Guitarist Jim Hall (December 4, 1930 – December 10, 2013) would have been 85 years old today. Building on what he absorbed from Charlie Christian, Hall came to prominence in Chico Hamilton’s and Jimmy Giuffre’s groups in the mid-1950s. He went on to collaborate with Ben Webster, Bill Evans, Paul Desmond, Sonny Rollins, Art Farmer, Lee Konitz and Bob Brookmeyer, among others. His versatility and his openness to a wide range of music allowed him to be as effective in third stream music as in the mainstream.

Of his own albums as a leader, Concierto has become a classic since it was issued in 1975. The title piece was drawn from Joaquin Rodriogo’s Concierto de Aranjuez already something of a jazz standard because of Gil Evans’ arrangement for Miles Davis in their Sketches of Spain album. For Hall’s CTI version, arranger Don Sebesky sketched out parts for Hall, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, trumpeter Chet Baker, pianist Roland Hanna, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Steve Gadd.

Of Hall’s avoidance of clutter in his playing, John Wilson wrote in a New York Times review in 1991, that he “carefully [chose] a few notes instead, one after another, and placed them with the care of someone setting an elegant table.”

Hall’s dedication to the creative use of silence in music led him to tell an overactive student who was showing off his technique during a guitar lesson,

Don’t just do something. Sit there.

The Rifftides staff does not plan to observe the season by loading the blog with jazz versions of Christmas songs. There may be exceptions.

The first exception is a video brought to our attention in a message from the irrepressible German alto and soprano saxophonist Nicole Johänntgen. In the clip, Ms. Johänntgen is disguised as someone you may recognize.

Here she is, undisguised, at a 2015 festival in Italy, with the William Lenihan Quartet—Lenihan, guitar; Francesco Puglisi, bass; Lucrezio de Seta, drums

For a review of Ms. Johänntgen and her band called Sofia (Support of Female Improvising Artists) at last summer’s Ystad Sweden Jazz Festival, go here.

Dan Brubeck, the drummer among Dave Brubeck’s five musician sons, took his own quartet into The Seasons Performance Hall in Yakima, Washington, last night. As did his band’s recent album, the concert paid tribute to his father and to his mother, Iola, who wrote memorable lyrics to a number of her husband’s melodies. The quartet includes pianist Tony Foster, alto and tenor saxophonist Steve Kaldestad and bassist Adam Thomas.

Introducing the band, I mentioned Iola’s answer when I asked her years ago what Danny was like as a little boy. I recalled that she gazed into the distance, silent for a few seconds, then smiled and said, “Hell on wheels.” The audience saw and heard evidence in his solos on “Blue Rondo a la Turk,” “Jazzanians,” and especially on “Take Five,” that he retains that aspect of his personality. Playing to a substantial holiday weekend audience, the quartet poured energy and ebullience into those and other up-tempo pieces. On quieter numbers, Brubeck was lyrical in the use of wire brushes.

Bassist Thomas has a high, clear voice. Playing acoustic bass as he sang, he found the emotion in Iola’s words to “Weep No More,” the nostalgia in “Summer Song” and “Autumn in Our Town,” the razzle-dazzle in “It’s a Raggy Waltz,” the humor in “Ode to a Cowboy.” Foster’s keyboard technique and speed were impressive; so, too, his willingness to back off from technique and use expressive silence. On both of his horns, Kaldestad played with an original conception and, happily, moments when he seasoned his originality with references to the jazz canon. He made a double bow to Duke Ellington and John Coltrane with a quote from Ellington’s “Take The Coltrane.”

For a Rifftides review of the Dan Brubeck Quartet’s Live From The Cellar album, go here.

That’s all I did – that’s all I ever did – try to do what Billy Strayhorn did.—Gil Evans

Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head; my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine.—Duke Ellington

‘A’ Train was born without any effort – if was like writing a letter to a friend.—Billy Strayhorn

Billy Strayhorn got his due recently from a major US repertory orchestra. Listeners may hear part of the tribute on Sunday. Here’s the announcement from Jim Wilke of Jazz Northwest.

Composer Billy Strayhorn was born 100 years ago, November 29, 1915, and his music was played in three concerts this month by The Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra co-directed by Clarence Acox and Michael Brockman. Highlights from one of those concerts will air on Jazz Northwest this Sunday, November 29, 2015 at 2 PM Pacific on 88.5 KPLU and on the web at kplu.org. Special guests for the concert include David Hajdu (pictured with the SRJO), author of Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn, and saxophonist Roxy Coss, formerly of Seattle, now active on the New York scene.

Billy Strayhorn worked hand-in-hand with Duke Ellington on some of their most loved and enduring music including individual songs and suites of music such as Such Sweet Thunder and The Far East Suite. Music from those suites as well as some of Strayhorn’s enduring songs including “Lush Life” and “Chelsea Bridge” are among those played in this hour-long concert broadcast, recorded live at The Kirkland Performance Center across Lake Washington from Seattle.

