Archives for December 2006

The question is no doubt as old as artistic expression. Imagine a viewer of the first paleolithic paintings in the Great Hall of the Bulls in the Cave of Lascaux: Well, of course Zog is brilliant, but have you seen how he drags his mate around by her hair? It's hard to see how such a rotten guy can make those beautiful pictures. Can you hate Wagner's Teutonic superman beliefs and love "Siegfried Idyll," abhor Ezra Pound's fascist propaganda and admire The Cantos, be appalled by Stan Getz's … [Read more...]

Back home after a warm, sunny nine-day Christmas visit with our son at his house on a Southern California beach, I cleared a path through the snow to reach the house. We rested a day, then piled into the car. Today, we drove south, crossed the mighty Columbia River, rendezvoused for lunch in Oregon with a cousin I hadn't seen in twenty years, then drove the hundred miles back. It was all terrific, but that's enough travel for a while, thank you. I am making my way through the accumlated … [Read more...]

Gilad Atzmon, the fiery Israeli multi-instrumentalist, is sometimes identified as a purveyor of world music when he is not being attacked or praised for political activity that involves aggressive criticism of Israeli policies. Neither of those facets of his existence is involved in a video clip called to our attention by Rifftides reader Don Emanuel, who posted it on YouTube. Here, Atzmon is a stunning post-bop alto saxophonist with a profound appreciation of John Coltrane. Listen to his … [Read more...]

There are two types of people -- those who come into a room and say, "Well, here I am!" and those who come in and say, "Ah, there you are." -- Frederick L. Collins, author (1882-1950) … [Read more...]

Mark Stryker, the music critic for the Detroit Free Press, writes: I really appreciated your post about David Berger - a gifted and underrated musician. Now, guess where he lives - on a street on the Upper West Side named "Duke Ellington Boulevard." It's really 106th Street, but it's also named for Ellington. Berger didn't know this when a real estate agent showed him the apartment. He called his girlfriend at the time and she said, "Take it. It's an omen." The relationship didn't last but, as I … [Read more...]

In the right-hand column, you will find a new set of Doug's Picks, none having to do with Christmas or Hanukah but satisfying for holiday listening, viewing or reading. Enjoy. … [Read more...]

David Berger, leader of the Sultans of Swing, is an esteemed arranger who might be called a Duke Ellington specialist except that he is expert in all areas of big band jazz. He created The Harlem Nutcracker, incorporating new arrangements of Tchaikovsky pieces that Ellington and Billy Strayhorn didn't get around to in their Nutcracker suite. For the Essentially Ellington project of Jazz At Lincoln Center, Berger wrote a set of guidelines for the playing of Ellington's music. They cover the … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Jim Sofra writes: Excellent topic, enjoyed it immensely! We were recently listening to 'Nicas Dream' and Monk and the stories started coming out about how Nica was devoted to the musicians in her life. Heres a pic of her with Theolonius Monk, one of my favorite pix of him as well. … [Read more...]

During the next week or so of travel, family activities and general holiday merriment, the Rifftides staff will post as often as possible, but you may note a diminution of blogtivity. Rifftiders and Rifftidings will be on our minds, and we hope to hear from you by way of the Comments function at the end of each item or the e-mail address in the right-hand column. All the best to each of you for the holidays. … [Read more...]

Count Basie was college, but Duke Ellington was graduate school. --Clark Terry At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.--Miles Davis Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.--Duke Ellington … [Read more...]

The Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter was known for her friendship with Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and other leading musicians of the bop and post-bop periods. She was born a Rothschild -- as Jean Bach puts it, a vraie Rothschild -- of the English branch of the lavishly moneyed international banking family. She married into minor royalty, was an ambulance driver in the Free French resistance during World War Two, lived in Mexico for a time and popped up in New York in 1951. Her interest … [Read more...]

Tom Sancton writes from Paris about the death of Kenny Davern: Beautiful piece. I am very saddened by Kenny's death. I met up with him this summer at a JVC concert called "Clarinet Marmalade." Hadn't seen him in a couple of years, but it was a warm, good-humored reunion. I gave him a signed copy of my book, which he appreciated. He played beautifully, and was gracious enough to praise my rendition of "Burgundy Street Blues" with George Wein on piano. It was a memorable occasion and now it's the … [Read more...]

