When bassist Avishai Cohen and his trio wrapped up their concert after midnight on Sunday, the 2016 edition of the Ystad Sweden Jazz Festival became history. For this listener, the festival’s five days of music included opportunities to hear several artists in person for the first time. One of them was Marlene VerPlanck, a veteran singer whose repertoire overflows with material from the A-list of songwriters and lyricists—among them Irving Berlin, Johnny Mercer, Victor Young, Sammy Cahn, Arthur Schwartz, Peggy Lee, and Jimmy Van Heusen.

She was superb from her opener, Berlin’s “The Best Thing For You,” to “The Party Upstairs,” a new song whose lyric tells a subtle story of longing for love, with a clever use of the title as the punch line. The New York singer worked with a British trio headed by pianist John Pearce. Suited, necktied and dignified, they looked as if they might have just come from a meeting of a bank’s board of directors. They accompanied her beautifully. Not primarily a scat singer, Ms. VerPlanck nonetheless scatted her way into “Speak Low” paying canny attention to the song’s chords and generating irresistible swing. That swing characterized every up-tempo song she performed. She caressed two ballads, Billy Eckstine’s “I Want To Talk About You” and “The Lies Of Handsome Men.” The latter is in this 2013 album. Her encore was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “It Might As Well Be Spring,” which had one of several tricky key changes in her concert. She executed them all seamlessly.

The Polish violinist Adam Baldych and his Norwegian rhythm section enraptured the audience in the recital hall of the Ystad Art Museum. At some points the band verged on free jazz, with a sense of time more implied than stated. Heads that nodded and feet that tapped testified that their rhythmic feeling ran strong through the hall. That compelling aspect of their music was occasionally in contrast with harmonies as old as Renaissance madigrals. Drummer Per Oddvar Johansen enhanced the atmosphere of freedom when he reacted to Baldych’s adventuring with mallets on tom-toms and sharp pops with sticks on snare drum rims. On a piece whose title was not announced, as Baldych’s pizzicato interaction with Helge Llien’s piano was underway, a cell phone with remarkably similar sound qualities gave its call. Running in a crouch, head down, the phone’s owner removed its surprising but not entirely objectionable contribution. The Baldych quartet listened to one another intently and brought an adventurous spirit to the festival.

Further impressions of the festival will be coming—later today if possible; or if not, when the staff returns to Rifftides world headquarters. Please check in from time to time.

The Ystad Sweden Jazz Festival is in its fourth day. It is so jam-packed and tightly scheduled that this is my first opportunity to begin reporting on it. The early posts will be a series of observations rather than full reviews. As always at this festival, things get underway with the Swedish variation on a traditional New Orleans street parade—making its way through the streets of this charming medieval town on the Baltic Sea.

The first evening, in the magnificent Ystad Theatre, three of Sweden’s best- known female jazz vocalists gave a concert accompanied by guitarist Ewan Svensson, bassist Mattias Svensson (no relation) and drummer Cornelia Nilsson. The singers, Vivian Buczek, Anna Pauline and Hannah Svensson (relation; she is Ewan’s daughter) performed in solo pieces, duets and trio numbers that imbued familiar standards and Swedish songs with rich harmonies and interwoven vocal lines. Ms. Pauline’s arrangements were notable for their harmonic subtlety.

(L to R) Hanna Svensson, Vivian Buczek, Ewan Svensson, Anna Pauline

If there is a report on the concert that Bill Mays and I performed on Wednesday, it will have to come from elsewhere. Journalistic objectivity and (ahem) modesty will allow me to say only that the audience was kind to us, even to the extent of demanding an encore. Of course, that alone is no great distinction; Ystad audiences inevitably insist on encores. Bill played at the top of his game. As always, it was a pleasure to work with him.

Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music!—Sergei Rachmaninoff

They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.—Charlie Parker

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.—Ludwig Van Beethoven

My goal is to live the truly religious life and express it through my music. If you can live it, there’s no problem about the music, because it’s part of the whole thing.—John Coltrane

Claude Williamson, a piano mainstay of jazz in California for seven decades, died on July 16 in Los Angeles. He had been in decline since he fell in his home in 2015 and broke a hip.
After Williamson moved from Boston to L.A. in 1947, he played with Charlie Barnet’s band for two years and was the featured soloist on the widely popular recording “Claude Reigns.” Barnet named the piece after him. Williamson’s harmonic sophistication and responsive timing made him an ideal accompanist for instrumental soloists and singers. After serving for two years as June Christy’s accompanist, In 1953 Williamson joined The Lighthouse All Stars, a quintessential band in what came to be called West Coast Jazz. Later, he co-led a quartet with saxophonist and flutist Bud Shank and worked with Red Norvo, Frank Rosolino, Barney Kessel, Art Pepper and other central figures in Southern California jazz. In a New York visit, he also recorded with two hardcore east coasters, bassist Sam Jones and drummer Roy Haynes.

