Graham Collier died last night at home in Greece. A British composer, author and bandleader on the forward edge of modern music, Collier was 74. Early reports are that he succumbed suddenly to a massive heart attack or stroke. From the announcement by Birmingham Jazz:

Graham Collier had a major influence on British jazz, being one of the first contemporary jazz composers to write extended works for a large ensemble, and one of the first jazz people to receive commissions and tours funded by the Arts Council. He also played an important role in the development of the Loose Tubes Big Band of the 1980s which came out of a big band workshop that Graham ran at the time. He also established the Jazz Course at the Royal Academy of Music in London and and many of the key jazz musicians of the 2000s are graduates of that course.

For a Collier biography and discography, click here.

One of his seven books was a Rifftides recommendation in 2009:

Graham Collier, The Jazz Composer: Moving Music Off The Paper (Northway). The title reads like that of a textbook, but this evaluation of the art is accessible to any layman with ears. Contradicting conventional wisdom about some composers, Collier nudges Thad Jones from his pedestal, for instance, and shrugs off Bill Holman with minor praise. He puts in perspective Ellington’s habit of borrowing and praises Gil Evans nearly without reservation. Whether or not you agree with Collier, he backs his positions with evidence and references and makes readers think hard about what they listen to. This is an important book.

From around the same time, here is my review of a Collier album released in 2009:

Graham Collier, directing 14 Jackson Pollocks (GCM). Long before he wrote his recent book, Graham Collier’s music made it plain that Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Gil Evans were profound influences on his work. Collier followed Ellington’s and Mingus’s lead in fashioning pieces with his soloists in mind rather than the common concept of arrangements into which a leader could plug whatever soloist was at hand. As for Evans, I must say that I heard in Collier’s earlier recordings more of the Evans of “La Nevada” or “El Matador” – roiling, abstract patterns under soloists — than of the tonal tapestries in, say, Sketches of Spain. I still do. Collier amalgamated his inspirations into an orchestral style that coalesced at a moment in the late 1960s when musicians and listeners in Great Britain were ready to expand their ideas about what constituted jazz.

Collier was his own bassist for years before he concentrated entirely on composing, arranging and leading. Among the members of his bands were adventurous players including saxophonists John Surman and Art Themen, trumpeters Kenny Wheeler and Harry Beckett and drummer John Marshall. In directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, Collier reaches distillation of the notion that the orchestra, the written music and the improvising soloist comprise a trinity, each element inseparable from the other. The music makes obvious what the CD title means, unless you don’t know who Jackson Pollock was.

The two-CD set consists of music recorded at concerts in London in 1997 and 2004. Themen, Marshall and the astonishing Beckett are among the players, along with pianist Roger Dean, bassist Jeff Clyne and others who long since absorbed Collier’s ethos of individual independence amidst collective dependence.

The music has something in common with the free jazz that emerged in the United States in the sixties, but where free jazz often fell by the weight of its pretensions of liberation from guidelines, Collier’s coalesces around his frameworks. His composing and arranging dictates, or suggests, shape, harmonic character and rhythmic direction of the solos. He infuses much of his music with wry humor at which titles like “Between a Donkey and a Rolls Royce” and “An Alternate Low Circus Ballad” can only hint. In any case, humor is only an element In Collier’s work, important but minor. He produces serious music that makes demands on its listeners and gives generous compensation to those who welcome it on its terms.

At the bottom of the opening page of Collier’s website there is a link to a 13-minute audio montage that can serve as an introduction to his music.

Collier titled a 2007 composition “From Acorns” for Derby Jazz, an organization that promotes development of jazz in the British city of Derby. Collier conducted a band of young musicians with two guest soloists, his colleague the veteran trumpeter Harry Beckett and pianist John Bailey. Collier constructed the piece so that some of the inexperienced youngsters were required to improvise free solos. In discussing the music, he synthesized some of his forthright philosophy about how jazz should be made and—at the end—how it should be supported.

Graham Collier, RIP. At Rifftides, we shall miss his e-mail messages and his resolute comments. The many recordings he left mean that we won’t have to miss his music.

