The second half of a remarkable concert I told you about last October is going to hit the airwaves and cyberspace this weekend. Here is the announcement from Jim Wilke: Jazz meets classical music in Part 2 of a concert by The Bill Mays Trio and members of Finisterra on Jazz Northwest on Sunday … [Read more...]

The Rifftides staff is awash in deadline assignments that yield even more than this blog pays, so we're bound to keep at them. When the waters subside, my plan is to begin surveying some of the CDs that have come in on the tide recently (is this aquarian metaphor getting out hand?). For now, please … [Read more...]

Mark Stryker, the jazz columnist of the Detroit Free Press, read the Clifford Brown posting and wrote: Given Soupy's Detroit connections, I once wrote a story about Soupy and the Clifford tape not long after it first surfaced in 1996. There's no link but I've copied some details below, as well as … [Read more...]

For years, I have heard reports that when the great trumpeter Clfford Brown appeared on a Detroit television program hosted by the comedian Soupy Sales, his performance was recorded. A kinescope has surfaced to confirm the reports. The guest shot with Sales produced what seems to be the only film or … [Read more...]

Barry Finnerty, a guitarist who worked with Michael Brecker in the Brecker Brothers band of the late 1970s, has posted a lengthy reminiscence about his friend. It includes this paragraph: He used to take his humility to extremes sometimes... he would complain to me that he hated his own playing, was … [Read more...]

They're asking for ludicrous, ridiculous kinds of tunes. It could be "Johnson Rag," or "Don't you have any Russ Morgan pieces?" or they're always getting your tunes mixed up with someone else's, so you get requests for "Green Eyes" or "Frenesi" or "In The Mood." And they get some very terse replies … [Read more...]

Please adjourn to the exhibit in the right-hand column under the sign reading Doug's Picks for the Rifftides staff's latest recommendations. The Louis Armstrong book is a holdover because no one on the staff has had time to read a new book. Hey, it was the holidays. … [Read more...]

Bill Crow writes from New York: So sorry to hear of Floyd's passing. When I returned to the Seattle area after 3 years in the Army, I met Floyd and Quincy and Gerald Brashear and Buddy Catlett and Kenny Kimball and Ray Charles. We played a lot together in the music annex of the University of … [Read more...]

From Seattle comes news that Floyd Standifer died Monday night. The trumpeter, saxophonist and vocalist went into the hospital in late December for treatment of a shoulder problem. Doctors discovered that his shoulder pain came from cancer that had spread to his lungs and liver, and that his … [Read more...]

A little research discloses that the man who did that brilliant dual-personality lip-synch performance to Charlie Parker's and Dizzy Gillespie's "Leap Frog" is named Jeremiah McDonald. He has other clips on YouTube, none of them based in jazz. Still, jazz listeners who dig Spike Jones (there are … [Read more...]

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player. --Ornette Coleman I am an improviser...I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it … [Read more...]

George Cables played a concert at The Seasons performance hall the other night. It was the kind of evening his listeners have come to expect, flowing with the inventiveness, technical skill and joy that Cables has demonstrated in a four-decade career with Art Pepper, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, … [Read more...]

If you follow the links at the ends of Rifftides items, you'll know that the distinguished Toronto broadcaster Ted O'Reilly commented on the recent Rod Levitt item. In his restrained way, O'Reilly wrote, in part: Wow, yeah! Rod Levitt. In the '60s RCA Canada did not release those LPs in Canada, … [Read more...]

Tenor saxophonist Mark Turner offers a heartfelt, forthright evaluation of Michael Brecker, including this: I saw him put his horn on at clinics and soundchecks and--cold, without warming up--instantly play the most f------- incredible sh--, stuff that most saxophonists simply cannot deal … [Read more...]

Trumpeter Randy Sandke knew Michael Brecker for nearly forty years, since both were college freshmen. Thought by many to be the most influential saxophonist since John Coltrane, Brecker died on Saturday, January 13, of leukemia brought on by myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a rare cancer of the … [Read more...]

The lead story on the ArtsJournal.com main page concerns jazz education's role in music and culture at large. Here's the AJ tease, quoted from NewMusicBox.com: "How is it that jazz has become the vehicle for the resurgence of robust music programs in the schools while classical music, and its … [Read more...]

Jazz gets relatively little attention on commercial television, but one of the newscasts on WBBM-TV, the CBS-TV affiliate in Chicago, made an exception recently. It profiled Bob Koester and his Delmark Records label. The story focuses more on Chicago blues than on Delmark's jazz artists, but … [Read more...]

On Saturday, Michael Brecker succumbed to leukemia brought on by MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome), the bone marrow disorder that put him on the sidelines of music until recently. He was fifty-seven years old. The most admired of the legion of saxophonists that arose in the wake of John Coltrane, … [Read more...]