Today is the 100th anniversary of Johnny Mercer's birth. To celebrate it, Dave Frishberg and Rebecca Kilgore will be the guests on National Public Radio's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. See your local listings for station and time, or check here. If you live somewhere other than the United States or if … [Read more...]

Kurt Rosenwinkel, Reflections (Wommusic). From his first recordings in the 1990s, Rosenwinkel's guitar playing has had an element of pensiveness. Regardless of tempo, complexity or adrenalin-fueled collaborators, he radiates the air of a man who won't hurry through even his most complex … [Read more...]

Every once in a while another 100 Best Jazz Recordings list pops up. A new one is batting about the ethernet. This time the source is the UK newspaper the Telegraph. The compiler is Martin Gayford, an art critic, biographer and sometime jazz critic. It's a good list, but anyone who has the temerity … [Read more...]

Dick Katz, The Line Forms Here (Reservoir). The news of Katz's death at 85 last week sent me to the shelf for this 1996 recording. It covers the range of his talents as pianist, composer and arranger. He plays alone in a moving performance of Duke Ellington's "Lotus Blossom," in a trio supported by … [Read more...]

John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, Eternal Interlude (Sunnyside). The ensemble is Large, all right, in the size of the band -- 20 pieces -- and in the expansiveness of Hollenbeck's vision. He is a composer who moves into, out of and beyond established categories of musical thinking and a drummer who … [Read more...]

Yesterday was the Marine Corps' 234th birthday. Today is Veterans Day and Ernestine Anderson's birthday. To celebrate all three, I gave the Rifftides staff the day off and my Italian friend Vigorelli Bianchi took me on a long, looping tour of this big old valley. Back to work tomorrow. The plan is … [Read more...]

Linda Oh, Entry (Linda Oh Music). Oh is a 25-year-old Chinese from Malaysia who grew up in Australia, plays bass and has a Masters degree from the Manhattan School of Music. Her music, as eclectic as she, eludes classification except as fresh and uncompromising. She achieves remarkable unity using … [Read more...]

Because of the high volume of comments Rifftides received following our piece on the death of pianist Eddie Higgins, the staff thought there might be widespread interest in a memorial concert. We bring you the announcement as it arrived by e-mail from Florida. This will give you time to make plans … [Read more...]

Family members and friends are planning a memorial service for Stacy Rowles. No date has been set. The trumpeter and singer died at home in Burbank, California, on October 27 of injuries from an automobile accident two weeks earlier. She was 54. The daughter of pianist Jimmy Rowles, she studied … [Read more...]

Bill Crow's column, The Band Room, has for decades been a feature of Allegro, the monthly publication of New York's Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. He fills it with what he is most famous for after his bass playing, anecdotes about musicians. Sometimes the stories concern … [Read more...]

The Rifftides series of posts on improving hearing by listening to bass lines leads inevitably to Scott LaFaro. It was less LaFaro's virtuosity that made a difference in the role of the bass than the uncanny group thinking and interaction he made possible in the Bill Evans Trio. LaFaro was what … [Read more...]

In the first paragraph of Part 3 of this series, it was not by random choice that I included Red Mitchell's name in the short list of important bassists who emerged in the 1940s. He discovered ways of playing the instrument that made a difference in the bass's role in jazz. Bill Crow, the hero of … [Read more...]

For the new segment of our adventure in letting bassists be our guides, author, critic and sometime Rifftides commentator Larry Kart has a fine idea. May I suggest, for Part 4, Paul Chambers behind Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Wynton Kelly and Jimmy Cobb on "So What." Like Heath and LaFaro in their … [Read more...]

As you may recall from parts 1 and 2, our theme in this series is that by concentrating on the lines played by a good string bassist, you can gain an understanding of the shape and structure of a piece of music, feel its heartbeat, sense its soul. Duke Ellington's Jimmy Blanton in the early 1940s … [Read more...]

Let us pursue the music appreciation method outlined in Part 1 (see the following exhibit). The theory is that concentrating on the bass lines of superior players can sharpen your perception of the music. Today's lesson is from another great bassist. It's Niels Henning Ørsted-Pedersen in 1971 at … [Read more...]

In the days when I was learning to truly listen, Red Kelly gave me a piece of valuable advice. He told me to close my eyes and in my mind isolate and concentrate on the bass player. He said that when I felt and understood what the bassist was doing, the rest of the music would begin to fall into … [Read more...]

The television comic Soupy Sales loved jazz, knew its history and many of its leading players. Early in his career, when he had a local show in Detroit, he frequently presented jazz stars as guests. After Sales died on October 22 at the age of 83, many obituaries mentioned that the only known video … [Read more...]

In his blog I Witness, Ed Leimbacher muses about the pervasiveness of Thelonious Monk as a model for or influence on other pianists. In an essay packed with album citations, he acknowledges 18 pianists from Jelly Roll Morton to Keith Jarrett who have made an impact, then writes: ... but I still … [Read more...]

Reviewing the Art Farmer Jazz Icons DVD the other day stimulated thoughts of his unique place in the pantheon of major jazz soloists. I started to write them, then realized that I already had. Here is an excerpt from the Farmer chapter of my book Jazz Matters. Even on some of Farmer's first … [Read more...]