It is Superbowl Sunday in the United States. The Superbowl is an event in which the top two National Football League teams play one another for the league championship. Tickets to the game sell for as much as $5,000. The television audience numbers in the millions. Our photograph shows Al Hirt at … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Mike Harris responded to last week’s post about the passing of pianist Frank Collett (pictured) and the outpouring of comments about him. Testifying to what all those folks have been saying, (plus, it will really cheer you up), watch this video of Frank on piano with the … [Read more...]

In early December, Rifftides Moscow correspondent Svetlana Ilicheva reported with enthusiasm about an appearance by singer Victoria Tchekovaya (pictured) at a vocal festival of the Moscow Jazz Art Club. Ms. Tchekovaya’s concert was in observance of the 95th birthdays of Dave Brubeck and Carmen … [Read more...]

What else do a great jazz artist and a great conductor have in common? Well, Maurice Ravel, for one. And for another, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Stravinksy and Ellington both said it, in almost the same words, and it boils down to this: there are only two kinds of … [Read more...]

Saxophonist Gary Foster sent a link to video from a Facebook post of a seldom seen or heard performance by Horace Silver (pictured). At the 1964 Antibes Jazz Festival in Juan les Pins, France, Silver played a new composition with the latest edition of his quintet. The band was Silver, piano; Carmell … [Read more...]

Producer Dick Bank reports that pianist Frank Collett died of liver failure yesterday in Pasadena, California. Collett was 74. He led his own trio and in the course of his career worked with Louis Armstrong, Zoot Sims, Shelly Manne, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Carter, Freddie Hubbard and a list of … [Read more...]

Jim Wilke's Jazz Northwest broadcast this Sunday will feature four of Seattle's most prominent jazz artists. Here is his announcement. Clarence Acox & the Legacy Quartet Seattle Art Museum concert airs on Jazz Northwest on January 24 Drummer Clarence Acox is a widely heralded teacher who … [Read more...]

Continuing the struggle to keep up, the Rifftides staff once again plunges into the accumulation of more-or-less-recent albums and selects a few to tell you about. The stacks you see below include the 50 or so review copies of CDs that have come in since January 1. Keeping up seems to be out of the … [Read more...]

When the music labeled West Coast Jazz was still in its heyday, before rock achieved more or less total dominance in popular music, Shorty Rogers maintained his popularity. One of his most successful pieces was the blues he called “Martians Go Home." He played it on the television program Jazz … [Read more...]

As on previous observances of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, Rifftides remembers him with one of the most eloquent pieces of music to arise out of the civil rights struggle in the United States in the 1960s. The John Coltrane Quartet played it on Ralph Gleason's Jazz Casual telecast in … [Read more...]

Eleven days into his 74th year, Barry Altschul is not resting on his laurels—or anything else. The drummer made his first big impression with Paul Bley’s trio in 1964 and went on to work with a cross-section of the most adventurous musicians in jazz. In the early ‘70s he, Chick Corea, Dave … [Read more...]

One of the great pleasures of my years in New Orleans was a friendship with Danny Barker (1909-1994). After he moved back to his hometown from New York, Danny became a guiding light to young musicians, curator of the New Orleans Jazz Museum and a living link to the city’s musical past. The … [Read more...]

To follow up on the post in the previous exhibit about the Bill Evans documentary, let’s revisit the 1962 Evans trio with bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Paul Motian. This clip seems to be from Italian television. Evans’s harmonic chance-taking, rhythmic force and quick reactions to Motian’s … [Read more...]

Time Remembered, a film about pianist Bill Evans (1929-1980), is being screened in selected showings around the United States. It is set for tomorrow, Tuesday, evening in San Diego, California. The film by CBS News producer Bruce Spiegel, was eight years in the making. It has screened in New … [Read more...]

Your Rifftides host tries to keep up with the relentless inflow of albums. The effort is doomed, of course, but it’s great fun to keep at it. Here are thoughts about two more or less recent arrivals. Houston Person, Something Personal (High Note) The clever album title stands as a fair … [Read more...]

We have all been victims, or beneficiaries, of cranio-melodia-repeatis syndrome. The tune I haven’t been able to get out of my head for several days is “Jeepers Creepers,” the 1938 Harry Warren-Johnny Mercer hit premiered by Louis Armstrong in the film Going Places. The movie had been … [Read more...]

Pianist Paul Bley died on Sunday. He was 83. His family announced his death through ECM Records, a company for which he recorded key quartet, trio and solo albums. Paul Bley, renowned jazz pianist, died January 3, 2016 at home with his family. Born November 10, 1932 in Montreal, QC, he began music … [Read more...]

Mozart is the archetype of the child musical genius. Over the centuries, many successors have been proclaimed. In the long run, few have qualified. The current child-genius nominee is Joey Alexander, a pianist from the Indian Ocean Island of Bali. Whether it is accurate—indeed whether it is fair … [Read more...]