[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Em0JeDIncJodW1DxUiGHLBlMATyV6vpN"] Smalls Jazz Club is in the eighth year of its most recent incarnation as a bastion of uncompromising jazz in New York City. A couple of blocks down 7th Avenue from the Village Vanguard, a couple up from The Garage, it is in a part of … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="NzFBw7aNlwmITnaAaFgyeyrK9awIWBpU"] All day, we had fierce winds, grey skies threatening rain—and then at sunset: An evening like ours might have made Jimmy Rushing feel a little better about things than when he recorded this with Count Basie in … [Read more...]

Rifftides was at ebb tide most of this week while I jumped in to help the Yakima Symphony Orchestra teach a couple of thousand children about music. The Chicago composer James Stephenson (pictured) was scheduled to be the narrator for his Compose Yourself, a 50-minute tour through instruments of the … [Read more...]

Today is the 115th anniversary of the birth of Duke Ellington, whose standing among the world’s great figures in music grows with each passing year. Miles Davis long ago summed up Ellington’s importance when he said, “At least one day out of the year all musicians should just put their … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="TF0RvtLdQicNQ4GO9OHklpGjtOx3qwkF"] Bassist Chuck Deardorf called my attention to a video from the early 1960s, when jazz on the west coast of the US was attracting attention around the world. Many big band sidemen settled in southern California in the 1950s, joining … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="OMJP0sOse81KrK6HI0qR6LKFshsKiM9t"] It has been a long time since we shared a video creation by the poet and broadcaster Lynn Darroch. One of his latest stories recalls Duke Ellington’s relationship with Oregon, beginning in a time when innovation, courage and … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Jkb76eMXmGCYV5pAHUHIBRPo8KWnU57E"] Herb Wong, an academic scientist who became prominent as a jazz critic, record company executive and festival producer, died this week. A PhD in Zoology, he was a native of northern California’s Bay Area. Wong continued to follow … [Read more...]

It was a full day, and the holiday greeting is late, but heartfelt. Happy Easter, everyone. Here’s one of the great sequences from the Fred Astaire-Judy Garland-Irving Berlin film Easter Parade. I hope that it makes you happy. For another great Astaire dance and drum sequence from the … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="8An3iXxFljyGejcP6m89fzkbgNqWgALZ"] The previous post was about lilacs, not Irene Kral, but it brought comments clearly indicating that Ms. Kral (1932-1978) is far from forgotten. She is forgotten least of all by her daughters, Jodi and Melissa. Jodi Burnett sent one … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="SnJrKKxOsbSvYC0tSJ3f7W8X1rMntWMS"] The Rifftides staff is up to his clavicle in non-Rifftides deadlines but wanted the readership to know that you are on his mind. He thought you would want to know that in the south forty, the lilacs and tulips are out. Junior … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="4oa6ntdS4ZD3Ntr1ppIq63bLSs19R0Pn"] The Jazz Journalists Association has named 24 Jazz Heroes, recognizing them as “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz.” Among them is Jim Wilke (pictured on James Moody’s left), whose Sunday Jazz Northwest … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="ztyrZNT58M739DrDlageHaobJ4Jr34W3"] A film about Ukraine’s position visa vis Russia showed up on YouTube earlier this week. In three days it has attracted more than 115,000 viewers. The film was created and posted by a video artist whose accompanying explanation said … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="43w5ClJhl93m1BKnekor6LoLwgIOb0kN"] This is an item from Bill Crow's The Band Room column in the April issue of Allegro, the newspaper of New York Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. We use it with Mr. Crow's permission. In the little town in … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="DbGx0rfZ5DCbwNMeoXVSs5HnbfUOAUou"] Geneva, a town of 13,000 in New York State’s Finger Lakes district, is the home town of Scott LaFaro. The brilliant bassist of the Bill Evans Trio influenced the development of jazz bass playing, and the town is keeping his memory … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="SDrPu230TqXOI7eLIKxUpvARl1Zf4qN9"] Best Press release of the week. Of course, it's only Sunday. Billy Mintz Quartet tours in New York May 2014 No more sneaking oversize instruments past the airlines! No more cramped economy seats! No more European trains where … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="zmC70lTlUxBpDUAt9XxvjInd7KmR59Wm"] On his Jazz Northwest broadcast this afternoon, April 6, Jim Wilke is airing an appearance by vibraharpist Susan Pascal. Recorded by Wilke recently at Tula’s in Seattle, Pascal will lead her quintet in the music of Cal Tjader. The … [Read more...]

For the past couple of days, Rifftides and all of the arts journal.com blogs have been hors de combat. Unlike last week's outage, this was not caused by hacker bots, but by good intentions gone awry. The webhost organization was moving databases to give them greater security and somehow … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="k1mg19EMmafmh7S2A2p1F4l4e0vsHMKl"] The family of Mrs. Dave Brubeck has announced that there will be a small memorial observance in Wilton, Connecticut on April 21. Iola Brubeck died on March 12 at the age of 90, 14 months following the death of her husband. In a letter, … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="tE2gU8J8wmI7lpnV614939WLGp6QhH2G"] New York City’s Library for the Performing Arts announces that it has received the archives of George Avakian, who supervised some of the most influential jazz recordings of the past 70 years. At first as a student working part time … [Read more...]