Stacks and boxes of CD review copies surround me, an indication that the music is alive and well or—at any rate—an indication that lots of jazz artists are recording. That’s good. The bad news is that unless someone discovers a way of listening that is other than sequential, it is impossible to hear and evaluate more than a smattering of those albums.

Let’s attempt to catch up with a few recent releases. I thought of adopting the Twitter maximum of 140 characters, but that’s probably carrying brevity too far. Some recordings may deserve as many as 200 characters.

Clare Fischer Orchestra: Extension (International Phonograph, Inc.)

Until recently, the only reissue of this vital 1963 album was an inadequately remastered vinyl disc released in 1984. Following Fischer’s death early this year, Johnathan Horwich’s International Phonograph company has restored the music to the luminous sound of the Pacific Jazz original, even improved on it. Fischer specialized in tonal shadings and harmonic subtleties, but also in rhythmic vitality. He melded those qualities in pieces like “Ornithardy,” “Extension” and “Canto Africano.” In “Quiet Dawn” he created a masterpiece of reflective impressionism. The improvising soloists are Fischer, brilliant on piano and organ, and tenor saxophonist Jerry Coker.

The classy CD package is a miniature of the original double-gatefold LP sleeve, with the extensive liner notes reproduced in readable type size on a removable sheet tucked into the CD pocket. The music is a reminder that with this album, at age 35 Fischer confirmed his place in the ranks of major jazz arrangers and composers. This is a most welcome release.

Tia Fuller: Angelic Warrior (Mack Avenue)

Fuller’s alto saxophone solo on “Body Soul” and her obbligato in the piece behind guest singer Dianne Reeves typify her growth as an improviser. Her band with pianist sister Shamie Royston, drummer brother-in-law Rudy Royston and lifelong friend Mimi Jones on bass provides the setting for Fuller’s increasingly forthright soloing on alto and soprano——and an outlet for her imaginative writing. Appearances by bassist John Patitucci and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington add sonic and rhythmic interest to the album. The two duet with delight and density on Fuller’s arrangement combining Cole Porter’s “So in Love” and “All of You.” Elsewhere, Patitucci plays electric piccolo bass, soloing on it like a guitarist. Despite the presence of heavyweight guests, the imagination and aggressiveness of Fuller’s playing dominate the CD. She, Rudy Royston and Carrington are formidable in an alto-percussion conversation on “Cherokee.”

Joe La Barbera: Silver Streams (Jazz Compass)

Long after the east-vs-west nonsense of the 1950s and ‘60s, much of the jazz establishment still looks the other way, listens the other way, when it comes to music played and recorded on the left coast. Such close-minded listeners—they don’t include you, of course—would be well advised to make an exception for this album by a powerful and subtle drummer. It is yet another sleeper by La Barbera, who with trumpeter Clay Jenkins, bassist Tom Warrington and guitarist Larry Koonse founded the Jazz Compass label a few years ago. Jenkins, Warrington, saxophonist Bob Sheppard and pianist Bill Cunliffe join La Barbera in a collection that contains a stunning version of Scott LaFaro’s “Jade Visions.” In it, the leader displays the lacy cymbal work that has been one of the joys of his music from his days with Bill Evans. Cunliffe’s title tune, structured like a suite, opens for mutual improvisation as well as solos by all hands. Further highlights: the quintet’s takes on Steve Swallow’s quirky “Bite Your Grandmother” and Elvin Jones’s “E.J.’s Blues.”

Carol Vasquez: I Have Dreamed (Carol Vasquez Music)

Vasquez’s classical training and musical theater background are apparent in her phrasing, diction and clarity of intonation. She imparts cabaret intimacy to “Safe and Warm,” with its insinuating guitar accompaniment by Charlie Hunter, and to Bill Evans’s harmonically challenging “Remembering the Rain.” She swings nicely in “The Song is You,” expresses the heartbreak of “Blame it on My Youth” and captures the longing of Curtis Lewis’s “All Night Long.” The canny arrangements and piano accompaniment are by Jan Stevens, who in his internet life is the proprietor of The Bill Evans Webpages. The repertoire is eleven standard songs of generations from Cole Porter to Stevie Wonder plus “On My Way to Love” by Stevens and Vasquez, which has standard potential.

