The last thing I want is for Rifftides to become a death watch. Nonetheless, as James Moody says his grandmother once told him, "Folks is dyin' what ain't never died before." Or, to use Bill Crow's words in the subject line of a message today about the arranger, composer and former trumpet player … [Read more...]

William Claxton's cover shots appeared on" ten CDs produced in Los Angeles by Dick Bank. The photographer's last project for Bank was the cover photograph for the 2006 Andy Martin-Jan Lundgren album How About You? (Fresh Sound)."  Bank sent this note following Claxton's death last weekend. I had … [Read more...]

For more thirty years, John Fordham has been favoring the British public with his finely-honed critiques and observations about jazz. Most of his work has appeared in the newspaper The Guardian, but he is also the author of an entertaining and informative history of jazz. Fordham is a full-range … [Read more...]

Word has just come in that William Claxton died on Saturday in Los Angeles of congestive heart failure. He was one day short of his eighty-first birthday. With his pictures of Chet Baker in the early 1950s, Claxton established himself as a brilliant photographer of jazz musicians and went on to a … [Read more...]

McCoy Tyner, Guitars (Half-Note). This is one of the most engaging Tyner collaboration projects since he teamed with the late tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker to record Infinity in 1995 and with Wayne Shorter the following year in the session that produced Extensions. For this release, the pianist … [Read more...]

The guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different color, a different voice.--Andres Segovia There is only one thing more beautiful than one guitar; two guitars--Frederic Chopin They said, ''You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are. The man replied, … [Read more...]

Julius LaRosa sent a reminiscence. This quote from Wikipedia: "Garner was self-taught and remained an 'ear player' all his life - he never learned to read music." A hundred years ago we shared a bill in Pittsburgh...or was it Boston...or was it Chicago...and by coincidence went there on the same … [Read more...]

The British composer, arranger and leader Graham Collier has a new web site that should win awards for design, thoroughness and easy navigation. The home page contains a link to a thirteen-minute montage of music from nine of Collier's eighteen albums over forty years. The montage is designed to be … [Read more...]

The Bill Charlap Trio with bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington played Wednesday night in a live broadcast on National Public Radio and Newark, New Jersey's, WBGO-FM. The program of well more than an hour consisted of one of the trio's sets at New York's Village Vanguard. … [Read more...]

Art Farmer-Gigi Gryce Quintet: Complete 1954-1955 Prestige Recordings (Fresh Sound). In 1953, Farmer arrived in New York from California with Lionel Hampton's band, Gryce from his Fulbright studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Arthur Honneger. The next year they began a two-year collaboration … [Read more...]

It's a pleasure to run into old friends in places where you don't expect them. Yesterday, I encountered Zoot Sims in a dog food commercial. He was in good company; a cute pooch and a beautiful woman. The music was "Blinuet," one of several pieces George Handy wrote for the 1956 ABC Parmount album … [Read more...]

Ted Nash, The Mancini Project (Palmetto). The multi-reed star of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra finds the jazz core of fourteen Henry Mancini songs or themes from films and television shows. There are familiar melodies here, but Nash avoids some obvious choices--the Pink Panther theme and "Moon … [Read more...]

The Yakima Herald-Republic asked me to write about the musicians who will appear in The Seasons Fall Festival October 10-18. The piece ran in On Magazine, the paper's weekly arts and entertainment supplement. Here is the lead paragraph: A weeklong festival of this quality would make a splash in … [Read more...]

The Portland Jazz Festival's news conference yesterday yielded no information about performers for the revived festival. A pledge of major support from Alaska Airlines on Tuesday brought the festival back from the dead. The demise of the event was announced in early September, but Alaska Air came … [Read more...]

Rifftides Washington, DC, correspondent John Birchard went to the city's leading jazz club to catch a veteran pianist. Here is his review. Jamaican pianist Monty Alexander has arrived at Washington, DC's Blues Alley for a four-night stand. If the US is looking for a source of renewable energy, we … [Read more...]

The Portland Jazz Festival reports that it is not dead after all. Nearly a month ago, the festival announced that a lack of major sponsorship and funding caused it to be canceled. Earlier this year, the telephone company Qwest dropped out as the event's primary sponsor. With the economy limping, … [Read more...]

It was nearly dawn after a round -- several rounds -- of music and conviviality during the 1969 New Orleans Jazz Festival. A few of us were sitting on the balcony of Bobby Hackett's hotel room on Bourbon Street swapping stories and thinking it might be about time to call it a night. Hackett's … [Read more...]

Please see the center column for the new batch of recommendations. It took a while, but you may find that they were worth waiting for. … [Read more...]

Researching an article that involves Ernestine Anderson, I came across this video of her rehearsing in Hungary in 1994 with Milt Jackson. It is one of several YouTube clips from the same occasion. The Hungarian musicians are not identified. … [Read more...]