Note: If this item looks familiar, it is because I mistakenly posted it on October 17. Today, October 21, is the correct date of Dizzy’s birth, so the Rifftides staff is moving the piece to where it belongs and adding a couple of links—DR.
This is the birthday of Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993). In observance, here is a remarkable confluence of the talents of Gillespie and the master composer and arranger Robert Farnon (1917-2005). The piece is Gillespie’s “Con Alma,” orchestrated by Farnon and conducted by him at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1985. The delay between video and audio is mildly disconcerting, but the music is glorious.

For insight into how Dizzy’s thoughtfulness and generosity affected one of many musicians, see today’s entry in Diane Moser’s blog.
For a personal remembrance, see this Rifftides archive piece.

Trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer Kenny Wheeler, now in his 80s, is a man of so few words that he is nearly silent, but John Fordham of The Guardian managed to persuade Wheeler to talk about himself for an article. Anyone interested in the unceasingly searching trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer will want to read Fordham’s piece. Here’s an excerpt:

He doesn’t even call himself a composer, but someone who “takes pretty songs and joins them up.” The soft-spoken Toronto-born musician has been sketching his enigmatic scenes for over half a century now, in which period – to his surprise – they’ve been massaged or creatively subverted by A-list jazz artists from the late Sir John Dankworth to sax stars Jan Garbarek and Evan Parker. Despite his 80 years, he retains his uniquely pure and melodically startling flugelhorn sound, and still composes profusely.

To read the whole thing, go here.
This video features Wheeler soloing with the George Gruntz big band on tour in Japan in the late 1980s. The tune is one of Wheeler’s best known, “Everybody’s Song But My Own.” Gruntz is the pianist, Chris Hunter the alto saxophonist. Mike Richmond is on bass, Paul Motian on drums. I recognize Tom Varner on French horn, but don’t have the names of the other musicians. This is a generous helping of Wheeler’s playing.

For an evaluation from the Rifftides archives of one of Wheeler’s albums and another honoring him, go here.

Rifftides reader Mike Paulson writes:

Looked up this clip on YouTube after watching Scott Robinson play “Isfahan” with Martin Wind at The Seasons the other evening.

I am amazed at how timeless this arrangement is. Hard to improve on perfection. Not sure why Duke had to hold the sheet music for Johnny Hodges.

Ellington and Billy Strayhorn got the inspiration for “Isfahan” during the band’s tour of the Middle East in 1963. It became a part of The Far East Suite, which Ellington did not record until 1966. An educated guess is that in the 1964 performance—not 1965, as YouTube labels it—captured on the clip, Ellington or Strayhorn had recently written it and Hodges was giving the tune one of is first hearings, if not the first. If that is the case, his needing the lead sheet for reference is not surprising. It was not unusual for Ellington to have the band perform new music when the ink was barely dry.
The Scott Robinson performance of “Isfahan” that Mr. Paulson mentioned is covered in the Rifftides October 18 review two exhibits down.

Alto saxophonist Marion Brown, who came to prominence in the 1960s and ’70s, died yesterday at age 79. He had been in an assisted living home in Hollywood, Florida, since 2005. Although some references list his birth year as 1935, he was born on September 8, 1931, in Atlanta, Georgia. Brown’s career got a boost when John Coltrane chose him to be on Ascension. That 1965 album, in effect, was Coltrane’s announcement that he was fully embracing free jazz. Brown also collaborated with Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, Paul Bley and other figures in the free movement. In albums like his Afternoon of a Georgia Faun, he struck a balance between lyrical playing and the unbounded improvisation of the avant garde. This 1967 clip from Italy, with its murky picture, is a rare piece of video featuring Brown. The other members of his quartet are not identified. Be patient; the man who posted the clip has a promotional announcement.