Duke Ellington’s My People:The Complete Show (Storyville)
Duke Ellington: The Treasury Shows, Vol. 16 (Storyville)

Ellington’s music is replete with African-American themes, but he made only one overtly angry statement about racial injustice, a powerful one. He composed “King Fit the Battle of Alabam” as a centerpiece of My People, the tribute to black Americans that he wrote, produced and directed in Chicago in 1963, at the height of the civil rights movement. Taped during the run of the show but never released in its entirety until now, the original cast recording features singers Jimmy Grissom, Joya Sherill and Lil Greenwood, a chorus, and an orchestra led by Jimmy Jones that includes members of Ellington’s band. Ray Nance, Bill Berry, Booty Wood, Bob Freedman, Harold Ashby, Louie Bellson and Russell Procope are among the soloists. “Come Sunday” and variations on it run through the production, there are strains of the blues and allusions to Black, Brown and Beige. But at the end, what lingers is the rage when the chorus sings “Martin—Luther—King—fit the battle of—bam—bam—bam!” and the band follows in a round of solos saturated with the energy of positive indignation.

Simultaneous with My People, Storyville released the most recent of the apparently endless series of Ellington’s 1945-46 radio broadcasts for the Treasury Department, inspiring Americans to buy war bonds, then victory bonds. The series amounts to an audio album capturing the Ellington band still populated by some of its biggest stars, including Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Lawrence Brown, Tricky Sam Nanton and Cat Anderson. The two-CD set has a few rarities; an early version of the Carney baritone sax feature “Frustration,” Carney’s composition “Jennie,” the incandescent vocalist Kay Davis singing “Dancing in the Dark,” the premier of Hodges’ “Crosstown,” Billy Strayhorn on piano backing Hodges in Strayhorn’s “Passion Flower.” In several solos, Al Sears acquits himself well in one of the toughest assignments in jazz, as Ben Webster’s successor on tenor saxophone. The set has a few bonus flashbacks to broadcasts of the 1943 edition of the band, when Webster, Shorty Baker and Taft Jordan were still aboard.

Just for fun, let’s go out with a bonus of our own. Here’s a piece from a later Ellington Treasury broadcast. He was still doing his patriotic duty in 1951. The introduction is by Willis Conover.

I have no intention of posting about every jazz person’s birthday. There are other sites on the web for that. I have every intention of acknowledging Dizzy Gillespie’s 95th, which is today.

The video below finds him sitting in with Johnny Griffin’s quartet at Châteauvallon, France, in August of 1971. Gillespie was 53 and at a peak of one of the great playing periods of his life. Vince Benedetti is the pianist, Alby Cullaz the bassist, Arthur Taylor the drummer. The same band appears on the Griffin DVD that is a current Rifftides recommendation (see the right-hand column). This piece, “I’ll Remember April,” is not included in the DVD.

You may think it’s about time the Rifftides staff gave you new recommendations. So do I. Therefore, merciless taskmaster that I am, the staff has complied by finding three CDs that are quite different from one another, a DVD that has one grand jazz master sitting in with another, and a readable book that can go a long way toward telling you everything you wanted to know about the jazz repertoire. You will find the recommendations in the right column under Doug’s Picks and, temporarily, also on the main page. Happy listening, viewing and reading.

Anita O’Day was in Chicago born 93 years ago today. From my notes for the 2009 O’Day Jazz Icons DVD, this is a summary of her importance:

Anita O’Day was the last of the great female jazz vocalists who emerged in the swing era. She survived Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee and Carmen McRae. She had perfect time and pitch, a voice virtually without vibrato and the ability to swing as hard as the top horn players of her era, which was long. Her feistiness matched her musicianship and she had the respect of her instrumental colleagues, an honor not always accorded singers. O’Day knew with precision what she wanted from supporting musicians. An anecdote circulated after she died in 2006 at the age of 87. She was overheard correcting her drummer. He told her not to tell him how to play. “I’m not telling you how to play,” she said, “I’m telling you when to play.”

Here’s O’Day from a television appearance in Tokyo in l993, performing two of her favorite songs. Pianist Bob Corwin traveled to Japan with her. Drummer Takeshi Inomata, bassist Tatsuro Takimoto and sxophonist Tadayuki Harada were members of the big band that played behind her on the show.

It has just been called to my attention that this is the birthday of Art Tatum (1909-1956). Before the day expires, at least in my time zone, here is one of the few instances of Tatum’s being caught on film. The clip is from the 1947 movie The Fabulous Dorseys. It finds the great man in a jam session with his peers—as if he had any. This may not be the most stunning Tatum ever recorded, and he gets only one chorus of a fast blues, but we see as well as hear the pianist who awed his contemporaries, including Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson, Vladimir Horowitz and Artur Rubenstein. Tatum’s colleagues are identified in the opening frames.

Musicians at the Oregon Coast Jazz Party can count on a busy weekend. If this jewel of a little festival had a theme, it would be compatibility. Regardless of whether the musicians she assigns have previously played together, music director Holly Hofmann assembles the players and singers in combinations that yield results. For three days, she was on target, relying on her instincts as a musician and producer and on her faith in the common language of jazz.

