Rifftides

The Bill Holman documentary that I helped with late last year is moving closer to reality. Its producer, Kathryn King, has launched a fund-raising drive to help her and her crew complete the film on schedule. That is how many projects are accomplished these days when they don’t have the backing of big Hollywood investors. Few of them have that kind of support, especially when the ventures have to do with the arts. In November, I spent a few days in Los Angeles interviewing Mr. Holman for the … [Read more...]

Jan Allan with the Visby Big Band, Berwaldhallen Stockholm, Sweden, 1985. Arranged, conducted and introduced by Rob McConnell. Later this month, Allan, now 79, will join pianist Jan Lundgren, bassist Georg Riedel, saxophonist-composer Erik Norström and the Bohuslän Big Band for an eight-city tour of Sweden in honor of the late pianist Bengt Hallberg. For a previous Rifftides post about Jan Allan, go here. … [Read more...]

The distinguished pianist, composer and leader is the 2014 occupant of the chair held by Bernstein, Cage, Eliot, Stravinsky and Gordimer, among others. For further details, including how to get a ticket for the remaining lectures in the series, go here. As for what qualifies Hancock for the honor, we have a demonstration of two attributes, his composing and his playing. The piece is “Chan’s Song.” His accompanists are bassist Christian McBride and drummer Karriem Riggins. … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Ted O’Reilly writes from Toronto: I wasn’t much inclined to shop much at Crocojazz personally – I’m not into vinyl as some are – but it was not as inviting as I’d hoped. Unorganized, dusty, boxes and crates on the floor...a treasure hunt, perhaps, but as I was without my spade, not much more than ‘a cultural’ experience. Here’s the late John Norris in a picture I took (it sez here) on May 28/08. Note that it was taken before we went in. He might not have been as … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Greg Curtis is on a study sabbatical in Paris. Wishing to stimulate envy—and succeeding—he sent an illustrated message about two used record stores in the 5th arrondissement, near his apartment. One, La Dame Blanche, specializes in classical recordings. The name of the other, Crocojazz, is self-explanatory. They are across from one another on the rue de la Montagne-Ste-Geneviève.               Mr. Curtis writes about … [Read more...]

From her opening blues, “Filosophical Flying Fish,” to the concluding “Summertime” done as a sort of neo-boogaloo, Grace Kelly’s Thursday concert at The Seasons in Yakima, Washington, left no doubt that she is in the top flight of today’s alto saxophonists. She has been there for some time. Here is what I wrote after I first heard her at a festival jam session in 2007 (pictured then, above). I know of no explanation other than genius for this slender fourteen-year-old girl’s attainment of … [Read more...]

Thara Memory wanted to make one thing perfectly clear. “This is new music,” the venerable trumpeter and educator told the Portland Jazz Festival audience. “New. N.E.W. Have you got that?” He said it was not going to be ninety minutes of “that free jazz,” but it would be adventurous. That was Dr. Memory’s emphatic way of introducing the Spring Quartet, an all-star band headed by veteran drummer Jack DeJohnette, whose track record encompasses Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Bill … [Read more...]

Listen to Kurt Vonnegut. … [Read more...]

Midway through Lew Tabackin’s tenor saxophone solo on “Long Yellow Road,” Toshiko Akiyoshi smiled at a particularly vigorous passage in his improvisation. The two have put a lot of miles on that Akiyoshi composition since it was the title tune of a classic 1975 album. It has worked for Akiyoshi as a big band vehicle and as a solo piano piece, and at the Portland Jazz Festival it worked for their quartet. Bassist Boris Kozlov and drummer Mark Taylor joined Akiyoshi and Tabackin in a 90-minute … [Read more...]

The Portland Jazz Festival booked Cécile McLorin Salvant to open for bassist Buster Williams’s “Something More” quintet, but she and her trio headed by pianist Aaron Diehl came close to stealing the show. The 24-year-old singer captivated an audience most of whose members were hearing her for the first time. As noted last summer in the Rifftides recommendation of her only album, she emerged, virtually unknown, as a fully developed artist. Salvant’s contralto, impeccably in tune from sub-basement … [Read more...]

Today as the Portland Jazz Festival was at its midpoint came the call I’ve been dreading. Jack Berry is dead. Since we were in the early stages of our careers during my Portland years in the 1960s, Jack and I have been friends whose closeness was never affected by distance. As I batted around the country from news job to news job, our friendship was not allowed to dim. He was a perceptive writer on jazz and any other subject he chose to approach, and over the years he has been quoted many times … [Read more...]

