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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Archives for November 2012

Other Places: NYC Jazz After Sandy

If you have been wondering how New York City’s jazz clubs are faring following the onslaught of of Tropical Storm Sandy, Nat Chinen reports in The New York Times on several of them.

Clubs form the core infrastructure of jazz in New York, and many of the leading showcases or incubators — the Blue Note, the Village Vanguard, the Jazz Standard, the Jazz Gallery, Cornelia Street Café, Smalls, the Zinc Bar, the 55 Bar — are in the part of Manhattan that recently came to be known as the dead zone. Jazz fans regard these rooms as an always-on utility, so their closing was felt even in a city confronting more pressing concerns. The power failure downtown meant canceled bookings and many thousands of dollars in lost revenue, a serious hit in a business of slim margins.

To read the details, click here.

Up North, They’re Celebrating Ed Bickert

Ed Bickert will observe his 80th birthday on November 29, but some of his admirers are starting the celebration early. They will honor the guitarist, one of Canada’s foremost jazz artists, Tuesday evening, November 6, at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto. Among the celebrants will be members of the music’s Canadian elite; Don Thompson, Lorne Lofsky, Mike Murley, Neil Swainson, Terry Clarke, Steve Wallace and many others. Veteran CBC jazz broadcaster Katie Malloch will host the event. The network will record the festivities and broadcast them nationwide on Bickert’s birthday.

Bickert’s decades of work with Moe Koffman, Rob McConnell, Phil Nimmons and as one of Canada’s most reliable studio musicians earned him great admiration. In the 1970s Paul Desmond—at the urging of his longtime guitar colleague Jim Hall—began using Bickert as a sideman and recording with him. The guitarist moved into the international spotlight as a member of what Desmond enjoyed calling “The Canadian Quartet,” which also included Don Thompson on bass and Terry Clarke or Jerry Fuller on drums. In his liner notes for The Paul Desmond Quartet Live, recorded at Bourbon Street in Toronto, here’s what Desmond wrote about Bickert:

When I work with Ed, I find myself turning around several times a night to count the strings on his guitar… how does he get to play chorus after chorus of chord sequences which could not possibly sound better on a keyboard? Or, in some cases, written for orchestra? This all becomes more impressive when I play a tape of Ed’s for a guitar player and suddenly realize, between the hypnotized gaze of fascination and the flicker of disbelief, that what I had cherished as a musical phrase is also totally impossible to play on guitar.

When I was writing Take Five: The Public and Private Live of Paul Desmond, I talked with Bickert about the experience from his viewpoint. He and Thompson used the same adjectives, “loose,” “easy-going.”

“We sort of jelled right away and it felt really good,” Bickert said. “The music that Paul played was always melodic and pleasant, as opposed to the angry fireworks kind of things that a lot of people were doing. That suited me just fine. Paul was such an easy-going person, and it was contagious for the rest of us going along that route.”

Bickert retired a few years ago, but not before he made this European festival appearance with bassist Dave Young and drummer Terry Clarke.

While we’re at it, here’s another beautiful Bickert performance, with Don Thompson, bass, and Claude Ranger, drums. Thanks to Ted O’Reilly for alerting me to this. The video quality is a bit dodgy. The sound and the playing are not.

For more about Desmond, Bickert, The Canadian Quartet and a strange recording episode, go here, then here. Finally, Bickert’s colleague Steve Wallace has a heartfelt tribute—with videos—on the CBC website.

Woods And Geller: In The Altosphere


This is a busy week for birthdays of major jazz artists: On Tuesday it was Clifford Brown’s. Today belongs to two musicians who have been in the vanguard of the legion of alto saxophonists—often called Bird’s children—who were inspired in the 1940s by Charlie Parker. One of the children, Herb Geller (pictured right) turns 84. The other, Phil Woods (pictured left), is 81 today. Both are traveling the world and performing regularly. Mr. Geller plays tomorrow night at Birdland in Hamburg, Germany, where he lives. Here he is about a year ago with pianist Pedro Guedes at the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon as part of the Dose Dupla concerts.

Three months ago, Phil Woods appeared with his quintet at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola in New York City. His colleagues are Bill Mays, piano; Bryan Lynch, trumpet; Steve Gilmore, bass; Bill Goodwin, drums. The piece is a beautifully crafted Mays arrangement of “The Very Thought of You.”

Happy birthday, Herb. Happy birthday, Phil.
Avanti

Autumn Leaves, 2012

I wanted to show you the maple tree on the west side of the house at its peak of fall glory. The question was, whose version of “Autumn Leaves” should accompany it? I considered those by Miles Davis, Eva Cassidy, Eddie Higgins, Doris Day, Cannonball Adderley, Sarah Vaughan, Nat Cole—including one of Cole singing the song in Japanese—and a couple of dozen others. In the end it came down to Bill Evans, from Portrait In Jazz, recorded on December 28, 1959, with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian.

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Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, … [MORE]

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