Archives for November 2009

Cindy (Schreiber) Scontriano writes from California: I just heard your NPR interview about Vince Guaraldi. I really enjoyed it and then I had a flash from the past and wanted to ask you a few questions. I think I met Vince as a little girl. My uncle played the stand-up bass in Cal Tjader's band in … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Len Gardner writes: I recently purchased and viewed the Anita O'Day DVD in the Jazz Icons series. I am writing to you, Doug, because you wrote the fine liner notes. What I'd really like to do is write to Anita, but that is no longer possible. What a revelation this DVD is! How … [Read more...]

In the days when commercial television networks in the United States were still working their way toward the shallowness we know and love today and cable networks did not exist, there was an NBC-TV program called The Subject Is Jazz. Its host was the cultural critic Gilbert Seldes. One 1958 … [Read more...]

National Public Radio has activated a link to my interview with Scott Simon about Vince Guaraldi. This is it. … [Read more...]

Hal Weary, A Rendezvous with Déjà Vu (halwearyjazz). Weary is a pianist from the west on the rise in New York City. The quintet numbers on his debut CD draw on the hard-bop/gospel spirit of Horace Silver and Art Blakey. On "Tenderly," he touches on but soon departs from Erroll Garner. … [Read more...]

Tomorrow morning, November 28, I will be with Scott Simon, host of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Saturday to discuss Vince Guaraldi. I had the privilege of writing the essay accompanying the new two-CD compilation of Guaraldi recordings. Celebrated for his Charlie Brown Christmas music, … [Read more...]

Among the friends of Eddie Locke who took part in his memorial service in Manhattan on November 22 was bassist and author Bill Crow. Locke, a stalwart drummer based in New York for more than five decades, died last September at the age of 79. Bill prepared this report for Rifftides. At St. Peter's … [Read more...]

Wadada Leo Smith's Golden Quartet, Spiritual-Dimensions (Cuneiform). The exploratory trumpeter follows up last year's triumphal Tabligh with a reshuffled quartet and goes himself one better by adding an excursion into electronic territory. The first CD again has Vijay Iyer at the piano and … [Read more...]

If Paul Desmond had lived, he would be 85 years old today. The last birthday he celebrated fell on Thanksgiving, 1976. For the occasion, Devra Hall cooked a turkey dinner for Desmond and her parents, Jim and Jane. She took the photograph that afternoon. Here's the story of the end of that part of … [Read more...]

Not that Rifftides intends to become a clearing house for performance announcements, but readers do sometimes send valuable listening information. Jack Kenny writes from London: You might want to alert your readers to this. The London Jazz Festival has just finished. I went to to the Carla concert … [Read more...]

It comes from Bill Kirchner, frequent Rifftides commenter, stalwart broadcaster and man of many parts, usually on reed instruments in the key of B-flat. Recently, I taped my next one-hour show for the "Jazz From the Archives" series. Presented by the Institute of Jazz Studies, the series runs every … [Read more...]

Jazz History Preservation Not all of the reconstruction work to be done in New Orleans is a result of Katrina's damage. One of the city's jazz landmarks has been falling apart for decades. Now, it appears that Crescent City officialdom may be about to ride to the rescue of the Halfway House. It … [Read more...]

Before the Rifftides staff gets back to business as usual, whatever that is, we're finding it difficult to let go of thoughts about Johnny Mercer. Lines from his songs won't go away -- ever. There's a dance pavillion in the rain, All shuttered down... I remember, too, a distant bell and stars that … [Read more...]

Alan Broadbent--pianist, composer, arranger, conductor for Diana Krall and Natalie Cole, among others--wrote in response to the Fresh Air program promoted in the previous exhibit. Thanks for posting Dave and Rebecca's Fresh Air show which I have just finished listening to and would have missed but … [Read more...]

Today is the 100th anniversary of Johnny Mercer's birth. To celebrate it, Dave Frishberg and Rebecca Kilgore will be the guests on National Public Radio's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. See your local listings for station and time, or check here. If you live somewhere other than the United States or if … [Read more...]

Kurt Rosenwinkel, Reflections (Wommusic). From his first recordings in the 1990s, Rosenwinkel's guitar playing has had an element of pensiveness. Regardless of tempo, complexity or adrenalin-fueled collaborators, he radiates the air of a man who won't hurry through even his most complex … [Read more...]

Every once in a while another 100 Best Jazz Recordings list pops up. A new one is batting about the ethernet. This time the source is the UK newspaper the Telegraph. The compiler is Martin Gayford, an art critic, biographer and sometime jazz critic. It's a good list, but anyone who has the temerity … [Read more...]

Dick Katz, The Line Forms Here (Reservoir). The news of Katz's death at 85 last week sent me to the shelf for this 1996 recording. It covers the range of his talents as pianist, composer and arranger. He plays alone in a moving performance of Duke Ellington's "Lotus Blossom," in a trio supported by … [Read more...]

John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, Eternal Interlude (Sunnyside). The ensemble is Large, all right, in the size of the band -- 20 pieces -- and in the expansiveness of Hollenbeck's vision. He is a composer who moves into, out of and beyond established categories of musical thinking and a drummer who … [Read more...]