Ms. Hofmann put Ken Peplowski at the helm of a quintet with trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, pianist Bill Mays, drummer Chuck Redd and bassist Dave Captein. Playing tenor saxophone, Peplowski kicked off the set with a fast “Blue ‘n Boogie,” delivering the Dizzy Gillespie line in unison with Gordon and giving all hands plenty of solo space. He followed it with a standup routine of wit that in its dryness and quickness was a match for his playing. Whenever he spoke during the party, he had musicians and the audience chuckling or, often, laughing out loud. Peplowski reserved his seriousness for the music. He introduced Rodgers and Hart’s “A Ship Without a Sail” (1929) as “a ballad that too few people know about.” He played it on clarinet with deep tones and phrasing that captured the song’s sense of longing. “Rhythm-a-ning” brought out the vaudevillian in Gordon, whose trombone choruses incorporated an update of the early New Orleans jazz practice of imitating body and animal sounds. He did it with astonishing virtuosity. Following Mays’ impressive choruses on the Monk tune, Gordon returned, equally startling playing his slide trumpet. Redd’s crackling drum solo was his first statement of a weekend that saw the Washington, DC, veteran also playing vibes in a variety of settings.

Peplowski and company wrapped up with another Monk piece, “Hackensack,” the leader on tenor and Gordon putting vaudeville tendencies aside. His solo on the “Lady Be Good” changes was serious, straight-ahead and stimulating, in keeping with the example Mays set in his choruses.

The Clayton Brothers Quintet opened with alto saxophonist Jeff Clayton’s “Cha Cha Charleston,” which achieved the neat trick of combining those disparate rhythms. The piece’s metric challenges underlined the crucial relationship among bassist John Clayton, his pianist son Gerald and drummer Obed Calvaire. In his solo Calvaire combined rhythmic looseness and total control as Jeff Clayton and Terell Stafford punctuated with unison horn stings. Other highlights of the Clayton segment:

          John Clayton’s impassioned bowing in Billie Holiday’s “Don’t Explain.”

          Stafford’s solo, lightning fast and full of complexities, on “Runway.”

Holly Hofmann and Jeff Clayton combining their flutes in “Touch the Fog” from the Clayton Brothers CD The Gathering, her solo exotic, his on bass flute colored with humming/playing gruffness.

The impressionism of Gerald Clayton’s solo on “Touch the Fog” and his soloing throughout; he has become one of the music’s major young players.

In one of two late-night jam sessions at the Shilo Inn, vocalist Kenny Washington, captivated listeners most of whom were hearing him for the first time. In a typically perceptive OCJP mix-and-match, Hofmann teamed Washington with Calvaire, Captein, Gordon and guitarist Graham Dechter. By the time Washington and singer Denise Donatelli shared leadership of a set the next night, Washington had accumulated new admirers of his swing, cheerfulness, vocal technique and a range that equals Bobby McFerrin’s. On another set, Donatelli headed a trio with Dechter and Portland bassist Tom Wakeling. Warmed up, minor intonation adjustments out of the way, she combined personal phrasing and time feeling with a smoky quality that melded into crystal clarity in the high register on “If You Never Come to Me” and “Darn That Dream.”

Bill Mays’ History of Jazz Piano concert for a morning audience covered pianists from James P. Johnson to Herbie Hancock. Teddy Wilson, Bill Evans and Bud Powell were among the 13 whose styles Mays summoned without surrendering his individuality. Tommy Flanagan and Sonny Clark had to be set aside when time ran short. I had the privilege of providing narration leading into each of Bill’s segments. That put me in the second best seat in the house in the curve of the nine-foot Steinway as Mays poured himself into interpreting some of the pianists who influenced his development. It was a great experience, with a responsive audience, and so much fun that we’re thinking of doing it again sometime, somewhere.

Three Portlanders—bassist Captein, drummer Gary Hobbs and pianist Tony Pacini—teamed with Chuck Redd on vibes for a set that included a superb Captein solo on “Come Fly With Me.” Listening backstage, Hofmann said, “He is so solid.” In Duke Ellington’s “Main Stem,” Hobbs used brushes on cymbals and floated through a solo that incorporated air as an element. In the second jam session at the Shilo, the former Stan Kenton drummer showed another side of his talent as he propelled a sextet with Stafford, guitarist Dechter (pictured), Peplowski, Redd (vibes) and John Clayton. In a quintet session Saturday night, on Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing,” Stafford and Gordon explored different degrees of rambunctiousness. Old pals John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton followed, trading eight-bar phrases as they grinned at one another. Other high points of the set were Gordon’s trumpet and singing on “Black and Blue” in tribute to Louis Armstrong, and Gerald Clayton’s sensitive playing on the intriguing harmonies of his “Sunny Day Go By.”