Dick Bank has produced a dozen albums led by or featuring the pianist Jan Lundgren. He sends a communiqué about a Lundgren performance in tandem with Bengt Hallberg, a fellow Swedish pianist 34 years his senior. In the bebop years, Hallberg was a favorite pianist of visiting players including Stan Getz, with whom he was featured on Getz’s influential recording that introduced “Dear Old Stocklholm” to American listeners. Many commentators consider Lundgren the successor to Hallberg in touch, harmonic acuity and melodic invention. Mr. Bank writes:

Friday, September 9 at 7:30 at the venerable Konserthuset in Stockholm,

Together Again For The First Time!

Bengt Hallberg and Jan Lundgren.

The Konserhuset is sold out (1200 capacity). They’ll be playing tunes like “All the Things You Are,” “Lover Man,” “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Sophisticated Lady,” plus original compositions for two pianos.

Jan is quite thrilled about it. Hallberg is the last living icon from the golden years of Swedish jazz. He will be 79 on Tuesday (same day as Mel Tormé and Dick Haymes and the day after Jesse Owens!

Jan previously recorded with Swedish jazz legends Arne Domnérus and Putte Wickman. Finally, he is paired with Hallberg. Sadly, it won’t be recorded.

It was ten years ago that Jan and Pete Jolly recorded Collaboration, which critic Alun Morgan called, “The best two-piano album, both technically and musically, ever produced.”

For more information about the event, go here. If you happen not to read Swedish, there’s an English translation option. If you read neither, Konserthuset makes available translations from Afrikaans to Yiddish. What, no Zulu?

Digging with their usual efficiency, the Rifftides staff has discovered that although the concert will not be recorded, Lundgren and Hallberg have made a two-piano album. It seems to be available at this website.

If you have forgotten or never heard the liquidity of Hallberg’s work, there is a prime example from 1953 in his accompaniment and solo in this recording by Clifford Brown and Art Farmer with the Swedish All Stars. The first trumpet solo is by Farmer. The other players are Lars Gullin, baritone saxophone; Ã…ke Persson, trombone; Arne Domnérus, alto saxophone; Gunnar Johnson, bass; and Jack Norén, drums. The tune is “Falling in Love With Love.”

Jimmy Rowles is an idol of a broad range of musicians and listeners. For more than four decades, he was in demand by premier jazz artists and conductors of studio orchestras. He was a favorite pianist of Ben Webster, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Benny Carter, Barney Kessel, Gary Foster and Harry Edison, to name a few of those who cherished his touch, swing and harmonic genius. Rowles is gone, but his influence lives on in the work of Bill Charlap, Alan Broadbent, Jan Lundgren and Bill Mays, among scores of other pianists, and also because of recordings of his compositions; Wayne Shorter’s version of “502 Blues,” for example, and Stan Getz’s of “The Peacocks” (with Rowles on piano). He is also memorable for his nonpareil accompaniments of singers including Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Carol Sloane and—early in Rowles’s career—Bing Crosby.

Rowles died 15 years ago in Southern California at the age of 77. Now, his son has taken his father’s and mother’s ashes to where he feels his parents always wanted to return. Jim Kershner tells the story and a good deal of Rowles’s history in Jimmy’s and Dorothy’s hometown paper, the Spokane, Washington, Spokesman Review. To read it, click here.

Many musicians and listeners treasured Jimmy equally for his singing and his piano playing. He put the two talents together unlike anyone else. Here’s a good way to remember him.

Rowles was a master at recalling or unearthing wonderful half-forgotten songs. He sings several of them on his 1994 Lilac Time album, which is itself becoming a rarity.

Terri Hinte provides this piece of news:

Sonny Rollins is one of five individuals who have been selected to receive the Kennedy Center Honors of 2011, it was announced today by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. These individuals’ “collective artistry has contributed significantly to the cultural life of our nation and the world,” said Kennedy Center Chairman David M. Rubenstein.



Along with fellow recipients singer Barbara Cook, singer and songwriter Neil Diamond, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and actress Meryl Streep, Rollins will be honored at the 34th annual national celebration of the arts on December 4.
”I am deeply appreciative of this great honor,” says Rollins, who turns 81 today.

“In honoring me, the Kennedy Center honors jazz, America’s classical music. For that, I am very grateful.”



Other jazz artists who have been Kennedy Center Honorees are: Ella Fitzgerald (1978), Count Basie (1981), Benny Goodman (1982), Dizzy Gillespie (1990), Lionel Hampton (1992), Benny Carter (1996), Quincy Jones (2001), and Dave Brubeck (2009).

