You may have been wondering why, to submit a comment to Rifftides, you are asked to type in a box two words like these samples. A curious and, possibly, irritated reader asked, Isn't it funny when they want you to type in the words at the bottom - it's like a "TEST" to see if you can make them out? Why don't they make it easy for us? Why is that? We can't cheat. We are on our own computers. That is so funny isn't it? It's not so funny if spammers grab your e-mail address and plague you with … [Read more...]

Last Friday, Leonard Lopate of WNYC radio in New York invited Bill Charlap to drop by the studio where Lopate does his Please Explain program and talk about how jazz improvisation works. Seated at the piano, Charlap spoke clearly about the raw materials of music and showed what jazz players do with them in the act of creation. He used "These Foolish Things" and the blues as his demonstration models. Lopate, a personification of the inquiring mind, asked good questions. He reached a couple of … [Read more...]