Paul Desmond would have been 91 today. I wish that he were. His friend the guitarist Jim Hall put it nicely—“He would have been a great old man.”

Readers have sent messages saying that they looked forward to this year’s Rifftides observance of Paul’s birthday. It might be impossible to say all that there is to say about that remarkable man. I came as close as I could when I wrote his biography. At his memorial service, the playwright Jack Richardson said,

I found him the best company of anyone I’d ever known in my life. I found him the most loyal friend I’ve ever known in my life. I found him the most artistic person I’d ever known in my life. His leaving will make this planet a smaller, darker place for everyone.

Yes. Except that Paul continues to illuminate the planet and our lives with his music. Toward the end, he assembled a quartet with the superb Canadian rhythm section of guitarist Ed Bickert, bassist Don Thompson and drummer Jerry Fuller. Thompson, also a first-rate audio engineer, taped the group at the Edmonton Jazz Festival in April 1976, a year before Paul died. Our birthday party music is Don’s one-hour recording of the concert. The playlist is “Just Squeeze Me,” “Darn That Dream,” “Wave,” “Someday My Prince Will Come,” “Wendy,” and “Take Five”

The still photo that accompanies the YouTube video may be unstable, but the sound is excellent.

Devra Hall took the photo below when Paul and her parents Jim and Jane were her guests for dinner on Thanksgiving, 1976. When I see it, I think about the countless hours I spent with Paul, about Jack Richardson’s memorial speech and about what Dave Brubeck said more than once about his friend and musical soulmate of more than three decades:

“Boy, do I miss Paul Desmond.”

Today is the birthday of Al Cohn (1925-1988), a major tenor saxophonist and one of the most admired composers and arrangers in modern jazz. Cohn’s career began with Joe Marsala’s big band when he was 18. He played and wrote for several of the most important bandleaders of the forties and fifties, among them Boyd Raeburn, Buddy Rich, Woody Herman, Artie Shaw and Elliott Lawrence. He replaced Herbie Steward in the Herman band’s Four Brothers saxophone section, joining Zoot Sims, Stan Getz and Serge Chaloff.

Cohn’s style, like that of many of his saxophone contemporaries, owed much to Lester Young. Toward the end of his life, he added darker colors to his tone and firmer spring to the rhythm of his phrasing. Employing a variety of rhythm sections over the years, Cohn and Sims were one of the best known tenor sax duos in all of jazz. Here they are at Birdland in 1960 with pianist Mose Allison, bassist Bill Crow and drummer Nick Stabulas in “Ah Moore.” Cohn named the ballad after his first wife, the singer Marilyn Moore. Sims plays the introduction. Cohn plays the melody and the solo, with occasional obbligato by Sims.

Al Cohn’s quick, mordant wit produced lines that musicians and fans repeat to this day. Bill Crow collected a few of his ripostes in his book Jazz Anecdotes. Here are a couple of them.

In Europe, Al was drinking at a bar with some friends who recommended the local beer.
‘Have you tried Elephant Beer?’ he was asked.
‘No,’ said Al, ‘I drink to forget.’

A disheveled man accosted Al at the bus terminal and asked for a dollar to buy a drink. Al started to hand him the money, and then said, ‘Wait a minute. How do I know you won’t spend this on food?’

A couple of those anecdotes also show up in this personal recollection of Al from the antedeluvian period of Rifftides. Maybe you won’t mind the repetition.

Jazz is not dying. I know that because the postman, the Fed Ex driver and the UPS man keep dropping off proof that it’s alive. I can’t keep up with all of the albums they bring—no one could—but here, in brief, are reviews of a few that have accumulated. Some are recent. Others have been out for a while.

John Coltrane, So Many Things: The European Tour 1961 (Acrobat)

Not long after the seminal tenor and soprano saxophonist settled on the lineup of players in his quartet, he took them on a European tour that included France and Scandinavia. For a short period, Coltrane’s band also included the alto saxophonist, flutist and bass clarinetist Eric Dolphy, who in certain respects was even more idiosyncratic than Coltrane. Supported by pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Elvin Jones, Coltrane’s and Dolphy’s explosive creativity announced—if by the early sixties there was any doubt—that the corner had been turned from the orthodoxies of bebop. Ornette Coleman’s free jazz had affected both of them, but the individualism of Coltrane’s musicians and their collective impact was so powerful that his band gave birth to a new strain in modern jazz. Coltrane, Tyner and Jones quickly became universal role models for players of their instruments.

This box of 4 CDs was made from broadcast air checks that captured Coltrane, Dolphy and company in a five-day run of concerts that took them to Paris, Copenhagen, Helsinki and Stockholm. They played many of the pieces several nights in a row, but their approaches were so varied, there is no likelihood that listeners open to the band’s innovations will be bored by repetition. Among the performances are two renditions of “Naima,” three of “Blue Train,” four of “Impressions” and six of “My Favorite Things”—each with power and chance-taking that shocked many listeners in the early 1960s who were not ready for Coltrane’s departures. The music heartened others who cheered his opening of new pathways in jazz. It made heavy demands on listeners and offered commensurate rewards.

