The veteran Pennsylvania broadcaster Russ Neff is once again doing a jazz program, but he’s streaming it on the internet. He writes that he was inspired by Jim Wilke’s Jazz After Hours to return to jazz radio. I'd not been on the air since 1991 and since no local station was interested in my … [Read more...]

Jessica Williams has entered the blogosphere. She is a most welcome entry. Her blog, The Zone, is unlike any other, just as Ms. Williams is unlike any other pianist. Here is some of what she wrote in a posting called “Making Oneself Available.” Never rehearse a moment. Too much practice kills … [Read more...]

Dick McGarvin writes from Los Angeles: I've been catching up on stuff, including a backlog of Rifftides (high tide?), which brings me to... I'm not sure why, but your letter to Gene Lees about Willis Conover touched me even more than when I first read it in the Jazzletter. Maybe it's because of … [Read more...]

I hate music, especially when it's played—Jimmy Durante Wagner’s music is better than it sounds—Mark Twain … [Read more...]

The pianist Roberta Mandel was at San Francisco State College in the 1940s with Paul Desmond, Jerome Richardson, Cal Tjader, Ron Crotty, Dick Collins and Vernon Alley, among other young musicians who went on to fame. She later sang with Boyd Raeburn’s trail-blazing band in broadcasts on NBC and … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Jon Foley writes: Thank God someone has finally brought up this subject. I thought I was the only one who thought this phenomenon was ridiculous. What could be more annoying than, let's say, a tenor player finishing a beautiful ballad solo, the crowd completely hushed and enthralled … [Read more...]

Jon Foley explains that his messages tend to come in batches. Yesterday, I was listening to a west coast jazz station over the internet, and a track came on, a quintet, I believe. The rhythm section caught my attention, even when the horns were soloing. When it came time for the piano solo, I was … [Read more...]

Bill Kirchner took time out of his busy schedule to send a response to a review. Thanks for commenting on jazz audiences' "self-conscious rote clapping" after every solo. This to me is the most mindless of all jazz customs. (Where did this idiocy come from--does anyone know?) It usually prevents … [Read more...]

Bill Kirchner's latest CD is Everything I Love. The instrumentation is his soprano saxophone, Eddie Monteiro's accordion and Ron Vincent's drums and percussion. Monteiro equips his instrument with MIDI ( musical instrument digital interface), making it possible for him to sound like a string … [Read more...]

The Jazz Times website now has my reviews of the Bill Charlap and Gary Hobbs performances at the Earshot Jazz Festival in Seattle. Here is some of the Charlap piece: From the first blowing chorus on “Who Cares?” the trio locked into one another. The Washingtons are brothers in time, Kenny … [Read more...]

A career in print and broadcast journalism may have hardened my conviction about the importance of a free press in a democracy, but it seems to me that every American should see the motion picture Good Night, and Good Luck. George Clooney, the film’s guiding spirit, the son of a television … [Read more...]

Good Night and Good Luck’s period atmosphere is supplied, in part, by Diane Reeves singing standards. She is important to the movie as a dramatic element. On the sound track and on camera, she does some of her finest work in the uncomplicated setting of a rhythm section and a tenor saxophonist. … [Read more...]

As articulate with words as he is at the piano, Bill Charlap gave a talk preceding his concert at the Earshot Jazz Festival in Seattle the other night. He spoke about the music that he, bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington were about to perform, songs of George Gershwin and Leonard … [Read more...]

Top 10 Sources has honored Rifftides by including us in its list of the top ten jazz sites on the web. To see the company we’re in and what the other nine sites are up to, go here. Thanks to Quentin Palfrey and all of the Top 10 Sources folks. … [Read more...]

Many state and local governments have elections tomorrow. Politicians making last- minute speeches might benefit from this 500-year-old wisdom. Words which do not satisfy the ear of the hearer weary him or vex him, and the symptoms of this you will often see in such hearers in their frequent yawns. … [Read more...]

The tenor saxophonist and composer Alex Coke wrote me from his home in Austin, Texas, asking if I would listen to his new CD. After going to his website, I replied, with misgivings, that if he sent the album, I would. Music advertised as being on a social mission is almost certain to end up on the … [Read more...]

Early tomorrow, I'm headed back to Seattle and the Earshot Jazz Festival to cover the Bill Charlap Trio for Jazz Times. I'll be traveling light; that is, without the laptop, so the probability of new Rifftides posts is small for the next couple of days. Unlike some foresightful bloggers, this one … [Read more...]

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation—Tom Stoppard … [Read more...]

Bob Brookmeyer periodically posts Currents, his reflections—not all of them ascerbic—on music, life, love, war and other matters. The next one is often a long time coming. The last one was on July 5, shortly after a club gig in New York. The Jazz Standard is a very fine place and the people who … [Read more...]