I would go to the library and borrow scores by all those great composers, like Stravinsky, Alban Berg, Prokofiev. I wanted to see what was going on in all of music. Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery, and I just couldn't believe someone could be that close to freedom and not take advantage of it.It was because of Bill [Evans]'s influence, I think, that I always had classic
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In Los Angeles, The Jazz Bakery is losing its lease. The nonprofit performance hall's guiding spirit, Ruth Price, says that it will live on...somewhere. Today's Los Angeles Times has the story.
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You may recall the Rifftides tip a year ago about a Michel Petrucciani documentary DVD. The film followed the pianist around the world and culminated in a memorable concert shortly before he died in 1999. If you didn't know about Petrucciani before you saw the film, it is unlikely that you forgot him afterward.In the current issue of The New Republic, David Hajdu does a fine job of placing Pet...
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I am adding to Other Places in the right column a link to Mule Walk And Jazz Talk, a web log posted from Madrid by Agustín Pérez. The legend Sr. Pérez erects below the name of his blog leaves no doubt en el que viene de, as they say in downtown Madrid.Random thoughts, casual writings and specific research on early jazz styles. If you think there is no jazz before Coltrane, you may have come to
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The recession seems to be doing little to stem the flood of CDs. This posting and others to follow constitute one man's attempt to deal with the rising tide. The quick hits below are not full-fledged reviews, far from it. They are acknowledgements of a few releases worth investigating. Many of them, no doubt, deserve full analysis. The Rifftides staff regrets that we cannot provide deep conside...
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Rifftides reader Jim Eigo followed up on yesterday's Wall Street Journal piece about Denny Zeitlin by sending this photograph. He took it last night at Zeitlin's gig at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola in New York. From left to right, Buster Williams, Zeitlin, drummer Matt Wilson, fully involved. Photo © Jim Eigo
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If you have wondered how those concerts turned out that celebrated the 50th anniversary of Thelonious Monk's Town Hall concert, Will Friedwald reported on them for The Wall Street Journal. As we mentioned last week in this Rifftides post, the bands were led by Charles Tolliver and Jason Moran. Here's an excerpt from Friedwald's review of the events. The first night, Mr. Tolliver and his musici...
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Fifty years ago today, the Miles Davis Sextet began recording for Columbia Records the music that ultimately made up the album called Kind Of Blue. To observe the occasion, Jan Stevens of The Bill Evans Web Pages commissioned an essay about that imperishable recording and its most recent CD reissue. The piece, by John Varrallo, is exclusive to the Evans site. It is worth reading. Evans, who was...
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Concerning the "Driving Be Bop" item below, Ted O'Reilly writes from Toronto: Here's a picture I took in St. Maarten in the Caribbean, in Oct. 2006. It's the nameplate of a car -- can't remember which Asian vehicle it was, but one less-familiar to us in N. America -- perhaps a Daihatsu? Anyway, must be a tenor fan who came up with it...
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When I was looking for something on You Tube the other night, what to my wondering eyes should appear but the Kessler Sisters. I hadn't seen them in forty years, and they still looked terrific. Paul Desmond introduced me to them in 1965 at the Hilton Hotel in Portland, Oregon. Desmond had just played a concert with the Dave Brubeck Quartet at Willamette University down the road in Salem. I coul...
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In today's Los Angeles Times, David Ritz writes from a personal standpoint about the nearly simultaneous loss of three important musicians. Ritz is the author or co-author of several books about blues and soul artists including Ray Charles. The headline on his op-ed piece is "Ray Charles' Heavenly Trio." Here's the first paragraph:In summer 1957, I was a teenager who had just moved to Texas fr...
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Earlier this week, Dick Hyman played a noontime recital at a church in Manhattan. Fellow artsjournal blogger Jan Herman was there with his camera and posted videos of Hyman playing Fats Waller's "My Fate Is In Your Hands" and "Bach Up To Me." To see Jan's piece and hear Hyman, go here.When you come back, if you want more Waller -- and, of course, you will -- click on these links to hear Fats p...
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Final report on the opening days of the Portland Jazz Festival: In elegant Schnitzer Hall, clarinetist and tenor saxophonist Don Byron had Edward Simon on piano and Eric Harland on drums in his Ivey-Divey Trio. It was the same instrumentation as the Gross-Frishberg-Doggett trio that played the night before in quite different circumstances (see Part 2). In makeup, feeling and interaction, both g...
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The sagging economy has led the Portland Jazz Festival to cancel one of the major concerts of its final weekend. Artistic director Bill Royston announced that for the first time in his 32-year-career as a jazz impresario he was pulling the plug on a primary event. Advance sales to a Friday night concert by singer Cassandra Wilson and pianist Jason Moran amounted to about 400 seats in a 3000-sea...
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The Rifftides staff was surprised and pleased to find Rifftides praised in Beckey Bright's "Blog Watch" column in today's Wall Street Journal. Ms. Bright also singles out Ethan Iverson's Do The Math and Jeffrey Siegel's Straight No Chaser. Her other topic today is weddings. To read "Blog Watch" and find links to Iverson and Siegel, go here.
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Gap Mangione writes from Rochester, New York, about the deaths of saxophonist Gerry Niewood and guitarist Coleman Mellett in last Thursday's plane crash near Buffalo. The three were to have played a concert that night in Buffalo with Chuck Mangione: We gathered at the hotel Thursday night. Chuck flew in from Florida to conduct and play a concert with the Buffalo Philharmonic. Janet and I drove..
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Dave Frishberg writes with important information on a matter raised in the previous entry. I'm reading the Rifftides discussion about Blossom Dearie and Bill Evans, and who influenced who. I'd like to add my comment:During the late sixties I played a couple weeks solo opposite the Bill Evans Trio at the Village Gate on Bleecker St, and had some conversations with Bill. I asked him how he came..
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Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, Niels-Henning Ørsted-Pedersen, Martin Drew
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Rifftide s reader Peter Myers writes:In your liner notes from the great Christmas present CD I received, The Art and Soul of Houston Person , you mentioned a gifted 19-year-old jazz musician who plays few standards. I wondered if you were talking about Eldar. I was looking forward to seeing him at the Clearwater, FL Jazz Holiday back in October. I came away disappointed for the same reason. He...
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This spring will see the release on DVD of a documentary film that dramatizes the degree to which we're all in this troubled world together. The film uses music to make that point and the further one that music can help heal our differences. Its producer, Mark Johnson, took video and sound equipment around the world. He spent ten years filming musicians and singers in South Africa, Moscow, Ne...
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