Sorry for the short notice, but this just came in from Jovino Santos Neto. The program he tells us about will go on the air ten minutes from now as I write this at 12:50 pm PDT. Jim Wilke, who has become a Northwest musical icon for his relentless support of our music scene for decades. His show … [Read more...]

For the next several days, blogging will be irregular. ("So, what's new?" a cynic might say.) The Rifftides staff is knee deep in the fourth year of The Seasons Fall Festival. The nine days of music include The Brubeck Brothers Quartet (pictured, left), Matt Wilson, Dena DeRose, The Imani Winds … [Read more...]

A friend asked me to bicycle through the Yakima River canyon with him this morning. I said I had too much work to do, so he rode the 40 miles north to Ellensburg alone. When he got back, he sent a message, "The canyon is nice today," with evidence. Photo by Michael Grim … [Read more...]

Trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, admired within jazz circles but little known outside them, has received tangible recognition for his work as a player and a teacher. Belgrave left Ray Charles in the early 1960s ago to settle in Detroit. In today's Detroit Free Press, Mark Stryker reports on the award and … [Read more...]

Marc Myers, the resourceful and indefatigable king of the verbatim interview, posts a JazzWax conversation with Sonny Rollins about one of Rollins's most unusual and successful albums. An excerpt: JW: How did you pick the songs?
 SR: All the songs I knew. By going to the movies so much as a child … [Read more...]

Brand New: In Brief Joe Martin, Not By Chance (Anzic). Martin is a versatile and rounded bassist who has collaborated with a wide range of musicians at the heart of the 30-something generation of jazz players in New York. Here, he enlists two fellow members of that generation's elite, pianist Brad … [Read more...]

Graham Collier, directing 14 Jackson Pollocks (GCM). Long before he wrote his recent book, Graham Collier's music made it plain that Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Gil Evans were profound influences on his work. Collier followed Ellington's and Mingus's lead in fashioning pieces with his … [Read more...]

From the Wikipedia entry about the saxophonist known as Kenny G: In 1997, Kenny G earned a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for playing the longest note ever recorded on a saxophone. Kenny G held an E-flat for forty five minutes and 47 seconds in the Hopkins-Bright Auditorium (named after … [Read more...]

This is the worst day of my life. Now I have nothing to live for. - Harry Carney on the death of Duke Ellington Harry Carney died of bereavement. - Whitney Balliett … [Read more...]

Following the Compatible Quotes entry two exhibits down, several Rifftides readers -- literate bunch that you are -- responded extolling the grandfather of all autumnul rhapsodies of the past two centuries. By popular request, here it is. ODE TO AUTUMN John Keats (1795-1821) SEASON of mists and … [Read more...]

Indian Summer is glorious in this precinct of the northern hemisphere. Skies are cloudless. The mountains stand out crisply on the horizon. Daytime temperatures are in the 80s and 90s, dropping to the high 40s at night. That makes for red apples and great wine crushes in the vineyards. The fine … [Read more...]

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. 
-- George Eliot Then summer fades and passes and October comes. We'll smell smoke then, 
and feel an unexpected sharpness, a thrill of nervousness, swift elation, … [Read more...]

Yakima, Washington The recent CD by pianist Bill Anschell and soprano saxophonist Brent Jensen is called We Couldn't Agree More. The title is inaccurate. In an intimate concert last weekend at The Seasons, they were in even greater agreement, with more daring and more complexity. The duo's approach … [Read more...]

In this video clip, bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen introduces Freddie Hubbard, who chooses the verse of one imperishable ballad to set up the chorus of another, to NHOP's evident bemusement. It may be from may be Danish television in the late 1960s, but DailyMotion provides no information … [Read more...]

Hearty congratulations to Doug McLennan, pioneer web chronicler of the arts. He is artsjournal.com's founder, commander-in-chief and unfailingly patient rescuer of digitally challenged bloggers like me. Terry Teachout, who has been aboard nearly the whole time, reminds me by way of his blog that … [Read more...]

In the fall of 2006, we posted a piece connecting two important Czech artists, one a novelist, the other a pianist. This week, the story they gave us drew a comment from yet another Czech artist who was there when it happened during the Soviet domination of Czechoslovakia. Here is the original item … [Read more...]

On the heels of the announcement that he is a 2009 Kennedy Center honoree, Dave Brubeck wrapped up a rare extended club engagement, part of his latest western tour. Sunday, at the helm of the "new" edition of the quartet he has headed since 1951, the 88-year-old pianist and composer played to a … [Read more...]

I think one of the best things you can do, no matter what you play, is to take up piano. Music is based on chord changes and harmonies, and you can get 'em more out of an instrument like piano, where you can hear all the notes at once. - Zoot Sims It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me. - … [Read more...]

Jessica Williams, The Art Of The Piano (Origin). Williams' 2800-word liner essay declares renewed and deepened love for the piano and rededicated independence from the strictures and orthodoxies of the music establishment. She cites an internet video clip of Glenn Gould playing Bach as "...a … [Read more...]