Initially inspired by Teddy Wilson, the young Williamson came under Bud Powell’s spell and absorbed the bop pioneer’s example into his own style. From his 1995 album Hallucinations, here is Williamson with bassist Dave Carpenter and drummer Paul Kreibich in Powell’s “Bud’s Blues.”

After posting (see the previous exhibit) last night’s piece about Bill Mays and our impending visit to Sweden, it occurred to me that I failed to include an example of Mr. Mays’ prowess as a solo pianist. His gift has been on display since he came to prominence in California in the early 1960s. Bill was one of the pianists featured in the lamented Concord Records Maybeck solo piano collection. Why Concord let so valuable a series go out of print is fodder for a congressional investigation. Fortunately, at least one example of Bill’s contribution survives on the internet.

Bill Mays and I are looking forward to being a part of the 2016 Ystad Sweden Jazz Festival. We have done our concert “A History of Jazz Piano” twice in The United States and are delighted that Jan Lundgren, the festival’s artistic director, invited us to Ystad to present it for the first time in Europe. Bill will play music composed by 27 jazz pianists in a stylistic range from Jelly Roll Morton to Cecil Taylor. My role is to talk a bit about each of the pianists. We will be at the venerable Ystad Theatre the afternoon of August 3. In the photograph, Bill and I pose with our instruments following a 2015 presentation.

In its seven years, the Ystad festival in the eleventh century town on the Baltic coast has become one of Europe’s best-known summer jazz events. Artists performing over its five days will include European and international stars, among them this year’s guest of honor, accordionist Richard Galliano. Host Lundgren (pictured) and bassist Mattias Svensson will give a concert with the Bonfiglioli Weber String Quartet. From the United States there will be saxophonists Joe Lovano and Dave Liebman, bassist Avishai Cohen, pianist Bob James and vocalist Marlene Ver Planck. Trumpeter Hugh Masakela will come from South Africa, guitarist Martin Taylor from Scotland, trumpeter Paolo Fresu from Italy. For full details of the schedule, see the festival’s website.

I have reported on four previous Ystad Jazz Festivals. Being there on stage will be a new experience for me, and it will be Bill’s Ystad debut. If you are going to be at the festival, please seek us out and say hello. Bill and I will enjoy meeting you.

Many thanks to artsjournal.com commander-in-chief Doug McLennan (pictured) for posting the previous item while Rifftides was in a digital shambles that rendered us incommunicado. The photo Doug used to accompany the announcement symbolized the chaos. As the problem got worse over a couple of weeks and we finally lost all contact, I spoke with countless Charter Communications technicians. Toward the end, we had visits from two—Jake, yesterday and Zach, today. Collaborating with an electronics wizard from Charter headquarters in St. Louis, Zach now has us back on the internet, and with one phone line in operation. There is more to be done, but we can post again, and those guys are the new heroes of the Rifftides staff.

But, post what? The annoyance of the breakdown was a preoccupation that consumed hour after hour, day after day. Nothing is ready. So I’m taking a logical way out and showing you a pretty picture from a recent pre-disaster bicycle expedition through the southern hills of the Yakima Valley. Let’s follow it with an appropriate piece of music.

From a 1960 Coleman Hawkins session, here is the man who adapted the tenor saxophone to jazz. Hawkins always encouraged adventurous musicians from younger generations, including Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie early in the bebop era. Here, he chose Thad Jones, trumpet; Eddie Costa, piano; George Duvivier, bass; and Osie Johnson, drums. The piece is “Cloudy.”

With the Republican nominating convention in the US presidential race underway, a passage in the novel Poodie James comes to mind. The mayor, Torgerson, is trying to drive Poodie, the title character, out of town, claiming that he’s connected with a civic threat from hobos who camp along the railroad tracks. Poodie and one of the hobos are heroes because they recently rescued the engineer from the locomotive of a burning freight train. The publisher of the local newspaper, Winifred Stone, is discussing the situation with her editor and thinking of a recent meeting with an acquaintance of Poodie who may be a madam. The editor says, “What I don’t understand is what he hopes to gain by going after Poodie James.”

Winifred Stone stood at her office window in The Dispatch watching cars go in and out of the hotel garage on the corner. She thought of her conversation with Angie Karn.

“He seems to have friends all over town, all kinds,” she said. “The mayor thinks he can tar Poodie with the hobo brush. In a funny way, Poodie’s joining the hobo in the rescue might help Torgerson’s cause. It’s hard for me to imagine that people think much about hobos one way or the other around here, but it wouldn’t be the first time a politician was able to get the populace stirred up about an imaginary threat. Demagoguery works.”