Rollins’s “masterful improvisation and powerful presence have infused the truly American art form of jazz with passion and energy,” said Rubenstein.

2011 is a good year for Rollins in the recognition department. In March in a White House ceremony, President Obama awarded him the Medal of the Arts. Rollins accepted “on behalf of the gods of our music.”

Bill Kirchner’s Jazz From The Archives next Sunday will feature Carol Fredette, a singer whose ability is far greater than her renown. Kirchner’s alert to the broadcast describes her as “a musicians’ and insiders’ favorite” and quotes Stan Getz: (“Carol Fredette possesses a very vivid voice, a voice of great quality. She’s as good as they come.” Bill promises several recordings featuring Fredette with pianist Steve Kuhn (pictured), a longtime collaborator. Here is a 2009 Rifftides mini-review of one of her albums.

Carol Fredette, Everything In Time (Soundbrush). This is Fredette’s first CD in more than a decade, and worth waiting for. I haven’t heard anyone do the Bing Crosby feature “Love Thy Neighbor” since John Coltrane in the 1950s. Fredette sings it with joy in her voice to equal the whooping exuberance of Trane’s solo. Her laughing, quacking take on the bossa nova classic “O Pato” is just one more of 15 reasons to admire this classy collection.

Jazz From The Archives will air at 11 pm EDT on WBGO-FM, 88.3, Newark, New Jersey, and around the world on the internet on WBGO’s website. When you go there, click on “Listen Now.”

In the early 1990s, as I was walking past a movie house on West 56th Street in New York, I spotted William Schuman in line with two women. I had seen them the night before at a concert tribute to him at Merkin Hall. Impulsively, I stopped, introduced myself and told him how much his music meant to me. He introduced me to his wife and her sister and said, “It’s always good to meet someone who listens.”

I have been listening to Schuman (1910-1992) for decades and intending for a long time to post something about this American composer whom I extravagantly admire. It puzzles me that, in common with Carol Fredette, he has never had the extent of performance or audience acceptance that his music warrants. In my notes, I recently ran across this from fellow artsjournal.com blogger and composer Kyle Gann:

There is a prejudice abroad that Schuman’s composing career was only propped up by his powerful position as President of first Juilliard and then Lincoln Center. Don’t you believe it.

To read all of Gann’s 2008 appreciation of Schuman, go here. The link in his post to an MP3 sample of Schuman’s Symphony No. 8 has expired, but you can hear the entire work on this CD in a superb performance by Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony.

If you would like to know more about Schuman, this video will fill you in on his history. Much of the story is in his own words. At the end, you’ll find a guide to the music used as background in the short film.

A Canadian, David Palmquist, and a Swede, Carl Hallstrom, have erected a new website devoted to Steve Voce’s writings about Duke Ellington and Ellingtonia. Voce is the veteran British broadcaster and author whom Palmquist and Hallstrom describe this way:

Steve broadcast for BBC Radio for more than 50 years and for 35 of them presented his own ‘Jazz Panorama’ programme. During these broadcasts he would telephone jazz musicians in the United States and talk to them live on air for an hour at a time. Steve has been writing a monthly column in Jazz Journal for more than 50 years and keeps insisting to the Editor that it is time he was taken out and shot – so that his obituary could appear in The Independent newspaper, for whom he writes all the obituaries for jazz musicians. Oh, and he wrote a book on Woody Herman but, since a fortnight after publication everyone except his mother had forgotten about it, he fell back exhausted and decided never to write a book again.

A sample lead paragraph from a 1966 Voce article in Jazz Journal:

‘A hundred shillings for bed and breakfast!’ The Ellingtonians were looking aghast at the bills which the Liverpool hotel had issued to them in advance. Lawrence Brown was fatalistic about the whole thing, and obviously regarded it as a mere extension of the ill-fortune which had made him a musician in the first place. I’m happy to report that he is still playing as well as ever, and still claiming loudly that his career is at an end, his lip is ruined, and that he could never play the trombone anyway. ‘All the muted work has ruined my lip.’

Good stuff. To visit the new Voce site, go here.