Hours before Friday night’s concert at The Seasons Fall Festival, bassist Martin Wind’s trio lost a third of its roster when drummer Matt Wilson returned home to attend to a family medical situation. Wind called Greg Williamson, who drove 150 miles from Seattle to Yakima across the Cascade Mountains in time for a quick talk-through before he joined Wind and saxophonist Scott Robinson on stage. The combination clicked in the trio’s first half and after intermission when singer-pianist Dee Daniels joined them.
Had the audience not known of the last-minute substitution, nothing in the performance would have told them that Williamson had never before played with Wind and Robinson. Relying on experience, intuition and occasional clues from eye contact with Wind, Williamson, an imposing figure, cooked along as if the three had been together on the road for weeks—or, at least, had rehearsed. From the opener, Lucky Thompson’s blues “The Plain But Simple Truth,” they drew upon the common language of jazz and their finely tuned antennae. The program included three tunes from Wind’s new CD, Get It! (See Doug’s Picks in the center column of this page). He began his composition “Rainy River” soloing unaccompanied on the melody of that moody song and led into Robinson, who improvised a variation with suggestions of sadness akin to that of a folk ballad with gospel tinges. The bassist introduced “Gone With the Wind” as “my theme song.” They jammed on it, Williamson locking with the bassist and the tenor man into blowing that went beyond bebop into freer territory.
Robinson did not bring along the arsenal of instruments that has made him a perennial winner in jazz polls’ miscellaneous-instrument categories. There was nary a contrabass sax, sarusaphone or theremin in sight. He played only tenor saxophone and made clear why he attracts so much attention for his work on the instrument. He and Wind demonstrated their empathy in “Remember October 13th” From Wind’s 2008 Salt ‘N Pepper album. The piece went from delicacy in the bass-saxophone exposition of the melody into wild interaction among the three players. Robinson astonished the audience with the range of his playing, from nearly subsonic to beyond altissimo, and control of volume from all but subliminal to thunderous. In the context of his improvisation, his fusillades of honks and slap-tonguing were not vaudeville gags but made sense in the development of his lines.
Wind dedicated “We’ll Be Together Again” to the late Hank Jones and opened it with a solo that radiated deep feeling. The trio segued into Billy Strayhorn’s “Isfahan,” Robinson giving pure melody with subtle references to Johnny Hodges. Wind delivered another memorable solo. Thad Jones’ “Three and One” is a favorite of both Wind and Robinson. Wind plays it with the Vanguard Orchestra and recorded it on Get It. Robinson used it as a vehicle for bass saxophone in his album of Jones compositions. Following Wind’s bowed solo, Robinson, blowing as he went, crossed the stage to the drum set and leaned with his tenor to within a foot or so of Williamson. They generated some of the hardest swing of the evening, Wind grinning at the power of it.
Following intermission, Daniels joined the trio. The power of her voice and a style marinated in blues captivated the crowd from the first notes of “Sweet Georgia Brown.” After “Honeysuckle Rose,” she moved to the Steinway to accompany herself in “A Song For You,” the first of two Leon Russell songs in her set. The Wind Trio returned for “What a Difference a Day Made” and “This Masquerade,” which contained a Robinson solo that uncovered possibilities Russell might not imagine were in his harmonies. Still at the piano, Daniels worked her way from blues shadings into unadulterated blues, belting Jimmy Reed’s “Baby, What You Want From Me.” She dug into the keyboard and set up Wind, Robinson and Williamson for powerful solos. Wind’s arco choruses included pauses that he emphasized with the bassist’s equivalent of Robinson’s slap-tonguing, exquisitely timed whacks with the bow across the strings. The performance brought the audience to its feet demanding an encore. Daniels responded with “Who Can I Turn To” and wrapped up a concert that put an exclamation point on the jazz portion of the eight-day festival.

There is no video of The Seasons festival performance of the Wind trio, but there is of Wind, Robinson, Matt Wilson and pianist Bill Mays at the Jazz Baltica Festival in Germany in 2008. Here, they play Paul Chambers’ “Tale of the Fingers.” Following Wilson’s introduction, Robinson begins on bass clarinet and later solos on cornet and tenor saxophone.

There is more coming soon about the festival at The Seasons, but to clear the mind it was necessary to hop on the bike for a couple of hours. I came across this scene near the end of the ride.

Mark Murphy may have had his problems the past few years, but rumors that he is not singing well appear to be unfounded. Rifftides reader and occasional correspondent Jim Brown sent a report with evidence.

A year or two ago, there were suggestions that Mark was in bad health, perhaps had dementia, and that he might not be performing again. Here’s a performance from last summer that will blow you away. Whatever his health problems might have been, it seems clear that he’s still hanging in. There are several other pieces of video from the same set that are worth watching, but this one is the masterpiece. Pianist Jon Cowherd, bassist Boris Kozlov and drummer Willard Dyson are the accompanists in this medley from the Kitano in New York.