Archives for July 2008

This is a plea for abandonment of an irritant that infests the English language. The phrase is "if you will." Just now on a news program, an economic spokesman for one of the US presidential candidates (which one doesn't matter; this is not a political comment) said, "if you will" nine times in the course of a ten-minute interview. In not one of those instances did "if you will" clarify, explain or inform. It only muddied understanding and interrupted thought. I think that I'll adopt the … [Read more...]

Not long ago in a Recent Listening in Brief posting, I brushed by the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra's new CD. Brevity by no means indicated a lack of enthusiasm for the latest recorded work of that remarkable institution. Will Friedwald, the jazz critic of The New York Sun, is another VJO enthusiast. He attended the band's recent performance at New York's 92nd Street Y in the summer concert series overseen by pianist Bill Charlap. Here is some of what he wrote about Thad Jones and Jim McNeely: Fifty … [Read more...]

Summer has us in its grip. The Rifftides staff is regrouping. Assuming that you are being patient, we thank you for your patience. … [Read more...]

Our patience will achieve more than our force. -- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France.   Turn thy complexion there, Patience, thou young and rose-lipp'd cherubin; Ay, there, look grim as hell! -- Shakespeare, Othello   Patience and fortitude, Patience and fortitude, Patience and fortitude, And things will come your way. -- Patience and Fortitude, lyrics by Johnny Mercer … [Read more...]

Johnny Griffin, a tenor saxophonist whose technical command set standards for his instrument and who refused to compromise his art, died today at his home in the village of Mauprevoir in France. From Ben Ratliff's obituary of Griffin in today's New York Times: His height -- around five feet five -- earned him the nickname "The Little Giant"; his speed in bebop improvising marked him as "The Fastest Gun in the West"; a group he led with Eddie Lockjaw Davis was informally called the "tough … [Read more...]

Lately, I've been missing Tom Talbert. I went into the archive to see what Rifftides had to say about him following his death a little more than three years ago. Here is one paragraph of the remembrance: Tom died on Saturday, a month short of his eighty-first birthday. An elegant, soft-spoken man, he was an early and drastically overlooked composer, arranger and band leader on the west coast before West Coast Jazz was a category. His mid-to-late-1940s Los Angeles bands included Lucky … [Read more...]

You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down... some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today--Aaron Copland Well, American composers are the best composers. At this time in the world, we are where the energy is. We are the most diverse, the most iconoclastic, the most maverick, and the most skillful--David Del Tredici I don't hate work, composing is not work for me, it's my … [Read more...]

In a 1995 Jazz Times review of a Sylvia Syms CD, I wrote: Sylvia Syms had a vibrato like a telephone wire in a breeze. She sometimes slid around both sides of a note before she settled on it. She often added the syllable "uh" to the end of a word ("ridin' on the moon-uh"). She could pounce on a consonant and ignore the vowel next door. Some of her power notes were pure brass and there were moments when she sounded alarmingly like Carol Channing. Hey, nobody's perfect, but to many discerning … [Read more...]

McFarland In the course of writing about Gloria Cheng's new CD (in the next exhibit), I mentioned Gary McFarland's collaboration with Bill Evans, a basic repertoire item in every serious CD collection of twentieth century music. Bill Kirchner includes it in his survey of a dozen essential tracks from a variety of McFarland's and others' recordings. Kirchner's preamble places in perspective this brilliant musician, called by Gene Lees an adult prodigy, who was taken from us in a senseless bar … [Read more...]

Warne Marsh & Kenny Drew In Copenhagen (Storyville). Recorded in 1980, Marsh--a tenor sax master of subtlety and liquid imagination--plays in a quartet with Drew, one of the brightest graduates of Bud Powell's college of bebop piano knowledge. Marsh has a few "oops" moments in note choices, but hearing him think his way out of them is part of the fun. This CD has one of Marsh's most stimulating explorations of "Star Eyes," a song that inspired him for decades. The … [Read more...]

Miguel Zenón, Awake (Marsalis Music). In the DownBeat critics poll results announced in the magazine's August issue, Zenón swept the "Rising Star Alto Saxophone" category and placed sixth among established alto players. That puts him in company with Ornette Coleman, Phil Woods, Lee Konitz, Kenny Garrett and Greg Osby and ahead of the pack of alto players closer to his age. He is thirty. The timing of the release of this remarkable suite just before the voting deadline may have had something to … [Read more...]

Jo Stafford, a perfect singer, died on Wednesday. She was ninety years old. There will be obituaries this morning in newspapers all over the world. Web sites have them already. Many people who read them will be hearing of her for the first time because in the 1960s, at the top of her game, she walked away from the music business. Tributes to Jo and memories of her showed up today across the internet. My artsjournal colleague Terry Teachout has a fine one, as does Bill Reed. I know of … [Read more...]

...An Explanation: As recently as the early 1980s, relatively few major labels made jazz records. Columbia, RCA Victor, Decca, Capitol, United Artists, Warner Bros, Atlantic and Mercury were the big names. Independent companies that specialized in regular jazz releases included Prestige, Savoy, Blue Note, Riverside, Contemporary, Fantasy, Bethlehem, Verve and Commodore. Mode, Dooto, Roost, Dig, Tampa, Debut and dozens of other small labels occasionally produced and released jazz recordings on … [Read more...]

          Busy old fool, unruly Sun,                     Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run? -- John Donne, The Sun Rising Bloggers' seasons, too. Summer temptations and summer duties call. Blogging is on hold for a day or two. Or three. … [Read more...]

DevraDoWrite reports that Gerald Wiggins died this morning in Los Angeles at the age of eighty-six. Encouraged when he was a youngster by Art Tatum, for decades Wiggins was revered by listeners and musicians--particularly by other pianists. Anyone familiar with his playing could recognize him immediately by his harmonic acuity, touch, use of space and wry turns of phrase. Jimmy Rowles, one of his greatest admirers among fellow pianists, did Wiggins the rare honor of writing the liner notes for … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Ries Niemi reflects on the Slim Gaillard performance in the clip from Hellzapoppin'. It's interesting to contrast this with one of the very last Slim Gaillard clips I have seen, in the movie Absolute Beginners, from 1986. Gaillard was in real life what he plays in that movie- one of the midwives of the birth of postmodernism in music. The novel Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes, on which the movie is based, is part of a trilogy about the invention of the teenager in … [Read more...]