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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.

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 for you. Last week the TCM channel had a marathon of Mercer movies beginning in the late 30's and I had to sit through hours of nonsense just to see him perform. Worth its wait in gold, though.

Speaking of "P.S. I Love You": I learned it as a kid from Johnny Mathis (I think it was the flip side on a 45 of "Chances Are"). When I conduct for Diana she occasionally sings it as a solo feature and I never fail to choke up. The first time I heard her do it I could hardly conduct the next number from weeping uncontrollably. The way she sings it, It's the first time I really understood that the person writing has nothing in particular to say and that everything is said behind the words.

I'm feeling very sad about the loss of it all. I was born way after my time.

But how can any of this compare to the new song my 9 year old son is learning from his guitar teacher, "Smells Like Teen Spirit"?

The Fresh Air Mercer program is archived here.

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 your town doesn't have an NPR station, the network will archive the program here, usually late the day of the broadcast.

We may presume that, whatever Ms. Gross has up her sleeve, Becky and Dave will accentuate the positive, among other things. I couldn't find a clip of Mercer singing that famous song of his, but that's all right because we can enjoy him with Bing Crosby in a recently unearthed television performance. It's not jazz, except in the sense that these guys were marinated in jazz from the 1920s on. But, hey, Mercer mentions Bix.

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 improvisations. Rosenwinkel's assurance and thoughtfulness are consistent in this set of standards, jazz classics and one original. Bassist Eric Revis and drummer Eric Harland are capable of speed and intensity, but here they are at one with Rosenwinkel's thoughtfulness. The trio gives particularly loving treatment to Thelonious Monk's title tune, Wayne Shorter's "Ana Maria" and the standard ballad "More Than You Know." The album's longest track begins with Rosenwinkel's leisurely unaccompanied introduction to his "East Coast Love Affair," a tune beginning to show staying power in the jazz repertoire.

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 to choose the best of anything, even the hundred best, opens himself up to the ire of fans. Mr. Gayford's list, published on November 10, has already attracted a batch of "how could you leave out ___________" complaints. Please direct yours to the Telegraph and Mr. Gayford, not to Rifftides. To see the list, go here.

How could he leave out Woody Herman?

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 bassist Steve LaSpina and drummer Ben Riley, and blends the tenor saxophone of the veteran Benny Golson and the trumpet of newcomer Ryan Kisor in quintet arrangements. In the CD's three blues pieces, notably on John Coltrane's "Mr. P.C.," Katz discloses himself as one of the most canny modern jazz blues players.

Admired for his harmonic knowledge and the subtlety of his touch, Katz was a favorite of the Modern Jazz Quartet's pianist and music director John Lewis, who arranged for his first recording contract. In his days as one of New York's busiest utility players, Katz worked with with Tony Scott, Roy Eldridge, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Kenny Dorham, and Carmen McRae, among many others. He came to the attention of a wide audience with the success of Benny Carter's Further Definitions, on which he was the pianist in Carter's spectacularly successful mixed marriage of swing and bop musicians. His collaborations with singer Helen Merrill, on the Milestone recordings The Feeling is Mutual and A Shade of Difference, fell out of print as vinyl albums, but Mosaic Records rescued them in a CD reissue. With Orrin Keepnews, Katz founded the short-lived but productive Milestone label.

For a comprehensive obitutary of Dick Katz, see Ben Ratliff's New York Times article. For further insights through an interview with Katz, go to this installment of Marc Myers' JazzWax. On its web site, WNYC-FM in New York has a video made last May of Katz reminiscing and playing with his contemporaries vibraharpist Teddy Charles, bassist Bill Crow and drummer Ron Free. The Rifftides staff thanks WNYC for permission to show it to you.

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 brilliantly meets the challenges he sets himself in his writing. Drawing on his mentor Bob Brookmeyer's example of originality and fearless innovation, Hollenbeck tempers the contemporaneity of his ideas with glances into the rear-view mirror of his creative imagination. Hence, his amusing expansion of the main idea of Thelonious Monk's "Four In One" into "Foreign One." Gary Versace's neo-boogie piano introduction sets up an expanding and contracting field of rhythmic patterns, orchestral textures and solos. It ends in a fiesta of intersecting lines across the brass and reeds, melding into 18 concluding quarter notes struck in unison on piano and cymbals, as insistent as a railroad crossing's warning signal.

