Don’t be a musician under any circumstances unless you can bring yourself to be nothing else—Paul Desmond

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music—Albert Einstein

The week’s eeriest internet experience: being mesmerized by the masthead picture box at the top of Jazz Improv magazine’s home page as a dozen great musicians appear and dissolve.
While you’re there, don’t miss the interview with guitarist Russell Malone. It includes his story of sitting in, as a twenty-two-year-old novice, with the brilliant, irascible, organist Jimmy Smith and making a shambles of “Laura.”

So I was going to leave, but I said, “Well, you know, I should, at least, go up to the old man and thank him for letting me sit in with him.” So I walked up to the bar and I tapped him on the shoulder. He looked around at me and before I could get the next sentence out of my mouth, he got in my face and poked his finger in my chest, like this, and he said, “Let me tell you something. All of these guys that you’re trying to play like”—and he named Pat Martino, Wes Montgomery, George Benson, Kenny Burrell, this long list of guitar players—“all those guys that you’re trying to play like, I taught them too.” And he said, “So don’t ever get on my bandstand with that bullshit again.” So I said, “Oh my god, man!” So I hung around. At around 11:45, he finished his drink, and he motioned for me to come with him. He said, “Bring your guitar. Come with me.”

The story has a happy ending.

I first heard the tenor saxophonist Tommy Smith on opening night of the Portland Jazz Festival earlier this year. Smith was a commanding figure in several areas of the festival, notably so in a guest turn with one of his favorite collaborators. I mentioned that appearance in a Jazz Times review of the event.

Vibraharpist Joe Locke’s Four Walls of Freedom quartet included Tommy Smith, Scotland’s impressive contribution to the world’s post-Coltrane tenor sax population. Performing in kilts, Smith matched the high-tension energy and stop-on-a-dime tempo and mood shifts of Locke, bassist Ed Howard and drummer Gary Novak.

To read the entire review, go here.
Smith is something of a Scottish cultural treasure. His precocious talent became known in Edinburgh when he was a teenager in the mid-1980s. A public fund drive raised money to send him to the US and the Berklee School of Music in Boston. At eighteen, he was playing with Gary Burton. Long since back home and active as a composer, educator, and nurturer and developer of young talent, he devotes much of his time and considerable energy to giving back to his country.
Smith shares his knowledge with radio listeners on BBC Scotland. In his latest series, he examines jazz standards in a well-produced, entertaining, thirty-minute program called Jazzlines. Smith’s attentions in the current installment are on “A Night in Tunisia.” Internet listeners can hear it in streaming audio by going here. The program includes various recordings of the piece and a live duo performance by Smith and pianist Brian Kellock. Smith’s inspired tenor sax personalization of Charlie Parker’s famous alto break is worth considerably more than the price of admission.

This piece ultimately concerns Ben Webster, but it requires setup. The setup has to do with books.

The book discussion group to which I belong operates a bit unconventionally. We don’t use outlines or lesson plans. There is no discussion leader. We are a sort of freewheeling literary cooperative. Sometimes, the discussion goes far afield from the book at hand, although we usually manage to get back to it. We laugh a lot. We live in one of the great wine producing regions of the world, so we drink wine—moderately, of course—as we discuss the book at hand. There are eight of us, four men, four women, none married to one of the others. We alternate meeting at one another’s houses. The host provides the wine, coffee and dessert. Ordinarily, we select a slate of six or eight books for the coming year. Last year, this was the list:

The Conservationist: Nadine Gordimer
The Moviegoer: Walker Percy
Light in August: William Faulkner
My Name is Red: Orhan Pamuk
The Canterbury Tales: Geoffrey Chaucer
Robinson Crusoe: Daniel Defoe
Kim: Rudyard Kipling/Candide: Voltaire (a twofer)
Wise Blood: Flannery O’Connor

This time around, we are devoting an entire year to James Joyce’s Ulysses. That’s only fair; it took Joyce nine years to write it. Last night, in addition to discussing the book, we watched an installment of the 1967 Irish film of Ulysses starring Milo O’Shea as Leopold Bloom. Then, we had coffee and dessert. As we ate, I noticed that the host had on a table next to my chair a copy of the CD box set of Duke Ellington at Fargo, 1940. He saw me staring at it as lustfully as Blazes Boylan contemplating Molly Bloom and asked if there was something I’d like to hear.
“Of course,” I said, “Ben Webster playing ‘Star Dust,’” He put it on.

“My God,” one of the women said about halfway through, “It’s as if he doesn’t have a horn, as if he’s just breathing the music.”

A good deal has been written about that imperishable tenor saxophone solo, but I can’t imagine a finer description of it. Joyce couldn’t have put it better.

