To my surprise, on the rare occasions when I divert from the main topic and post illustrated accounts of cycling excursions, Rifftides readers ask for more. Okay. This morning my Italian friend Vigorelli Bianchi took me 35 miles through farmland, orchard country and high desert. It is difficult with … [Read more...]

The latest Doug's Picks appear in the center column. They are: • CDs by two fiery alto saxophonists and a satisfying singer • A concert DVD by the man who first poured jazz into a tenor sax • A book that considers the shallowness of so much of the news we watch, hear and read—and what … [Read more...]

The Rifftides staff is feverishly preparing a new batch of Doug's Picks. (Well, all right, langorously preparing.) In the meantime, part three of that 1972 Brubeck concert in Rotterdam has appeared. If you have missed the previous installments, it's the Brubeck Trio with Jack Six, bass, and Alan … [Read more...]

The YouTube contributor who posted the Dave Brubeck-Paul Desmond-Gerry Mulligan "All The Things You Are" video we brought you last month promised that there would be more. He is as good as his word. The piece that Brubeck announces seems likely to be from his 1972 oratorio Truth Is Fallen, or in … [Read more...]

Manfred Eicher's ECM label, still celebrating the 40th anniversary it observed late last year, has reissued some of its landmark recordings. Many of them are on CD for the first time. Over the decades, ECM has achieved nearly infallible sound reproduction of a broad and eclectic range of musicians … [Read more...]

Steve Wilson, alto saxophone, and Lewis Nash, drums, playing Dizzy Gillespie's "Con Alma" at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania … [Read more...]

With his permission, I occasionally steal from Bill Crow's "Band Room" column of anecdotes in the American Federation of Musicians Union Local 802 newspaper Allegro. The latest theft is below. First, a preamble for those who have been living in a box for several decades: Maynard Ferguson (1928-2006) … [Read more...]

Bill Mays, on tour in Japan, sent a link to a Japanese web log called... Rifftide:後藤 誠のJAZZ and other matters.. What a surprise. The blog seems to be operated by someone identified as Makotogotoh. If you go there—and if you know Japanese—you can read a review of a Mays performance … [Read more...]

When Roger Kellaway isn't performing in a club or concert, or practicing and composing at home, chances are he's out collecting honors. Recently, he picked up two in the city where he grew up, Boston. For one event, he and his friend Quincy Jones dressed in black gowns and medieval hats to receive … [Read more...]

For those still thinking about Paul Desmond, Iola Brubeck sent a lovely comment with a poem. To read it, click here. … [Read more...]

Devotees of jazz and poetry or of poetry about jazz will want to read Ed Leimbacher's new entry on his I Witness blog. He wraps together several samples and a review of a poetry collection, and offers this: Like any other art at its best, certain pieces about Jazz can make you "stop breathing" for a … [Read more...]

The form is not going to revolutionize either jazz or poetry but it is going to stay with us, and both jazz and poetry are going to have one new way of expressing themselves, and so are going to be just a little richer.—Kenneth Rexroth I never drowned out one word of whatever Jack was reading … [Read more...]

Desmond has been in my thoughts today, back to the weeks before his death of lung cancer in 1977 at the age of 52. We talked frequently during that time. Here are two excerpts from Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, then a song that Paul cherished. He and Dave Brubeck played it … [Read more...]

Occasionally, the Rifftides staff trolls the archives with an eye for older posts that hold up. Here is one from three years ago this Memorial Day weekend. Time out of the writing crunch to hear successive Jessica Williams concerts was time well spent. Williams has taken a liking to The Seasons and … [Read more...]