Another significant Canadian contributor to jazz is gone. Barely more than a week after Gene Lees died comes news that Rob McConnell lost his long struggle with cancer Saturday in a Toronto hospital. A valve trombonist, arranger, composer and leader, McConnell made his Boss Brass one of the … [Read more...]

A few years ago, Gene Lees and I fell into serious agreement. It happened in one of our long talks over a glass of wine, or two, at the big table just off the kitchen in his and Janet's house in Ojai. We were kicking around the peculiar effect that popular acceptance of an artist often has on the … [Read more...]

A man named Paul Sonnenberg has posted a medley of songs with Gene Lees' lyrics. If you go here, you'll learn as much about Mr. Sonnenberg as I know. If you watch the video below, you'll see and hear him sing the songs, largely in tune, with a feel for the Brazilian samba idiom and with, for the … [Read more...]

Tributes to Gene Lees continue, for good reason. A line from Longfellow applies: "Dead he is not, but departed - for the artist never dies." Terry Teachout remembers Gene in today's Wall Street Journal: Had Gene been born sooner, he would surely have been as famous and successful as the top … [Read more...]

Following Gene Lees' passing, the Canadian tenor saxophonist, pianist, composer, arranger and educator Phil Dwyer sent a story about how he acquired one of Gene's books. In the spring of 1990, I was playing in New York, at a club call Visione's (in the Village) with David Friesen and Alan Jones. It … [Read more...]

The vicious work of a hacker or several hackers rendered Rifftides and all of the other artsjournal.com blogs inaccessible to most of you for the past four days. If you called up our web address, you were probably greeted with a red box containing a warning that if you continued, your computer would … [Read more...]

Since the Rifftides entry about Gene Lees' death on April 22, we have received a flood of comments. They are posted in the comments section at the end of that piece. A couple of days later, Gene's friend Jeff Sultanof sent me a message that he intended as a private communiqué. I was moved by it and … [Read more...]

Gene Lees died today. We lost a writer unsurpassed at illuminating music and the world that musicians inhabit. I lost a cherished colleague whose work inspired me, a dear friend whose companionship brightened my existence. For a formal biography, see his entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia. My … [Read more...]

In response to yesterday's Rifftides post, music critic Mark Stryker (pictured) of the Detroit Free Press sent a message that included a column he wrote earlier this year. With his permission, we bring it to you. Very nice piece on Billy Childs' new album. I'm anxious to hear it. Billy just wrote a … [Read more...]

Billy Childs, Autumn In Moving Pictures: Jazz Chamber Music, Vol. 2 (artistShare). There is a long history in jazz of strings in small-group chamber music. In a 1935 concert, Artie Shaw played a piece that he composed for clarinet and string quartet. It brought him attention that helped lead to his … [Read more...]

Hear Ye! The latest selection of Doug's Picks is posted in the center column. It includes recommendations of new and old music on CD, a DVD documentary about a revered figure and a stimulating -- even provocative -- book. … [Read more...]

No doubt there is marvelous jazz being broadcast all over the world this weekend, but here are two instances that we know about. One program is hosted by Jim Wilke on the west coast of the US, the other by Bill Kirchner on the east coast. Both are available to Rifftides listeners through the magic … [Read more...]

The Jazz Journalists Association has announced the nominees in its 2010 awards competition. Darcy James Argue (pictured) did not come from out of nowhere, but the young band leader, composer and arranger has moved up fast and made a big impression. Argue is nominated for the first time, in five … [Read more...]

Ashley Kahn's profile of Bruce Lundvall in The Wall Street Journal captures the Blue Note label president's importance as a developer of talent and identifies his partial retirement as a marker of what is happening to the business of recorded music. To many, Mr. Lundvall's exit from Blue Note's … [Read more...]