Wayne Shorter, Without A Net (Blue Note) About seven minutes into Shorter’s first soprano saxophone solo on the monumental “Pegasus,” someone in the band says, “Oh, my God!” The interjection stands as reaction not only to that track by Shorter’s quartet and the Imani Winds but also to … [Read more...]

Two days following Cedar Walton’s passing, we have lost another splendid pianist, one of the world’s best known and best loved jazz artists. Marian McPartland died in her sleep just before midnight Tuesday in her home on Long Island, New York. A message from family members reports that she … [Read more...]

  In late summer each year, the Rifftides staff photographer puts a camera in the bike bag and heads out to orchard country to see how the apples are coming along. It seems there will be a crop.       Some apples are taking on color sooner than … [Read more...]

Cedar Walton died this morning at his home in Brooklyn at the age of 79. Family members confirmed his passing but have not announced the cause of death. A pianist admired for his adaptability and thorough musicianship, Walton wrote tunes that became jazz standards, among them “Firm Roots,” … [Read more...]

Detroit is gearing up (they’re good at that in Detroit) for the 2013 edition of its massive free jazz festival over the Labor Day weekend. A central performer at the festival and a major figure in the city’s jazz community is the 45-year-old bassist Rodney Whitaker, internationally known as a … [Read more...]

We continue in our doomed effort to keep up with recent (more or less) releases. Billy Hart, All Our Reasons (ECM) For months I have been listening repeatedly to this CD, one of last year’s best. Somehow, I didn’t get around to writing about it until now. Hart, a drummer of … [Read more...]

On opposite coasts of the US, Jim Wilke (Washington State) and Bill Kirchner (New Jersey) will present stimulating jazz listening this Sunday. Here’s Wilke’s announcement: Anat Cohen has been winning both critics and readers national jazz polls for several years and she tours continually, … [Read more...]

It is Bill Evans’ birthday. He was born on August 16, 1929 and died on September 15,1980. Evans influenced pianists in all genres of music. With bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, he changed the concept of the jazz piano trio. From their 1959 album … [Read more...]

A few major record labels survive, but most jazz albums come from independent companies, many of them one-man or one-woman operations. Digital technology makes recording relatively simple and inexpensive for small independent labels. It also makes it easy for musicians to be their own record … [Read more...]

Now that the White House has announced President Obama’s Medal of Freedom winners for 2013, the sniping begins over his choices. Here is my snipe. Whatever Arturo’s Sandoval’s merits as a musician, they are put in perspective by his biography in the White House announcement, which notes that … [Read more...]

Denny Zeitlin, Both/And (Sunnyside) One-man bands have come a long way since 1941, when Sidney Bechet recorded “The Sheik of Araby.” Playing clarinet, soprano and tenor saxophones, piano, bass and drums, Bechet and the RCA engineers laboriously added an instrument in each of a succession of … [Read more...]

For an idea of what the RCA post-production crew went through half a dozen times to make the two-and-a-half-minute Sidney Bechet record mentioned in the Zeitlin review in the post above, watch these films about the complexities of the record-making process 72 years ago. The narrator is Milton Cross, … [Read more...]

Louis Armstrong was born on this day in 1901. When he was 26, he recorded King Oliver’s “West End Blues” with an opening cadenza that put the world on notice that this new music was an art form to be taken seriously. How big was Armstrong’s impact on the development of jazz in the late … [Read more...]

As reported in this Rifftides coverage last fall, a concert by the Clayton Brothers is likely to become a party. John and Jeff Clayton and their band partied again at the recent Jazz Port Townsend festival on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. Jim Wilke, a fine recording engineer as well as an … [Read more...]

Woody Shaw: The Complete Muse Sessions (Mosaic) In a couple of record dates when Woody Shaw was 21 and in a dozen years through the 1970s and ‘80s, Muse Records captured some of the trumpeter’s most innovative and inspired work. When Shaw emerged, it was clear that Freddie Hubbard had … [Read more...]

The Rifftides webmaster received a communiqué from the distinguished songwriter Mickey Leonard (pictured) about the Fred Astaire-Rita Hayworth videos in the next exhibit. This is the absolute best thing I've ever seen/heard with “Stayin' Alive” & those two spectacular dancers. Bravo … [Read more...]

Article 235, section 17-a of the Web Logger Handbook: When other duties preclude blogging, inspiration flags or the dog days of summer make you listless and you haven’t posted lately, just tap dance or play a drum solo. How about both. And how about if I get someone else to do … [Read more...]

On July 17 Lionel Ferbos broke his own record as the world’s oldest working jazz musician. The New Orleans trumpeter is now 102. Ferbos celebrated by playing a gig at the Palm Court, where he has performed for a substantial number of his ten decades. This shot of Ferbos recently won Skip Bolen the … [Read more...]