Tomorrow morning, I am off to Newport, Oregon to attend the 2012 Oregon Coast Jazz Party. The three-day event used to be called The Newport, Oregon, Jazz Festival, but I'm told that it became necessary to rename it because of concerns that it could be mistaken for another festival. Perhaps you can … [Read more...]

Pianist, composer and member of The Bad Plus, Ethan Iverson is also a prodigious and canny blogger. On his Do The Math blog, he often features extended interviews with prominent musicians. I have never been a fan of transcribed interviews. Too often, they are a boring substitute for writing. Ethan … [Read more...]

Sorry to hear of Eddie Bert’s passing last week. He was a trombonist who loved to play so much that if there were no paying gigs, he would find a band to sit in with. Bert was 90 years old and worked until shortly before he died. He was an asset in combos as well as big bands. His resume included … [Read more...]

No one promised me a rose garden, but that's what I got, and a resident rose expert who manages to keep it glorious well into autumn. I'm a lucky guy. Happy October. … [Read more...]

If you're keeping up with the adventures of the Brubeck Brothers Quartet in Russia, read Chris Brubeck's latest blog post, an account of the BBQ's good will mission to a country town. The band held a concert for the citizenry and, in return, heard some of the locals, including "extremely sturdy … [Read more...]

Everything else in life has not quite come to a standstill while I race the deadline for the Dizzy Gillespie project mentioned in the “Sweet Lorraine” post of September 20. It only seems that way. Researching Gillespie’s “Brother K,” his tribute to Martin Luther King and Robert … [Read more...]

Responding to the Brubeck-Desmond item in the previous exhibit, David Evans writes: Thanks for sharing that! Desmond always kills me. It takes tremendous strength and control to play with such a beautiful sound and such balanced phrasing. It sounds easy, but believe me, it’s not. Classical … [Read more...]

The following item ran on Rifftides more than five years ago, with a link to video that later disappeared from the web. The clip has been restored. In light of recent discussions about the blues theme that frequently appeared when the two men played together, even after the Brubeck Quartet dissolved … [Read more...]

After rounds of research and interviews, I am finally in the writing phase of a Dizzy Gillespie project whose nature I will disclose to you one of these days. For now, suffice it to say that it involves Gillespie club performances most of which have never been released. In the course of listening to … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Svetlana Ilicheva (pictured) responded from Moscow to yesterday's post with an account of a later Brubeck Brothers Quartet concert during the band's visit to Russia. In addition to what Chris Brubeck wrote about his first concert at the Igor Butman club in Moscow and his panegyric … [Read more...]

Chris Brubeck reports from Moscow about the Brubeck Brothers Quartet’s Russian tour. He last played there a quarter of a century ago as a member of his father Dave’s quartet, when the country was the Soviet Union. Chris writes on his blog that at the BBQ’s first concert of the current trip, … [Read more...]

Here’s another shot from the visit to smoky central Washington State, where the wildfires are intensifying today. Now, firefighters are coming down from Canada to help in the battle to contain the blazes. The landmark in the hazy distance is Saddle Rock. You may recognize it as the skyline … [Read more...]

Heading for a reunion and coming into the picturesque valley that holds Wenatchee, we saw little of the hundreds of acres of apple trees that have made the area famous. Clouds and walls of smoke obscured them. For days, dry hills in Eastern Washington State have been under attack by wildfires. A … [Read more...]

In the wake of Ornette Coleman and the post-“Giant Steps” developments pioneered by John Coltrane, many listeners to free jazz heard anger and unrest. Through the tumult, though he was in the heat and hurly-burly of the movement, Marion Brown (1931-2010) managed lyricism, logic and quiet beauty. … [Read more...]

Paul Desmond had political convictions. He occasionally indicated but rarely went on at length about them. Iola Brubeck knows that and called our attention to an opinion piece by Chan Lowe, and his accompanying editorial cartoon, in today’s Florida Sun Sentinel. Here’s one line: If the … [Read more...]

Things are popping around here on several fronts, sending the development of blog posts to the back burner. The good news is that the Rifftides staff has come across film of Hampton Hawes in action with three of his peers. The quality of the new print outshines that of a previous web version. In … [Read more...]

By the time Hampton Hawes’ third trio album appeared, his piano playing had me in thrall. I was so taken with the LP’s cover that I traced its portrait of an alligator transported by music, inked in the outline, colored the gator with an Asparagus green Crayola and framed the copy. I have been … [Read more...]

Grégoire Maret (e-one) Grégoire Maret divides his time between his mother’s native United States and Europe, where he was born in the land of his Swiss father 37-years ago. For more than a decade, Maret has been in demand for his harmonica playing by performers who occupy distinctly different … [Read more...]

At the Ystad Jazz Festival in Sweden last month, scheduling caused me to miss a concert by the young Swedish singer Hannah Svensson and her guitarist father Ewan. Someone who did not miss it took along a camera and posted videos on YouTube. Svensson père, if that is an appropriate designation in … [Read more...]