According to the Oregon Encyclopedia, Darrell Grant moved to the state in 1997, “in search of a place where his music could have a greater impact.” Not that the pianist had been ignored. He had worked for Roy Haynes, Tony Williams and Betty Carter, among others, and recorded successful albums as a leader. The encyclopedia article quotes him, “I was looking for a sense of community, a place where I could make a contribution and serve.” Grant became a professor of music at Portland State … [Read more...]

Ahmad Jamal’s Portland Jazz Festival concert focused primarily on pieces from his recent Saturday Morning CD. Since early in his career, Jamal has been a master at making rhythm work for him. That hasn’t changed, although in his current quartet he and rhythm have plenty of help from drummer Herlin Riley, the ingenious percussionist Manolo Badrena and bassist Reginald Veal. In “Saturday Morning,” “Back to the Future,” and the standards “Blue Moon” and “The Gypsy,” Jamal’s exchanges with his … [Read more...]

For the 2014 Portland Jazz Festival’s second concert, drummer Brian Blade reassembled his band called the Brian Blade Fellowship. Some of the music was from the past of the group that he founded in 1997. Other pieces previewed their next album, Landmark, to be released in April. Blade, pianist John Cowherd, bassist Chris Thomas and saxophonists Myron Walden and Melvin Butler have played their ruminative, stately music together for so long that it often seems to unfold independent of their … [Read more...]

Last evening’s opening concert of the 2014 Portland Jazz Festival found the pianist and singer Eliane Elias in joyous spirits that led her to, but never quite over, the edge of giddiness. With bassist Marc Johnson, guitarist Graham Dechter and drummer Mauricio Zottarelli, Elias concentrated on music from her and Zottarelli’s native Brazil, with side trips into pieces from her … [Read more...]

The Columbia River Gorge looked like this today, only wetter. Motoring through the Gorge even in a driving rainstorm is one of the world's great travel experiences. Portland is only a bit rainy at the moment—par for the course at this time of year. The Rifftides staff is off to listen to a conversation with Brian Blade and John Cowherd, then to take in an early concert by Eliane Elias and her trio and and a late one by drummer Blade's all-star band. … [Read more...]

Tomorrow morning, I will have the thrill of driving through south central Washington State and along the Oregon side of the magnificent Columbia River Gorge (pictured) to the Portland Jazz Festival. My schedule permits attending only the first four days of the festival, which runs nearly two weeks. I’ll take in major concerts by Ahmad Jamahl, Eliane Elias, Brian Blade and The Fellowship Band, Dave Frishberg and Bob Dorough together, Toshiko Akiyoshi with Lew Tabackin and as much other music as I … [Read more...]

Leonard Bernstein took a bit of a thrashing here recently in the Sid Caesar spoof and some of the comments that followed it. So, it is only fair to let Maestro Bernstein (1918-1990) redeem himself. The Rifftides recommendation of Rudy Royston’s new album mentions that he includes Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus.“ The opening seconds of the performance that you’re about to watch show the sort of Bernstein mannerism that was fodder for Caesar’s satire. Still, eight months before his death, Bernstein … [Read more...]

The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, HE was a genius. The remote control changed our lives, ... The remote control took over the timing of the world. That's why you have road rage. You have people who have no patience, because you got immediate gratification. You got click, click, click, click. If it doesn't explode within three seconds, click click, click. The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds the other fellow … [Read more...]

The new Rifftides recommendation of Bob Dorough’s CD Eulalia mentions that his daughter Aralee, who appears on the recording with him, is a symphony musician. Ms. Dorough has been the principal flutist of the Houston Symphony since 1991. Aside from a few chamber music ensemble performances, little of her work is accessible on the internet. The exception is video of a 2011 recital of Béla Bartok’s Romanian Folks Dances. Bartok’s effect on jazz musicians is not only direct but also through the … [Read more...]

Remembering him, with gratitude. … [Read more...]

The latest Rifftides recommendations include four CDs, three by established artists and one by a young drummer who has captured the attention of major musicians and a wide audience. We also call your attention to a book about a pianist whose unanticipated hit trio record led to an association that made his music among the world's best known. You'll find the recommendations in the right column under Doug's Picks and, for a day or so, immediately below. … [Read more...]