"Eternal Interlude," the title piece, is nearly 20 minutes of impressionism in which the sensation of floating is sustained through energy created by the contrast between long ensemble tones centered on flutes, and percussive effects of marimba, piano and drums. In this piece, the exquisite subtlety in Hollenbeck's writing is reminiscent of what the late Gary McFarland used to achieve with woodwinds. Much the same can be said of "The Cloud," which has the added elements of whistlers, a section of aphorisms spoken by Theo Bleckmann and Bleckmann's wordless vocalizing. "Perseverance" comes as close to traditional big band writing as we're likely to hear from Hollenbeck. The resemblance is mostly in contrapuntal lines between brass and reeds, a succession of rowsing, even rowdy, saxophone solos and a masterly drum solo.

In "Guarana," infectious Latin rhythms and minimalist repetition work hand in hand. "No Boat" is a two-minute tone poem, full-bodied but subdued. It has the effect of a closing prayer.

Yesterday was the Marine Corps' 234th birthday. Today is Veterans Day and Ernestine
Anderson's birthday. To celebrate all three, I gave the Rifftides staff the day off and my Italian friend Vigorelli Bianchi took me on a long, looping tour of this big old valley.

Back to work tomorrow. The plan is to do a bit of catching up, with brief reviews of additional recent, and maybe a few not-so-recent releases.

Linda Oh, Entry (Linda Oh Music). Oh is a 25-year-old Chinese from Malaysia who grew up in Australia, plays bass and has a Masters degree from the Manhattan School of Music. Her music, as eclectic as she, eludes classification except as fresh and uncompromising. She achieves remarkable unity using spare instrumentation, nicely crafted compositions and sidemen who listen closely and react to her, as she does to them. Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and drummer Obed Calvaire share Oh's instrumental skill and her economical application of it. Her acoustic bass sound is firm, clear and deep. She has no evident tendency toward invading guitar territory, as many young bassists do, and she makes satisfying note choices even in material that might encourage the randomness of free jazz.

The music has moments of annunciatory boldness--there is a kind of bebop fanfare in "Gunners"--but even at its most complex and active, Oh, Akinmusire and Calvaire exercise the restraint of artistic judgment. In "Numero Uno," Akinmusire overdubs himself into a brass choir of contrapuntal voices before the piece evolves into a series of thoughtful solos and a stretch of interactive improvisation. The swift "Fourth Limb" is all three-way interaction for its first half, with sparkling trumpet work from Akinmusire over Calvaire's pointillist drumming, then a bass solo that manages coherence at a demanding tempo. Though the CD package gives no composer credits, all of the pieces but one seem to be by Oh. The album concludes with the contrast of intensity and, ultimately, peacefulness in a cover of The Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Soul to Squeeze." This is the debut recording of a musician who leaves the listener with a keen sense that she knows who she is and where she is headed. It is available as a CD here or an MP3 download here.

Because of the high volume of comments Rifftides received following our piece on the death of pianist Eddie Higgins, the staff thought there might be widespread interest in a memorial concert. We bring you the announcement as it arrived by e-mail from Florida. This will give you time to make plans to fly in from, say, Tokyo or St. Thomas.

There will be a Jam Session tribute to Eddie Higgins on Sunday, December 6 from 4pm to 6pm in the ArtServe auditorium at 1350 E. Sunrise Blvd.

(Ft. Lauderdale Library branch)

Haydn (Eddie) Higgins 1932 to 2009

Pot Luck finger food, please. Soft drinks provided. BYOB.

Free admission.

Contributions to the Haydn (Eddie) Higgins Memorial Music Scholarship Fund
will be gratefully appreciated.
For information about the jam session and scholarship, call 954-524-0805.

I think Haydn would like the BYOB part.