In the adjoining exhibit, under Doug’s Picks, are the Rifftides staff’s latest recommendations. We hope that you find them worthwhile. Either way, let us know, please. The e-mail address is also in the right column.

It bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not. It’s feeling—Bill Evans

Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself—Igor Stravinsky

My heavily-traveled weekend with an assemblage of couples out for a good time included an evening at Jazz Alley in Seattle eating well and hearing Toots Thielemans, Kenny Werner and Oscar Castro-Neves. Thielemans is a member of that astonishing corps of world-class jazz octogenarians (Hank Jones, Marian McPartland, James Moody, Dave Brubeck, ClarkTerry, Buddy DeFranco) who seem uninterested in slowing their pace, let alone retiring. At eighty-three, his polish, harmonic daring and swing on the harmonica keep him the undisputed champion not only of that unlikely jazz instrument but of all instruments that show up in the jazz magazines’ “miscellaneous” poll categories.
When it comes to Thielemans’ level of musicianship, categories don’t matter. He would likely be as creative if he played comb and tissue paper. Thielemans and Werner, long established as a formidable duo, became a virtual chamber orchestra with the addition of Castro-Neves’ guitar. There were moments at Jazz Alley when the piano, guitar and harmonica melded into chords so expansive and deep, it seemed impossible that they came from only three instruments. The authenticity of Castro-Neves’ Brazilian rhythms and bossa nova spirit were an essential part of the set’s air of happiness. An inveterate quoter, Thielemans now and then broke himself up with some of his allusions. He threw sly glances at Werner as he worked snatches of several other Frank Sinatra hits into his solo on “All The Way.”
On some pieces, Werner supplemented his piano with an electronic keyboard. His goal may have been to create atmospherics, but rather than enhance the sublime quality of the ensemble, his synthesizer “sweetening” diluted it. A pianist of his protean capabilities needs no digital reinforcement, as he demonstrated in brilliant solos on “The Dolphin,” “Chega de Saudade,” and an unlikely neo-samba treatment of “God Bless America.”
The trio’s treatment of the Irving Berlin classic inspired a standing ovation, then a short speech by Thielemans about how jazz and the American people drew him to move to the United States from Belgium in 1957 and to become a US citizen. He talked about his love of Louis Armstrong. Then, as an encore, Thielemans, Werner and Castro-Neves played “What a Wonderful World.” For the ninety minutes of their set, the world, the band, the audience, the club, were wonderful. Everything was wonderful.

The islands of Puget Sound are among the glories of the Pacific Northwest. Vashon Island, where we celebratory couples spent the night after we left Jazz Alley, is one of the loveliest. Because the only way to get to it is on the water, Vashon has managed to retain much of its rural and small town charm despite its proximity to Seattle.
For now, and I hope forever, to get on and off Vashon, you drive, bicycle or walk onto one of the boats of the Washington State ferry system and take a fifteen-minute ride. The ferries run frequently and usually on time. They provide essential transportation for commuters and sightseeing opportunities for visitors.
From time to time there has been talk of building a bridge from Seattle to Vashon. If that happened, the developers would eradicate the place’s character quicker than you can say bulldozer. Island people are frustrated when they miss a ferry or it runs late, but most of those who live on Vashon will regard you with horror if you mention the word bridge. When you find yourself in this part of the world, carve out time to take a ferry boat ride.

The veteran Pennsylvania broadcaster Russ Neff is once again doing a jazz program, but he’s streaming it on the internet. He writes that he was inspired by Jim Wilke’s Jazz After Hours to return to jazz radio.

I’d not been on the air since 1991 and since no local station was interested in my services, I decided that online audio was the way to go…audio streaming is my chosen vehicle.

To hear Russ’s current My Favorite Things, click here and then on “Listen Here.” The program has a minimum of talk from Neff—all of it informative—and a generous, mellow and varied supply of music, some of it unexpected. As I write this, he has just played B.B. King singing and Eric Clapton gargling “Come Rain or Come Shine” and segued into “The Quintessence,” by Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass.

Jessica Williams has entered the blogosphere. She is a most welcome entry. Her blog, The Zone, is unlike any other, just as Ms. Williams is unlike any other pianist. Here is some of what she wrote in a posting called “Making Oneself Available.”

Never rehearse a moment. Too much practice kills all magic, all spontaneity. Being spontaneous is the highest form of calculated artistic achievement. Calculated only in that it’s a plan not to have a plan. Sitting alone at home at the piano, I become the piano.

Most piano players see the piano like a big black bull. They go to the bullfight as toreadors, they fight the bull, they are either gored or they are bull- killers.

By becoming the piano, you become music, you become a musician.

Never strive to be a pianist.

To read the whole thing, click here, and then roam through Ms. Williams’ other postings. I am adding her blog to the Other Places list in the right-hand column.
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