One of the hippest and most eclectic programs dealing with music and other cultural matters is Sound Check on WNYC-FM, New York. Monday, December 18, at 2:15 p.m. EDT I will be with Sound Check's host John Schaefer to discuss the best jazz recordings of 2006. To join us in the New York metropolitan area, go to 93.9 on your radio. Elsewhere, listen on WNYC's streaming internet audio. As we discussed procedure for the broadcast, I told Allison Lichter of the Sound Check staff that my list of … [Read more...]

The ferocious storm that disabled much of Seattle and other parts of western Washington state last night roared across the Cascades and into our valley, only slightly diminished. It was so powerful that the house shook when the first blast hit. The windows howled for hours as the wind tried to pry them out of their frames. The awning over the doors to the deck flapped like the mainmast of a schooner in a high gale. I expected to find it a tangle of canvas and metal in the next block this … [Read more...]

Like virtually everyone who knew him or his music, I was shocked by Kenny Davern's death on Tuesday. A heart attack--sudden and massive--took him at the age of seventy-one. The New York Times obituary by Dennis Hevesi offered the perfect description of Davern: "a radically traditional jazz clarinetist and soprano saxophonist." I listened to and enjoyed Davern for years, but met him only once, introduced in passing by pianist Dick Wellstood, the clarinetist's alter-ego in musical taste and … [Read more...]

Conventional wisdom, which--granted--isn't always dependable or even wise, holds that current sales of jazz recordings account for about three per-cent of the recorded music market and classical recordings another three per-cent. Fellow artsjournal.com blogger Greg Sandow has thoughts about that, and a look at what those figures might have been forty-six years ago. His piece just might make you contemplate the state of culture in the new century. … [Read more...]

Francis Davis, who monitors developments on the outer edge, writes in this week's Village Voice about the avant garde tenor saxophonist David S. Ware's new CD of standard ballads. Davis suggests that Ware may be playing to an audience for whom classics by Kern, Gershwin, Porter and other popular song writers of the first half of the last century have no meaning. ...who under the age of 50 has the lyrics to those songs going through his or her head now? Standards figure in the marketplace today … [Read more...]

When Pandora Internet Radio first popped up on the web a year ago, I visited it often but in the press of business and activities gradually forgot about it. Today, I remembered. I'm glad I did. Over the course of an hour or so, out of Pandora's box came, in succession, Cannonball Adderley, Von Freeman, Donald Harrison, Hank Mobley, Eddie Higgins, Dave Brubeck with Gerry Mulligan, Russell Malone, Ellis Marsalis, Clara Nunez (new to me), Elis Regina and Lee Morgan. Pandora, powered by something … [Read more...]

In the Rifftides report on the ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards ceremony the other day, I mentioned that audience members were told not to take photographs through the windows of Jazz At Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Room. If that restriction --based on a claim of copyright-- sounded strange to you, you're not alone. Noel L. Silverman, a veteran lawyer who represents many musicians, takes issue with it in this communique. I'm surprised at JALC, most especially whoever there has instructed the … [Read more...]

The Rifftides staff is back at home base following a transcontinental flight and a drive through the snowy Cascade mountains. Posting from New York a few nights ago about the ASCAP Deems Taylor bash, in my bleary-headed condition at 2:30 a.m. I forgot to mention this: My thirty-second oration wound up with, "I wish that Desmond were here because, as his friend the guitarist Jim Hall has often said, Paul would have been a great old man." Somewhere in the hall, a woman sighed. Desmond would have … [Read more...]

Rifftides offers a short list of recommended holiday music -- one old CD, two new ones. OLD: The umpteenth reissue of Vince Guaraldi's imperishable sound track to Charles Schulz's television classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas. Maybe I love it because the music is so good, so fresh, that listening to it every year is a rediscovery. Maybe it's because when I hear it, I'm bewitched by the image from long ago of two little boys in their pajamas, transfixed as they watch Linus, Lucy, Charlie Brown … [Read more...]

When I was among the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award winners in 1997, there was a handful of us, barely more than a half-dozen. There has been an expansion of categories. They include not only writers and publishers of books, articles and liner notes, but also--observing new media reality--hosts and producers of radio and television programs and proprietors of blogs. The total of winners for 2006 is thirty-seven. It's the No Writer Left Behind Program, and I am delighted not to have been left behind. … [Read more...]