In a recent Rifftides posting, I wrote:

It must be tempting, if you own a newspaper, to break down the traditional separation between the news side of the paper and the advertising department. There are plenty of advertisers eager for credibility they think will come from a more direct connection with news content, and there are plenty of good reasons why a breakdown of separation is a bad idea for a news organization.

DevraDowrite is also distrubed by the apparent trend toward a melding of news and advertising and alerts us to another step down what she correctly calls a slippery slope. To read her post and follow her link to further information, go here.

The other day, we declared the following item from The Los Angeles Times the winner of the Rifftides everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-in-the-lead newswriting competition.

Ed Masry, the flamboyant, crusading environmental lawyer portrayed by actor Albert Finney in the movie “Erin Brockovich,” which was based on Masry’s landmark $333 million settlement against Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for ground water contamination in California’s high desert, has died.

Reader Dick McGarvin of Los Angeles had this response:

Word has it that, at the beginning of this item, Ed was still alive.

The Rifftides applause discussion of the past several days attracted attention off the web as well as on. Drew McManus of Adaptistration and I will join John Schaefer of WNYC radio in New York to talk about applause for jazz and classical music.
The broadcast will be tomorrow, Friday, December 9, at 2 pm Eastern time, 1 pm Central, 11 am Pacific, 9 am Honolulu, 8 pm Paris. You can hear it on WNYC’s live audio stream. Please do.

One of the great albums of the early 1960s has never been reissued on CD, a circumstance that calls for a listener uprising and perhaps a congressional investigation. It was Flute Fever by the Jeremy Steig Quartet (Columbia CS 8936 stereo, CL 2136 monaural). Copies of the LP in good condition, when they can be found, sell for upwards of $200. Great music should not be available only to rich collectors.

Steig, son of the brilliant cartoonist William Steig, was, and is, a flutist of audacity, force and humor. Flute Fever was his debut recording, as it was for his pianist, a young medical student named Denny Zeitlin. On the Sonny Rollins compostion “Oleo,” each of them solos with ferocious thrust, chutzpah, swing and—one of the most challenging accomplishments in jazz—a feeling of delirious freedom within the discipline of a harmonic structure. The structure happens to be the most lenient in jazz apart from the blues, the chord pattern of “I Got Rhythm.” Nonetheless, Steig and Zeitlin used it for two of the most exhilirating rides anyone since Charlie Parker had taken on “Rhythm” changes. Great as they both were, if I were forced to referee, I’d have to give the round to Zeitlin. His choruses constitute one of the most memorable stretches of improvisation by an unknown player ever captured on record.

Zeitlin’s anonymity ended with that solo, which triggered enthusiastic reviews. He went on to make a series of five LPs for Columbia. Only two of them are available on CD, not including the brilliant Live At The Trident. He was graduated from medical school and became a prominent practicing and teaching psychiatrist, never abandoning the piano. In the notes for Flute Fever, Willis Conover quoted the prospective MD: “I love medicine as much as music…I can play more of what I feel is in myself instead of playing what I have to for hamburgers.” While in full-time medical practice, he has managed to turn out seventeen albums and make regular appearances in clubs and concerts. He had an electronic period, with interesting, if mixed, results. He has done a fair amount of solo playing, but it seems to me that Zeitlin had made his most effective music with trios, none of which has been more stunning than his current one with bassist Buster Williams and drummer Matt Wilson.

Music and psychiatry are not enough to absorb Dr. Zeitlin’s curiosity and energy. He is also devoted to mountain biking, fishing, gastronomy and wine. Nor does he dabble in those interests. He Pursues them. I should mention his newest passion, his web site. With the aid of internet maven Bret Primack, Zeitlin recently set up shop on the web. I recommend a visit, but go when you have time to explore, among other areas of his life, the Zeitlin wine cellar. He gives you a video tour that, if you love wine, will activate your olfactory and saliva glands—and whatever gland stimulates envy. When you get there, click on “Denny’s Wine Cellar.”

Zeitlin’s old partner in excitement, Jeremy Steig, is still in business, as you may hear on a recent CD. He has a website, too. His primary interests are music and art. His site gives us glimpses of a few of Steig’s paintings, which he creates with the same imagination and whimsy that he brings to his music.

Now, the question naturally arises: when will these two magicians make music together again?

As you may have noticed, I maintain an interest in what is happening in journalism. Quality of writing is a particular fascination. I’ve begun keeping a sort of journal of examples of writing and of broadcast speech. I may occasionally share an entry with you.
The year is nearly over, so I think it is safe to declare a winner in the 2005 Rifftides everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-in-the-lead-sentence competition. No one’s going to top this:

Los Angeles Times
December 6, 2005

Ed Masry, the flamboyant, crusading
environmental lawyer portrayed by
actor Albert Finney in the
movie “Erin Brockovich,” which
was based on Masry’s landmark
$333 million settlement against
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for
ground water contamination in
California’s high desert, has died.