Requests keep coming for photographs from cycling expeditions. Here’s one from the latest. A number of people in the countryside hereabouts raise llamas for fun or profit. High on a hilltop, I came across this herd grazing, which is what llamas do when they’re not sleeping, packing or curiously watching passersby.

It seems logical to follow the photo with music by Peruvians, in this case Gabriel Alegria and his Afro-Peruvian Sextet at their club, Tutuma, on New York City’s east side.

Gabriel Alegria,trumpet; Yuri Juarez, guitar; Huevito Lobaton, cajon, cajita, quijada (jawbone); Ramone Debruyn bass; Shirazette Tinnen, drumset and cajon; Laurandrea Leguia, saxophone

Judith Schlesinger writes about one manifestation of a trend that is not confined to New York.

For many years, the Blue Note club in NYC, except for Monday night fill-ins, was pretty much booking people who could call themselves “jazz artists” without anybody snickering or throwing things.

Until now. On September 20, which is not a Monday, the Blue Note “jazz” club will feature… Kenny G.

OK, it’s a Tuesday, not a weekend. And one night only. But still.

Dr. Schlesinger is a contributor to All About Jazz. Her book The Insanity Hoax: Exposing the Myth of the Mad Genius, will be published in December.

Bill Crow sent an alert to a clip of the amazing musician Damian Draghici. Tricked by memory, I could have sworn that I had posted the video a few months ago, but the staff’s thorough search of the Rifftides archive turned up no trace of it. Draghici is a Romanian Gypsy as celebrated in his country for activism in behalf of the Roma people as for his mastery of the pan flute, an instrument rarely encountered in your average jam session. He studied at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, worked in Los Angeles and London and has toured extensively.

This performance is from a televised concert late last year in Bucharest. With Draghici are Eddie Daniels, clarinet; Randy Porter, piano; Scott Steed, bass; and Reggie Jackson, drums. Over the years, Charlie Parker’s (or possibly Miles Davis’s) “Donna Lee” has picked up velocity as musicians have mastered its linear complexity. This opening chorus probably sets a new land speed record.

For biographical information about Damian Draghici, go here.

Here’s something to engross you as you prepare for a new week. A man named Dan Cohen animates music in the most fundamental and entertaining way. You have no doubt heard the Miles Davis Sextet playing “So What” often enough that you can sing along with the solos. Well, in fairness, it would require a remarkably flexible voice to stay in unison with Coltrane, but enjoy singing along—or reading along—with Mr. Cohen’s tour of one of the great jazz recordings.

Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, 1959.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Harry Connick and Branford Marsalis vowed to see that New Orleans musicians affected by the storm would get long-term help. Six years of their hard work and the cooperation of hundreds of others are about to make a tangible difference in the city’s musical community and beyond. A new center named in honor of Ellis Marsalis (pictured)—father of four famous sons in jazz and teacher of hundreds of musicians—is officially open and will be in full swing in the fall. In today’s New Orleans Times-Picayune, Keith Spera writes:

Were it not for Hurricane Katrina, there would be no Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.

“I was guilty of the same thing our city has been guilty of for 100 years: Resting on our traditions and thinking everything is going to keep on going status quo,” Connick said. “No one thought there would be a storm that would put the city under water. No one thought that the musical traditions would ever be in jeopardy.

“The storm really opened up a lot of dialogue.”

In the storm’s wake, housing was a more pressing concern. Connick and Marsalis partnered with New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity to develop the Musicians’ Village for musicians and others. From the outset, Connick said, the vision included a performing arts/community center.

The 72 single-family homes in the Village were built by thousands of volunteers. Habitat financed construction with donations and low-interest loans to the homeowners.

In a few weeks, the halls of the Marsalis center will ring with the music of its first class of students. To read Spera’s entire story, click here.

To see and hear Ellis Marsalis perform with his sons Branford, Delfeayo, Jason and Wynton, play this video.

Kristin Korb, you may recall, plays the bass as she sings or sings as she plays the bass. Take your pick; she does both equally well. This video is from a house-party concert she gave last year. The event was called Spring Soiree. The house provided a splendid view of the lights of Los Angeles. Korb’s colleagues in the rhythm section were her frequent pianist Llew Matthews, and drummer Matt Gordy. The clip gives a rare opportunity to hear former Stan Kenton alto saxophonist Mary Fettig, a veteran of touring with Airto Moreira and Flora Purim, Joe Henderson and Marian McPartland, among others. It also demonstrates that properly cared for, good old songs are never really old.

