop culture framing or interfacing. To restore UCLA’s performing arts schedule to the prominent Los Angeles destination for jazz audiences that it once was.

* L.A.’s balkanized jazz organizations. Resolutions: To get to know one another--at the very least. To make the decision that the geographic vastness of the Southland, with its many communities, doesn’t have to be reflected in fragmented support for the music. To work toward creating a jazz umbrella association that will combine the resources of individual organizations in a fashion that best serves the needs of Southland jazz artists, rather than the organizations’ internal agendas.

* L.A. jazz audiences. Resolutions: To make the effort, at least every month or two, to go out and hear something new. To be receptive to unfamiliar young players and take a chance with thorny musical styles. To visit a club or a concert hall outside one’s familiar routine.

* Button pushers, dial twisters and fader sliders (more precisely known as audio engineers). Resolutions: To learn how a jazz group should sound. To understand that, unlike rock music, jazz does not benefit from amplification of bass, drums and guitar to a level that can blow away the sound of five trumpets and four trombones. To make the best possible effort to allow the musicians to create their own dynamic levels without your intrusion.

* Whoopers and screamers. OK, we probably can’t ask you to stifle your enthusiasm and save the eardrums of anyone within 10 yards of your seat. But how about this resolution: that you’ll at least control yourself long enough in the closing passages of a piece to allow it to come to a natural conclusion, without inserting your personality into the music?

* Bandleaders (everywhere). Resolution: To announce the names of your musicians when the crowd is quiet, not when there’s so much applause that it’s impossible to hear anything you say. After all, without them, you’d be a solo act.

* Jazz journalists (including the one who writes this column). Resolutions: To review what you’re hearing, not what you think you should be hearing. To review players, not audiences. To remember that there’s very little that you can say about a performance that is not already fully apparent to the musicians. And to keep in mind that there’s probably a lot more that the musicians are aware of that has completely eluded you.

Riffs: Film composer-arranger Patrick Williams, winner of four Emmys, two Grammys and an Academy Award nomination for his scores, has been appointed artistic director of the Henry Mancini Institute. He succeeds institute founder Jack Elliott, who died last summer. Williams’ first official appearance with the HMI Alumni Orchestra takes place today at 11 a.m. at the Terrace Theatre in the Long Beach Convention Center as part of the 29th annual International Assn. for Jazz Education conference.... Pianist-composer Michael Melvoin will fill another of Elliott’s former posts on Feb. 27, when he takes over as musical director of the 2002 Grammy Awards show. Melvoin’s newest jazz CD, “Oh, Baby,” is due for release next week on the City Lights label.