Considering that the broadcasts were recorded off the air, sound quality is acceptable to good. Album notes by the British saxophonist Simon Spillett place in perspective Coltrane’s transition from the forward edge of the mainstream into the avant-garde and, not so incidentally, enormous popularity.

Steve Kuhn Trio, Wisteria (ECM)

Soon after Steve Kuhn was graduated from Harvard, he was the original pianist in Coltrane’s quartet. They appeared for eight weeks in 1960 at the Jazz Gallery in New York. Kuhn has written about that time,

We played six nights a week, and the place was always packed. It was just incredible the way people would rise during one of Coltrane’s solos, as if they were in a church revival meeting. I was just finding my way, trying different things – laying out sometimes while he improvised, comping other times. Coltrane was only in his mid-30s, but he might as well have been a million years older than I was, he was on such another level.

Kuhn found his way. At 21, he had already been a member of Kenny Dorham’s quintet. After Coltrane, he played with Stan Getz then with Charles Lloyd, Art Farmer and Art Blakey. Following a few years in Sweden, he returned to the United States and has led his own groups since. His relationship with bassist Steve Swallow goes back to 1960, when the two were both new to New York. With drummer Joey Baron, they make a trio of surpassing sensitivity undergirded by rhythmic strength. As Swallow observed in a recent conversation, Kuhn’s keyboard touch allows him to give the impression that he is pulling or coaxing the notes from the instrument rather than striking a key that makes a hammer hit a string. The title ballad, “Wisteria,” by Farmer, is a perfect demonstration of Kuhn’s ability to give the piano tonal personality.

In “Chalet,” one of six Kuhn compositions in the album, Baron creates melody in his drum solo, as he does in his breaks in Swallow’s amiable “Good Lookin’ Rookie.” Yet, time keeping is his true specialty, and throughout the CD he does it incorporating accents and asides that enhance the swing, rather than distract from it. Swallow abandoned his acoustic bass decades ago to concentrate on the electric bass guitar. In the ensembles his walking lines retain the thrust, tonal quality and power that many listeners recall in his acoustic work. His solos often have characteristics of the guitar, notably so in the high register, as in “Morning Dew.” That Kuhn piece contains a passage of his piano harmonies richer than it might seem reasonable to expect from only two hands. It is one of many rewards that this album yields to close listeners.

Paul Hemmings, The Blues and the Abstract Uke (Leading Tone)

The title alludes to a classic 1961 Oliver Nelson album, and the blues is at the heart of Hemmings’ CD. He fingerpicks the ukelele like a guitar, makes use of his thumb and evokes the spirit of Wes Montgomery in “West Coast Blues.” He pays tribute to Jim Hall in “Careful” and his own minor blues, “Study Hall.” Hemmings compensates for the instrument’s short sonic range with voicings as full as four strings can deliver. The pieces include departures from standard blues forms, Johnny Cash’s “Folson Prison Blues” (11 bars) and Hall’s “Careful” (16 bars). Hemmings’ arrangements make resourceful use of Curtis Fowlkes’ trombone, Greg Tardy’s tenor saxophone, Gaku Takahashi’s bass and Rudy Royston’s drums. Fowlkes and Tardy are impressive in the generous solo time Hemmings allots them. The results are more soulful than anything you’re likely to hear from a ukelele on the beach at Waikiki.

Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci, Brian Blade, Children Of The Light (Mack Avenue)

All members of the Wayne Shorter Quartet are present here but one—Wayne Shorter. Pianist Pérez, bassist Patitucci and drummer Blade have been the saxophonist’s rhythm section for 15 years and have absorbed his music so deeply that the presence of his spirit may be implied. Their close listening and reactions to one another make them a compelling trio. Titles of the many of the 11 compositions reflect the album’s theme, manifestations of light. They include Patitucci’s “Moonlight On Congo Square,” Pérez’s “Light Echo” paired with Shorter’s “Dolores,” and his “Luz Del Alma.” On “Lumen,” using two keyboards Pérez incorporates the Latin dance impulse that guides much of his music, in this case the Afro-Cuban strain. With its brevity and air of contemplation, Blade’s “Within Everything” seems to sum up what Shorter calls in a brief album note the group’s “sense of mission…to point to places unknown or places yet to be.”

They are not long, the days of wine and roses. Out of a misty dream, our path emerges for a while, then closes, within a dream.—Ernest Dowson

I’d love to have the whole place swimming in roses.—James Joyce, Ulysses

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.—William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

But he who dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose.—Anne Brontë

Why is it no one ever sent me yet one perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get one perfect rose.—Dorothy Parker