Bill Crow writes from New York: So sorry to hear of Floyd's passing. When I returned to the Seattle area after 3 years in the Army, I met Floyd and Quincy and Gerald Brashear and Buddy Catlett and Kenny Kimball and Ray Charles. We played a lot together in the music annex of the University of … [Read more...]

From Seattle comes news that Floyd Standifer died Monday night. The trumpeter, saxophonist and vocalist went into the hospital in late December for treatment of a shoulder problem. Doctors discovered that his shoulder pain came from cancer that had spread to his lungs and liver, and that his … [Read more...]

A little research discloses that the man who did that brilliant dual-personality lip-synch performance to Charlie Parker's and Dizzy Gillespie's "Leap Frog" is named Jeremiah McDonald. He has other clips on YouTube, none of them based in jazz. Still, jazz listeners who dig Spike Jones (there are … [Read more...]

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player. --Ornette Coleman I am an improviser...I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it … [Read more...]

George Cables played a concert at The Seasons performance hall the other night. It was the kind of evening his listeners have come to expect, flowing with the inventiveness, technical skill and joy that Cables has demonstrated in a four-decade career with Art Pepper, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, … [Read more...]

If you follow the links at the ends of Rifftides items, you'll know that the distinguished Toronto broadcaster Ted O'Reilly commented on the recent Rod Levitt item. In his restrained way, O'Reilly wrote, in part: Wow, yeah! Rod Levitt. In the '60s RCA Canada did not release those LPs in Canada, … [Read more...]

Tenor saxophonist Mark Turner offers a heartfelt, forthright evaluation of Michael Brecker, including this: I saw him put his horn on at clinics and soundchecks and--cold, without warming up--instantly play the most f------- incredible sh--, stuff that most saxophonists simply cannot deal … [Read more...]

Trumpeter Randy Sandke knew Michael Brecker for nearly forty years, since both were college freshmen. Thought by many to be the most influential saxophonist since John Coltrane, Brecker died on Saturday, January 13, of leukemia brought on by myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a rare cancer of the … [Read more...]

The lead story on the ArtsJournal.com main page concerns jazz education's role in music and culture at large. Here's the AJ tease, quoted from NewMusicBox.com: "How is it that jazz has become the vehicle for the resurgence of robust music programs in the schools while classical music, and its … [Read more...]

Jazz gets relatively little attention on commercial television, but one of the newscasts on WBBM-TV, the CBS-TV affiliate in Chicago, made an exception recently. It profiled Bob Koester and his Delmark Records label. The story focuses more on Chicago blues than on Delmark's jazz artists, but … [Read more...]

On Saturday, Michael Brecker succumbed to leukemia brought on by MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome), the bone marrow disorder that put him on the sidelines of music until recently. He was fifty-seven years old. The most admired of the legion of saxophonists that arose in the wake of John Coltrane, … [Read more...]

That is the headline on a newspaper article about arts web logs. Rifftides is the focus of the piece by Kim Nowacki, arts editor of the Yakima Herald-Republic. She also interviews Brooke Cresswell, conductor of the Yakima Symphony Orchestra; Dan Peters, proprietor of the Blue Begonia poetry blog; … [Read more...]

More than a year ago, we reported on the alliance between Václav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic and the pianist Emil Viklický. Klaus established a series of jazz concerts at Prague Castle, the Czech equivalent of the White House, and chose Viklický to launch it. To read about that … [Read more...]

The interaction between or among jazz soloists has often been described as like a conversation. A brilliant young man about whom I am trying to learn more -- his name, for instance -- has taken that simile literally, given it substance and put it on YouTube. Watch this, and smile your way into the … [Read more...]

You may remember the tenor saxophonist Jim Pepper for "Witchi-Tai-To," an American Indian peyote chant he learned from his Kaw grandfather. Pepper set it to music and it became a crossover hit. The song persists as a staple in the repertoires of pop and so-called world music groups on several … [Read more...]

In The New York Times, Ben Ratliff reports on Sunday night's memorial service for tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, at which a number of Redman's colleagues performed. The pianist Ethan Iverson and the bassist Reid Anderson, both of the trio the Bad Plus, with (Matt) Wilson on drums, got off a version … [Read more...]

In her blog, DevraDoWrite picks up the Erroll Garner thread, posting reminiscences of her husband, the ageless 94-year-old John Levy, who played bass on a Garner recording date in 1945. There were no parts to read on this session because Erroll, like many of the great musicians, didn't read or … [Read more...]