Ms. Korb recently married a Danish man and is moving to Copenhagen, which will be her headquarters and point of departure for touring.

I had hoped to include in the post below something from André Previn, who was Mr. Rasey’s colleague in the studios and, like him, is one of the few remaining members of the remarkable MGM orchestra of the 1940s and ‘50s. My request for a few words from Maestro Previn made its way to him a day late. He responded with this:

Thank you very much for your email. I have many remembrances of Uan, all of which are complimentary and flattering. He was not only the best trumpet player working at the film studios in Hollywood, but also a kind and good friend.

Please wish him the happiest of birthdays from me. I wish I could see him sometime soon.

With best regards,

André

My peripheral involvement in Bob Belden’s Miles Español project has refired a longstanding interest in music that combines Latin and jazz elements. A story by Larry Rohter in today’s New York Times added more fuel. It is about the restoration and DVD release of a film that played an influential role in bringing widespread attention to Latin music and, in particular, to the brand of salsa cooked up in New York’s Latin melting pot. Rohter begins by quoting the master percussionist Ray Barretto about his hopes for the film’s success in raising awareness. Then, he writes:

In 1971 Latin music barely existed on the margins of American consciousness. But Mr. Barretto, who died in 2006 at 76, was prescient. If salsa is today a globally popular and influential dance music style, that is due in no small part to “Our Latin Thing,” which documents a concert by the Fania All-Stars at the Cheetah club on 52nd Street in Manhattan on Aug. 26, 1971, and the chain of events it set in motion.

In the history of salsa music and Fania Records, which for many years were all but synonymous, “Our Latin Thing” and the Cheetah show occupy a singular position. It took another Fania All-Stars concert, this time for a crowd of more than 45,000 people at Yankee Stadium in 1973, to alert mainstream English-speaking America to the vast commercial potential of the Latin music market, but it was the Cheetah performance that may have been the ensemble’s artistic pinnacle.

The article includes an embedded performance excerpt from the “Our Latin Thing” film. To read it, go here.

It was time to put up a new post. With a house full of guests, ideal summer weather and the attractions of all outdoors, I looked for an easy out. The solution begins with a perfect trumpet chorus, then gets better.

The gorgeous arrangement was by Russell Garcia.

At this hour in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Laurie Verchomin is celebrating the 82nd anniversary of Bill Evans’ birth. She is at Alberta College reading from her book about the brief, intense relationship with the pianist that inspired him to write “Laurie.” The composition became a central part of Evans’ repertoire in his final years. Ms. Verchomin was with him on his final day in September,1980. On the left, we see Evans with photo booth shots of Laurie.

For a Rifftides mention of the book, go here. For Roger Levesque’s story in the Edmonton Journal about Ms. Verchomin and this evening’s event, go here. For a performance of “Laurie” by Evans, Mark Johnson and Joe La Barbera in Rome in 1979, don’t go anywhere. Play this video.

Gordon Jenkins (pictured) wrote the music and Joe Bishop the words to “Blue Prelude” in 1933. Shortly after, the Isham Jones band introduced the song on record. In the reed section was a young saxophonist and clarinetist named Woody Herman, who ultimately became leader of a cooperative band that some of Jones’ members formed after Jones retired in 1936. That group, in turn, became the first of Herman’s own bands, known as The Band That Plays the Blues. Herman was so attached to “Blue Prelude” that he made it his theme song. The recording with his vocal was a minor hit in 1939 and ‘40.

Over the years, performers in a variety of genres have recorded the piece. Among them are Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Peggy Lee, Judy Garland, Helen Humes with Bill Doggett, Sonny Stitt, Sonny Criss, Charlie Ventura, The Moody Blues, Linda Ronstadt and Nina Simone. Simone’s version is in a three-way tie with Garland’s and Humes’ as the most wrenching. Gretta Matassa’s approach to the song is right in there with Peggy Lee’s as the hardest swinging. Here’s Matassa singing “Blue Prelude” last year in a Beverly Hills, California, appearance. The trio is Mike Garson, piano; Bob Leatherbarrow, drums; and Matassa’s bassist of longstanding, Clipper Anderson. This is one of those rare web videos that you can watch full screen without losing significant picture quality.