The New York pianist George Ziskind observed the changing of the guard at a venerable New York jazz institution and sent us this report. Monday night I attended the opening shot of this year's "Jazz in July" event at the 92nd Street Y. Dick Hyman, who had long been artistic director of this annual jazz concert series, recently passed that baton to Bill Charlap - and Bill has already made some significant innovations in programming. (Like, how about "The Front Line: Small Group Jazz of Horace … [Read more...]

The eminent neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote a letter to The New York Times that touches on the subject of a recent Rifftides posting. Here is the final paragraph: The human brain is exquisitely sensitive to, susceptible to, the sound patterns of speech and music, but it is only with music, curiously, that we can be so readily overloaded - we see this, in a minor way, with catchy tunes. And I am inclined to agree with Dr. Victor Aziz that such hallucinations may well become more common as we are … [Read more...]