On the Jazzhouse web site, W. Royal Stokes posts a valuable column recommending recent jazz, blues and pop photography and art books. It is an extensive list, just in time for Christmas. Stokes gives each book a thorough paragraph of review and a link to an online source for purchase. Here is some of what he writes about Hank O'Neal's Ghosts of Harlem, a recent Doug's Pick: That he shot them with an ancient wooden view camera, setting up lights, inserting a plate, and throwing a cloth over his … [Read more...]

Thanks to Bill Royston for calling our attention to a strange turn of events at a jazz festival in Spain. Here is beginning of The Guardian's story about the incident: Jazzman Larry Ochs has seen many things during 40 years playing his saxophone around the world but, until this week, nobody had ever called the police on him. That changed on Monday night however, when's Spain's pistol-carrying Civil Guard police force descended on the Sigüenza Jazz festival to investigate allegations that Ochs's … [Read more...]

The Kennedy Center Honors ceremony held last Sunday will be televised on CBS December 29. In the meantime, the White House has released a clip of President Obama's informal talk at the reception before the event. It runs about 18 minutes, with the camera on the President the whole time. The following video, nicely edited and produced, incorporates a shortened version of his remarks and interaction with the honorees, Dave Brubeck, Mel Brooks, Grace Bumbry, Robert De Niro and Bruce Springsteen. I … [Read more...]

It was six degrees above zero here last night, but the calendar says we have eleven more days until winter. Before autumn leaves, let's enjoy Bill Evans playing his signature arrangement of one of his favorite pieces. This was Copenhagen in 1965, with Eddie Gomez on bass and Alex Riel playing drums. There are several videos of Evans playing the song, but this one comes closest to the spirit of the version he first recorded in Portrait In Jazz, the 1959 album that brought him to wider attention … [Read more...]

Indiana Public Media's Night Lights has posted on the internet a one-hour program about Vince Guaraldi. The host, David Brent Johnson, traces the pianist's career, plays a broad selection of his recordings and talks with guitarist Eddie Duran, Charlie Brown specials producer Lee Mendelson, Guaraldi's son David, pianist Luke Gillespie providing analysis, and others who were close to Guaraldi. I am pleased to be included in the broadcast. To hear It's Jazz, Charlie Brown: The Vince Guaraldi Story, … [Read more...]

The Kennedy Center Honors for 2009 went last night to Dave Brubeck on his 89th birthday, and to Mel Brooks, Grace Bumbry, Robert De Niro and Bruce Springsteen. CBS-TV will broadcast two hours of highlights from the ceremony at 9 pm EST on December 29. This morning's papers and tonight's newscasts will be full of the story. Googling the name of the event will turn up dozens of items on the web. Brooks, Brubeck, Bumbry, De Niro, Springsteen For the jazz community, of course, the big news is the … [Read more...]

It has been a long while since the Rifftides staff acknowledged the extent of our readership. These are just a few of the places where you have recently allowed us into your computers. EUROPE Cagliari, Italy Luxembourg, Belgium Andover, Hampshire, UK London, England Dublin, Ireland Viskafors, Sweden Skara, Sweden Zurich, Switzerland Prague, Czech Republic Berlin, Germany Moscow, Russia Rekyavik, Iceland ASIA Bangkok, Thailand Tokyo, Japan Kyoto, Japan Seoul, South Korea Beijing, China Mumbai, … [Read more...]

The Rifftides staff thought you would be interested in this announcement from Jim Wilke of an imminent broadcast pairing. Besides, the photographs by Jim Levitt are too good not to use. Tenor saxophonists Hadley Caliman and Pete Christlieb first played together in LA in the 60s and have remained friends ever since. They reunited in Seattle last month to record a CD together for Origin Records and to play at The Ballard Jazz Walk. Highlights from their reunion (with Bill Anschell, Chuck … [Read more...]

Art Blakey, Live in '65 (Jazz Icons). The Blakey entry in the new Jazz Icons DVD release will come as a surprise even to many of the drummer's most persistent fans. The band it presents in France was not an edition of Blakey's celebrated Jazz Messengers, but a short-lived quintet billed in the opening credits as "Les Art Blakey's New Jazzmen." Assembled for a European tour, it had played a few concerts by the time it appeared at the Palais de la Mutualite as part of the Paris Jazz Festival. … [Read more...]

Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that's it. No America, no jazz. I've seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn't have a damn thing to do with Africa. Music washes away the dust of every day life. … [Read more...]

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 the sixties and seventies. His name was Freddie Schreiber, from Seattle. I have his most famous LP, Saturday/Sunday Night at the Blackhawk. Did you happen to know uncle Freddie and if so, do you have … [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 marvelous her artistry is! Too often, I buy a CD or DVD and am disappointed. Not this time. This DVD exceeded my expectations, which were already high. For those who haven't yet seen it, be prepared to … [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 installment of the series explored the proposition that a fairly new tributary of the jazz mainstream ran cooler than the jazz that preceded it. The musicians were Lee Konitz, alto saxophone; Warne Marsh, … [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. Unaccompanied on "Praise Medley" he seems to refer to the Ellington of "Reflections in D." Weary and his sidemen, saxophonist Shantawn Kendrick, trumpet Kenyatta Beasley, bassist Gregory Williams and drummer … [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, Guaraldi is the focus of a Weekend Edition feature. Mr. Simon and I will discuss the pianist's career from his early years as a sideman to his fame as the musical alter-ego of cartoonist Charles … [Read more...]