Bassist Bill Crow’s column “The Band Room” is an event New York musicians look forward to each month. It appears in Allegro, the newspaper of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. As readers of Bill’s books know, he is a superb anecdotist who tells stories about jazz artists and, often, musicians in other disciplines. In the current issue, he remembers a pianist whose artistic scope, adaptability, swing and idiosyncratic personality made him a favorite of a wide variety of musicians and listeners. With Bill’s permission, here is the column.

The Band Room
by Bill Crow

Dave McKenna (1930-2008) was a one-of-a-kind piano player. He often denied that he was a jazz player, even though he was steeped in the music. “I’m a song player,” he would say, and he certainly played all the wonderful songs in the American songbook. He liked to group songs in a set by themes. Sometimes a medley would be all songs about rain, sometimes about happiness, sometimes about a color, or once in a while just songs by the same composer. He would explore each tune harmonically, wandering from stride to bebop to romanticism, and usually making everything swing like mad.

I got to know Dave playing jam sessions with Zoot Sims, and then playing with him at Eddie Condon’s club. Eddie’s manager had talked him into only hiring a bass player with his sextet on weekends, so Dave was always glad to see me every Friday. He played the bass lines himself on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and got to be very good at it. He incorporated walking bass lines into his solo piano style in a very original way.

Dave was a great admirer of food and drink, and when the liquor outbalanced the food, he could be a belligerent companion. He was broad shouldered and strong, and nobody to mess with when in his cups. We lived near each other in Chelsea for a while, and I remember running into him on the street one morning and saying to him, “You were in pretty rough shape last night at the Half Note.” “I don’t want to hear about it!” he growled. Toward the end of his life, physical problems began to interfere with his playing, but he plowed ahead, playing gorgeously even when in pain. He once said to me, “I suppose if I do what the doctor tells me and cut down on the rich food and the booze, I’ll live a little longer. But how will I know for sure?”

I always keep one of Dave’s solo records in my car to keep me company while driving to gigs. He sure knew how to cheer a guy up.

Here’s proof. Dick Gibson introduces McKenna at one of Gibson’s celebrated Colorado jazz parties in the early 1980s.

The generations move on. It’s a sad part of an observer’s task to acknowledge the deaths of musicians who made important contributions.

Pianist Don Friedman died of pancreatic cancer at home in New York City on June 30. He was 81. Friedman was treasured by fellow musicians for the subtlety and strength of his support as an accompanist and for the daring ingenuity of his harmonies. He was equally at home with traditionalist Bobby Hackett; modern mainstreamers Clark Terry, Chet Baker and Lee Konitz; and free jazz iconoclasts Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy. This Friedman quotation from my notes for his last album, Nite Lites, indicates a major source of his inspiration.

I love contemporary modern music,” Don said. “Great classical composers inspire me. I’ve listened a lot to Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Stravinvsky, Prokofiev, Stockhausen, Bartok. They inspire me to try to make sounds like theirs.

Here is Friedman at the Jazz Baltica Festival in 2006 with bassist Martin Wind and a drummer whom YouTube does not identify.

Not to bore Rifftides readers with internet trivia, but two more days of extended conversations with Apple technicians seem to have led us out of the digital black hole that captured us for a few days.

I never had these hassles with my Royal Standard typewriter. Of course, the Royal refused to go online.

While the staff catches its breath and hopes for a good night’s sleep, we invite you to enjoy guitarists John Stowell (on the right in the video) and Larry Coryell playing “Someday My Prince Will Come,” not “Waltz For Debbie,” as some misled YouTube contributor tells us in the screen credits. Bassist Doug Matthews and drummer Keith Wilson accompany the guitarists. This was taped in 2011 at the White House, an arts center in Tumucua, Florida. The painter at work in the background is Jerry Hooper.

Although the engineering department is still working on a permanent fix, the Rifftides computer problem is mostly solved and we seem to be back in full operation (knock on wood). Let’s hope—and celebrate with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis.

Here is the tenor saxophone master (1921-1986) at the Jazzhus Slukefter in Copenhagen a year before his death. Davis’s colleagues are Niels Jørgen Steen, piano; Jesper Lundgaard, bass; and Ed Thigpen, drums. The excellent video quality supports the full-screen mode for a close look at Davis in full flight in this exhilarating performance of Billy Strayhorn’s classic train song.

The notorious Apple spinning rainbow disc has invaded the Rifftides mainframe computer, also known as a MacBook Pro. Several hours of the entire staff’s concerted technical efforts have failed to regain control. We can’t even illustrate the problem with a representation of the spinning disc because when we try to show it—guess what?—right, the real spinning disc disables the system. We will isolate the cause and defeat it as soon as possible. Please check in periodically.