William Claxton, the master photographer who died a week ago, was a great raconteur. A sample of that side of his personality is available on the internet. In 1988, Terri Gross interviewed Claxton on her National Public Radio program Fresh Air. He discussed his experiences photographing, among others, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker. To hear the conversation, go here and click on "Listen Now." As a bonus, listen to Felix Contreras's short biography of arranger and … [Read more...]

The last thing I want is for Rifftides to become a death watch. Nonetheless, as James Moody says his grandmother once told him, "Folks is dyin' what ain't never died before." Or, to use Bill Crow's words in the subject line of a message today about the arranger, composer and former trumpet player Neal Nefti, "The parade continues." Hefti died at home in the Toluca Lake community of Los Angeles on Saturday, the same day and a few miles from his contemporary William Claxton, the master … [Read more...]

William Claxton's cover shots appeared on ten CDs produced in Los Angeles by Dick Bank. The photographer's last project for Bank was the cover photograph for the 2006 Andy Martin-Jan Lundgren album How About You? (Fresh Sound).  Bank sent this note following Claxton's death last weekend. I had the idea for the cover to be a trombone (for Andy Martin) resting on top of the piano (for Jan Lundgren). It necessitated Clax getting up on a tall ladder to shoot it. I asked if itwouldn't be safer if … [Read more...]

For more thirty years, John Fordham has been favoring the British public with his finely-honed critiques and observations about jazz. Most of his work has appeared in the newspaper The Guardian, but he is also the author of an entertaining and informative history of jazz. Fordham is a full-range listener with good ears and a writer with an open mind, as interesting on The Bad Plus as he is on Humphrey Lyttleton.  In a flow of 881 words, Fordham's most recent column manages … [Read more...]

Word has just come in that William Claxton died on Saturday in Los Angeles of congestive heart failure. He was one day short of his eighty-first birthday. With his pictures of Chet Baker in the early 1950s, Claxton established himself as a brilliant photographer of jazz musicians and went on to a career as one of the most admired camera artists in the world. He did incomparable work not only in jazz, but also with a varied array of personalities including Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Igor … [Read more...]

McCoy Tyner, Guitars (Half-Note). This is one of the most engaging Tyner collaboration projects since he teamed with the late tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker to record Infinity in 1995 and with Wayne Shorter the following year in the session that produced Extensions. For this release, the pianist set up in a studio with stalwart rhythm companions, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Jack DeJohnette. He brought in four guitarists -- John Scofield, Bill Frisell, Derek Trucks, Mark Ribot -- and Bela … [Read more...]

The guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different color, a different voice.--Andres Segovia There is only one thing more beautiful than one guitar; two guitars--Frederic Chopin They said, ''You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are. The man replied, ''Things as they are changed upon a blue guitar.''--Wallace Stevens, The Man With The Blue Guitar … [Read more...]

Julius LaRosa sent a reminiscence. This quote from Wikipedia: "Garner was self-taught and remained an 'ear player' all his life - he never learned to read music." A hundred years ago we shared a bill in Pittsburgh...or was it Boston...or was it Chicago...and by coincidence went there on the same flight. Anyway, during the usual small talk I asked, re: "MISTY", how he came up with that gorgeous melody. He replied, I daresay innocently, "I was sittin' in a plane, just like this...imaginatin'." … [Read more...]

The British composer, arranger and leader Graham Collier has a new web site that should win awards for design, thoroughness and easy navigation. The home page contains a link to a thirteen-minute montage of music from nine of Collier's eighteen albums over forty years. The montage is designed to be played while the visitor roams the site. It is a clever teaser, making the roamer want to hear more of Collier's daring writing played by superb musicians, among them trumpeters Kenny Wheeler, Ted … [Read more...]

The Bill Charlap Trio with bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington played Wednesday night in a live broadcast on National Public Radio and Newark, New Jersey's, WBGO-FM. The program of well more than an hour consisted of one of the trio's sets at New York's Village Vanguard. Coincidentally, Charlap opened with Gigi Gryce's "Satellite" (See the next item). If you missed the broadcast, you may be glad to know that NPR archived it. You can listen to it by going here and clicking on … [Read more...]

Art Farmer-Gigi Gryce Quintet: Complete 1954-1955 Prestige Recordings (Fresh Sound). In 1953, Farmer arrived in New York from California with Lionel Hampton's band, Gryce from his Fulbright studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Arthur Honneger. The next year they began a two-year collaboration in a quintet that amalgamated their instrumental skills with approaches to form and harmony that eased away from the rigidities of bebop. Farmer, with his lyricism and relatively soft tone, already … [Read more...]

It's a pleasure to run into old friends in places where you don't expect them. Yesterday, I encountered Zoot Sims in a dog food commercial. He was in good company; a cute pooch and a beautiful woman. The music was "Blinuet," one of several pieces George Handy wrote for the 1956 ABC Parmount album Zoot Sims Plays Alto, Tenor and Baritone. If you would like to hear all of "Blinuet" and the rest of that sterling collection, you'll find it on a CD reissue called That Old Feeling. The disc also … [Read more...]

Ted Nash, The Mancini Project (Palmetto). The multi-reed star of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra finds the jazz core of fourteen Henry Mancini songs or themes from films and television shows. There are familiar melodies here, but Nash avoids some obvious choices--the Pink Panther theme and "Moon River" for instance--to explore more obscure pieces. Among them is a gorgeous alto saxophone-piano duet with Frank Kimbrough on the ballad "Cheryl's Theme" from a movie called Sunset. Bassist Rufus … [Read more...]

The Yakima Herald-Republic asked me to write about the musicians who will appear in The Seasons Fall Festival October 10-18. The piece ran in On Magazine, the paper's weekly arts and entertainment supplement. Here is the lead paragraph: A weeklong festival of this quality would make a splash in any major city, including New York and Los Angeles. The Seasons has managed to put it together in a high-desert town of 85,000 people in the upper left corner of the nation. In the online version of the … [Read more...]

The Portland Jazz Festival's news conference yesterday yielded no information about performers for the revived festival. A pledge of major support from Alaska Airlines on Tuesday brought the festival back from the dead. The demise of the event was announced in early September, but Alaska Air came zooming in "out of the blue," as artistic director Bill Royston put it, to resuscitate the festival. At the news conference, festival officials did not name headliners or other musicians for the … [Read more...]

Rifftides Washington, DC, correspondent John Birchard went to the city's leading jazz club to catch a veteran pianist. Here is his review. Jamaican pianist Monty Alexander has arrived at Washington, DC's Blues Alley for a four-night stand. If the US is looking for a source of renewable energy, we need seek no further than the bandstand in that venerable Georgetown jazz joint. Gesturing to the wall behind the piano, Alexander told the opening night audience that he was happy to return to Blues … [Read more...]

The Portland Jazz Festival reports that it is not dead after all. Nearly a month ago, the festival announced that a lack of major sponsorship and funding caused it to be canceled. Earlier this year, the telephone company Qwest dropped out as the event's primary sponsor. With the economy limping, fuel costs high and revenues pinched, airlines are not thriving, but Alaska Air Lines is flying to the festival's rescue, aided by a coalition of former and new sponsors. Alaska Air has promised … [Read more...]