With A Little Help...

Rifftides Readers sometimes send useful tips. Here are three:

Pianist Emil Viklický called our attention to this YouTube clip of him and two other Czech musicians sitting in with Dizzy Gillespie's band in a 1990 concert. In a moment of geographic confusion, Diz introduces them as our "Yugoslav brothers." The other Czechs are saxophonist Jiri Stivin, who plays a startling solo on pennywhistle, and trumpeter Juraj Bartos. Paquito D'Rivera is also aboard, on clarinet and alto. The bassist is John Lee, the drummer Ignacio Berroa. Does anyone recognize the tenor saxophonist? There is a guitarist whom we hear but never clearly see. Dizzy introduces the piece as "Straight, No Chaser." That melody line never materializes, and they end with "Billie's Bounce," but we get ten entertaining minutes of the blues in F and a reminder that no one was better than Gillespie at setting riffs behind a soloist.

Saxophonist David Liebman
sent the following radio information:

I am being interviewed on the Musician's Show tomorrow (Wednesday-Jan 16 at 6PM-Eastern time in the U.S.) on the illustrious jazz station WKCR-FM broadcast from Columbia University in New York. I will be playing the music that shaped my aesthetic over the years. As I write now, I am putting together the music, which will include my first influences and teachers (Elvis, Tristano, Charles Lloyd) to the main saxophonists (Wayne Shorter, Trane, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Lee Konitz, Joe Henderson); Miles and Bill Evans of course; world and classical music (Chopin, Beethoven and Bartok) as well as a few of my things and one track from a live gig that Quest just did a few months ago (Richie Beirach, Ron McClure, Billy Hart). Quest is playing Birdland in New York Feb 6-9. The show is three hours and hopefully the interviewer will be cool. You can google it and tune in anywhere in the world I believe. (I assume it will be archived).

To hear the program, tune in 89.9 FM in New York or listen on the web by going here.

Saxophonist, composer, arranger, bandleader and broadcaster
Bill Kirchner's next Jazz From The Archives on WBGO radio will feature the singer and bassist Jim Ferguson, a world-class musician who might be better known if he lived in New York or Los Angeles. Ferguson is based in Nashville, Tennessee. Kirchner writes:

We'll hear recordings of Ferguson performing solo, with two quartets (accompanied by tenor saxophonist Chris Potter, pianists Pat Coil or Stefan Karlsson, and drummer Jim White), and in duo with the veteran guitarist Mundell Lowe. The show will air this Sunday, January 20, from 11 p.m. to midnight, Eastern Standard Time.

In the New York area, WBGO is at 88.3 FM. On the internet, go here. Before the week is out, I expect to have a Rifftides item about the Mundell Lowe/Jim Ferguson CD.