Rifftides reader Steven Marks responded to a recent more or less lighthearted posting with this::

As a former writer for Down Beat and other arts periodicals, this post made me laugh. I know what you mean about the writer’s minimum wage, esp when it comes to arts journalism — I’d say it’s about 2 bits. Which is why I became a medical science writer – don’t ask. It isn’t nearly as much fun, but it does pay the rent. How you guys are able to survive on the pittance the editors are willing (or able) to pay continues to amaze me.

(Reminds me of something funny that Calvin Trillin once said. When asked about The Nation’s Victor Navasky and his closed-wallet policies, Trillin demurred, noting that Navasky always paid him “in the high 2 figures.”) While there certainly is more to life than money, financial recognition for the wisdom, experience, and grace required to move words around a blank page in a compelling manner is no small potatoes either. You gotta love it, I guess. And one can always hope the reader is enlightened, amused, infuriated, or otherwise moved. That too is something. Count me among the entertained and informed.

Minimum Wage duty calls. Today, I must write like crazy to finish what one might amusingly describe as a paying job. I also have to figure out what I’m going to say tonight when I introduce a performance of the Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn “Nutcracker Suite” at The Seasons. It will be played by a band from the Central Washington University music department, a good one. The likelihood of further posting in the next thirty-six hours is small, but not nonexistent. You might visit the archives (right column) and my talented artsjournal.com neighbors (farther down the right column).

A month ago, in the discussion of Good Night, And Good Luck, I included this item about Diane Reeves’ important contribution to the film’s success. Thanks to Rifftides reader Paul Conley of KXJZ in Sacramento for calling my attention to his interview with Ms. Reeves about her role in the movie.
Conley being Conley—a craftsman whose reports are those of a documentarian with a fine production touch—it is more than an interview. He knows how to let music help tell the story, as he has proved in a number of full-length programs, including this one, for NPR’s Jazz Profiles series. The Reeves piece is a representative sample of his work. To hear it, click here, then click on “Listen.”

We are about to wrap up the discussion about whether to applaud, and when. First, if you’d like to see the comments of classical fans who responded on Drew McManus’s Adaptistration , go here, then come right back.
Unless something extraordinary pops up, we conclude with a comment from Bill Kirchner, who more or less initiated the conversation.

Fascinating views from the classical part of the spectrum. Maybe the overall lesson is that regimented, obligatory, unspontaneous responses from an audience are a drag for all concerned. Let people
respond as and when they wish, but *because* they wish to, not because they believe it’s their duty.

A composer friend of ours tells of going to hear a performance of a work by a famous contemporary composer. After twenty minutes, our friend was so overwhelmed in a negative sense that he started booing and was escorted out of the hall. “But you know,” our friend remarked, “I give ________ credit; he got an honest and deep reaction out of me.”

As a rule, I don’t advocate booing, but perhaps both jazz and classical audiences need to be encouraged to trust their guts more and be less encumbered by tired conventions of conduct.

I would like to tell you the names of both composers, but a promise is a promise.

Eric Jackson, Stephen J. Charbonneau and Steve Schwartz of Boston’s venerable jazz station WGBH have launched a new weblog. It concentrates on music and musicians in the Boston area. Many of the best jazz players show up there, several live in the city or nearby and the WGBH blog has news about them. Schwartz recently went to the Regattabar in Cambridge to hear Kenny Barron’s trio. He found Barron and Ray Drummond, but drummer Ben Riley was missing, replaced by young Francisco Mela. That worried Schwartz.

My apprehension was short lived. Mela, from Cuba and a former Bostonian (he came here to go to school, graduated and moved to New York but continues to teach at Berklee College of Music) was totally up for the task. This gig was the first time he had played with Kenny and Ray. It was as if he was born to be there.

He told me afterwards that Kenny heard him at a jazz festival in France, came up to him after and began talking to him. Kenny said he would call Francisco about gigs. Francisco told Kenny, “Maestro, please don’t tell me you are going to call me if you are not going to call me!”

Kenny took him by the shoulder and said, “Francisco, I’m going to call you!” Two days later the phone rang and this gig was a result of that conversation.

To read the whole thing, go here. I’m adding the GBH blog to the Other Places list in the right column. Please go there now and then, but don’t forget to return to Rifftides. Bring a friend. There’s lots of room.