The Sunday Morning wrap session began with Mays updating and expanding the repertoire of his CD Mays at the Movies. He, Wakeling (pictured) and Redd concentrated on music from films he admires, has written for, or on whose soundtracks he played. The admiration category included the classics “Laura,” “The Very Thought of You” and “Smile.” His own “Cool Pool” was a Miles Davis “All Blues” clone that he wrote for a producer who didn’t want to pay a heavy licensing fee to use the Davis original. He played on the sound track of the Coen Brothers’ Fargo, and gave the Newport audience a trio version of the film’s theme by Carter Burwell, which Mays described as “not a bad piece of music.” Mays’ composition “Judy” appeared in the appallingly violent Willem Dafoe psychological thriller Anamorph. Accordingly, he, Wakeling and Redd played it as what Mays called a “group grope,” free jazz with simultaneous improvisation that ended with the trio wreathed in smiles.

Atsuko Hashimoto reappeared as the head of a trio with Peplowski on tenor sax and Hamilton on drums. In “If I Had You,” she affirmed the B3’s capacity for dynamic subtlety as well as displays of power when she built to a crescendo, sustained it momentarily, then let the volume fall away without losing momentum as Peplowski reintroduced the melody. Hashimoto does not speak English but evidently understands it. Peplowski served as the trio’s spokesman. He reduced his leader and the audience to nearly helpless laughter after he promised that they would play Wagner’s Ring Cycle, then introduced “Shiny Stockings” by reminding Hamilton, “this is the tune we first danced to.”

The fun and games continued with the Clayton Brothers band augmented by Wycliffe Gordon. The trombonist, Terell Stafford and Jeff Clayton comprised a powerhouse front line in blues pianist Al Copley’s “Friday Night Strut,” with solos in kind by all hands. Stafford’s had a series of chromatic descending lines so logical, it sounded composed, as of course it was—on the spot. They followed with “This Ain’t Nothin’ But a Party” and spirited soloing on the 16-bar piece written by Jeff C., who led the audience and the band in a singalong. The crowd quickly picked up the lyrics, which consisted of the title sung repeatedly. It was nothin’ but a party all weekend, and it closed with the group jam on “Perdido” with which we began this series of Newport reports three days ago and three items below.

Hammond B3 organist Atsuko Hashimoto bookended the Oregon Coast Jazz Party. The diminutive bundle of energy from Osaka performed on opening night, again on Saturday and in the Sunday morning wrap session. Her set with drummer Jeff Hamilton and guitarist Graham Dechter began with the ballad “All or Nothing at All” from their most recent CD. She and Hamilton kicked it off at a blistering non-balladic tempo, as later they did “Yours is My Heart Alone,” another piece that began life as a tender expression of sentiment and takes on a different character at top speed.

In their decade of playing together, Hashimoto and Hamilton have developed an easy relationship into which Dechter fits as a full partner. The trio locked in tightly through Hank Mobley’s “Soul Station,” “Always Trust Your Heart” with Hamilton’s hand drumming introduction, and “I’ve Never Been in Love Before.” The closing blues had stop-time breaks for Dechter, Hamilton’s compelling shuffle beat and Hashimoto in flurries that swelled and receded in waves up and down the keyboard. The three smiled continually through the piece.

They were back the next morning, each playing an unaccompanied solo in a set that also included clarinetist Ken Peplowski, bassist John Clayton, pianist Gerald Clayton and vibraharpist Chuck Redd. In the Sunday wrap session, Hashimoto, Hamilton and Peplowski—this time on tenor saxophone— played an organ trio set that began with “Sunny,” leading Terell Stafford, listening backstage, to say of Peplowski, “Wow, he sounds like Stanley Turrentine.” They followed with “If I Had You,” Hashimoto applying dynamics reminiscent of Jimmy Smith, her early inspiration. Peplowski announced the final tune of the set as “Wagner’s Ring Cycle. We’re going to try to get through it in three-and-a-half hours.” He looked over at Hashimoto shuffling through lead sheets and said, “She’s looking for the music.” The piece turned out to be “Shiny Stockings.”

Tomorrow morning, I am off to Newport, Oregon to attend the 2012 Oregon Coast Jazz Party. The three-day event used to be called The Newport, Oregon, Jazz Festival, but I’m told that it became necessary to rename it because of concerns that it could be mistaken for another festival. Perhaps you can guess which one. This poster, perhaps commissioned by the chamber of commerce or the tourist commission, clearly shows that the Oregon Newport is on the left coast. If you look closely, you will see that it illustrates some of the things I could do if I weren’t going to be in windowless rooms listening to music.