My guess is that this is the Glenn Gould clip that sent Jessica Williams into a new phase (see the first paragraph of the previous exhibit). It's from the documentary Art Of Piano. Gould is at home, fairly early in his career, working out on the Bach "Partita # 2." … [Read more...]

Stefon Harris And Blackout, Urbanus (Concord). Harris is one of the brightest legatees of the vibraphone tradition glorified by Milt Jackson and such of his successors as Walt Dickerson, Cal Tjader and Bobby Hutcherson. The Jackson school played an important part in Harris's development as a … [Read more...]

Sonny Rollins is 79 today. We celebrate the occasion by bringing you Rollins playing an extended version of a tune his mother remembered from her girlhood in the Virgin Islands. "St. Thomas" has been an essential and beloved part of his repertoire for more than 50 years. The rhythm section Is Kenny … [Read more...]

News flash: Johann Sebastian Bach may have been ahead of his time. Eric Altschuler, a Bach researcher for more than a decade, was a guest today on National Public Radio's Morning Edition Sunday. He discussed with host Liane Hansen his proposition that Bach used a twelve-tone row a couple of … [Read more...]

Listening to the Art Pepper CDs for the new batch of recommendations in Doug's Picks (center column) stimulated memories of time spent with Pepper not long before he died. The occasion was the basis of an article in Texas Monthly. Later, in slightly different form, it ended up as part of a chapter … [Read more...]

Your attention, please: In the center column, we present five new Doug's Picks, by an author-photographer, two pianists, a saxophonist and a stimulating young composer. … [Read more...]

Eddie Higgins died yesterday of lung cancer. Those who knew him called him by his given name, Haydn. He was a pianist of uncommon sensitivity, taste, subtlety and adaptability. He was equally accomplished and enthusiastic working with singers (his wife is Meredith d'Ambrosio), traditional bands (he … [Read more...]

Ronan Guilfoyle is an Irish jazz musician and educator whose blog, Mostly Music, probes issues that concern working musicians as well as academics in institutions where jazz is taught. Those are often the same people. Increasingly, professional jazz players also teach in jazz schools. In part, that … [Read more...]

You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail. - Charlie Parker He had just what we needed. He had the line and he had the rhythm. The way he got from one note to the other and the … [Read more...]

Charlie Parker was born in Kansas City on this date in 1920. The Rifftides staff debated whether to observe the occasion by publishing a 5000-word essay tracing Parker's musical heritage, analyzing the components of his style and evaluating his influence on several generations of musicians. You'll … [Read more...]

Jack Brownlow has been dead nearly two years, but stories about him keep surfacing. Among his other attributes, the pianist was admired for his harmonic ingenuity, chord placement, taste and timing in accompanying instrumentalists and vocalists. At Brownlow's memorial service in the fall of 2007, … [Read more...]

If I had known of Ethan Iverson's conversation with Lee Konitz about Lester Young, I would have included a link to it in the previous exhibit. On his blog, Do The Math, Iverson, the pianist and polymath of The Bad Plus, posts what amounts to a Prez master class with Konitz. The alto saxophonist has … [Read more...]

Lester Young was born 100 years ago today and died in his 49th year in March, 1959. Billie Holiday called him the president of the tenor saxophonists. His nickname became Prez, and he called nearly everyone else Prez. There is an endless list of musicians who played as they did mostly because of … [Read more...]

Best moment of the day, ten minutes ago: Coming to the end of a long bicycle ride, I passed a church playground not far from the house. A boy of about three ran out of the mass of children on swings and jungle gyms and yelled, "Hey." "Hey," I replied. "Can you go home?" he said. "I'm going home," I … [Read more...]

In the e-mail today came yet another news release using one of the favorite clichés of record company publicists. It announced the release of "the sophomore album" of a young saxophonist. A sophomore is a second-year student at a high school, college or university. You could look it up. The word is … [Read more...]

The world may have known about it, but I just stumbled upon a rich cache of Elis Regina video clips on YouTube. They come from a 1973 Brazilian television special. The program seems to have been available on a DVD that quickly disappeared from the market. Amazon, CD Universe, Netflix and several … [Read more...]

Browsing the works of my fellow artsjournal.com bloggers this morning, I discovered in his blog Overflow a piece by Harvey Sachs that illuminates the condition of American popular culture in the new century. Mr. Sachs, the distinguished biographer of Arturo Toscanini and Artur Rubinstein, recently … [Read more...]

No one ever accused Stan Getz of phoning in a solo. Not infrequently, however, he gave the appearance of detachment as he played while surveying the audience with eyes wide open. When he closed those cool blue eyes and leaned into a solo, something special was likely to happen. In Italy in 1961, … [Read more...]

You don't rehearse jazz to death to get the camera angles. - Stan Getz A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other's ideas. - Stan Getz The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to … [Read more...]