As I wrote the day Paul Motian died, Rifftides was not conceived as an obituary blog, but when an important musician leaves, I feel an obligation to observe the passing. I failed to do that when Gordon Beck died at 75, also in November. To many, Beck was best known as a pianist who frequently collaborated with singer Helen Merrill, and as a member of Phil Woods’ European Rhythm Machine in the 1970s, but his contributions to jazz were much more extensive. The Irish flutist Colm “Red” Sullivan, a frequent Rifftides correspondent who has lived in Brazil for the past year or so, is a great admirer of Beck. This week he contributed an appreciation to Ethan Iverson’s Do The Math blog. Here is some of what he wrote:

He is most usually compared, or considered in relation to, Bill Evans – but I feel that’s less than half the story. As a soloist he was less narrative driven than a Tommy Flanagan (along with Russ Freeman, always one of his personal favourites, though) or a Barry Harris: not so much text in solo (as with, say, Sonny Rollins or Dexter): his music is all about colour and light, shards of amazing brilliance – and he did have that glorious and singing keyboard sound.

To read all of Red’s detailed and thoroughly informed essay about Gordon Beck, go here.

In this 1991 video, Beck supplies the lyrical opening and closing choruses of a vigorous and adventurous version of Bill Evans’ “Waltz For Debby.” It’s the Gordon Beck-Kenny Wheeler Quintet with Wheeler, trumpet; San Sulzman, tenor saxophone; Dieter Ilg, bass; and Tony Oxley, drums.

For more about Beck, including his discography of more than 100 recordings, visit his website.

Ken Dryden, estimable liner note author and Allmusic.com reviewer, writes in response to yesterday’s post about the Rhapsody critics poll.

Doug, please share your method of winnowing the huge list of new releases and reissues down to a manageable list from which to make your final picks, I think everyone would be interested. I know it is easier for me if I highlight possible picks monthly for possible inclusion on my new arrival log.

One thing I always have to note is that not all of us have had time to hear or even obtain some of these CDs listed by other writers over the course of a year.

Ken, as responsible reviewers trying to stay on top of a jazz scene in the throes of a perpetual population explosion, ideally you and I would listen to everything. In boxes on my office floor (shelf space is a golden memory) are approximately 600 CDs—most of them unsolicited. Assuming that each of them runs an hour, by listening steadily 40 hours a week for 15 weeks I could hear them all, if the men in the white coats hadn’t taken me away by week 10. By the end of the 15th week, a few hundred more albums would have shown up.

I log everything that comes in on a computer spread sheet and put Xs by the albums that are self-evident musts; a new Sonny Rollins, an Armstrong reissue, something by Charlap, Pelt, Jarrett, Mahanthappa or d’Ambrosio, to pull a few names out of the air. The little yellow things in the photograph are notes to myself about prospective review points. The CDs sticking up at an angle are albums I have sort of, maybe, decided to write about. Now that every recent Berklee or North Texas graduate is a record company sending CDs or downloads as business cards, I make choices by name recognition, instinct or the influence of something as subjective as package design or the readability of the accompanying news release. It’s amazing to me that most of these fledgling musicians seem to have press agents. (Did Bird have a press agent?) Well, we don’t want to overlook the next Parker, Evans or Coltrane, but we can’t hear everything.

As for your second point, I know one reviewer whose goal is to have a copy of every jazz record ever made. Samuel Beckett could have based a play on that. I’m willing to resign myself to missing a few.

I keep swearing to swear off critics polls. I fail when Francis Davis persuades me to take part in his. For years, Francis ran the Village Voice jazz critics poll. This year he moved the operation to the Rhapsody website and recruited more than 120 jazz critics, writers and broadcasters. Who knew there were so many jazz critics? Well, the definition is stretched, but the results are interesting.

The Winner

Here is some of what Davis wrote in his essay about the Beacon Theater (New York) concert that produced the winning Sonny Rollins album:

Exchanging nods of astonishment with the New York cognoscenti (including numerous devotees of free improvisation whose ears usually go numb at the mere suggestion of a recognizable melody or blues riff) as I exited the Beacon that night, the thought occurred that if Rollins were to approve a commercial release, there might be no need for a poll. I could simply introduce a resolution naming it Album of the Year by unanimous consent. Going into this year’s poll, the only question seemed to be Road Shows, Vol. 2’s margin of victory.

Here are the top ten finishers and their recordings.

1. Sonny Rollins, Road Shows, Vol. 2 (Doxy/Emarcy)
2. Ambrose Akinmusire, When the Heart Emerges Glistening (Blue Note)
3. Joe Lovano Us Five, Bird Songs (Blue Note)
4. Miguel Zenón, Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook (Marsalis Music)
5. Craig Taborn, Avenging Angel (ECM)
6. Matthew Shipp, Art of the Improviser (Thirsty Ear)
7. Lee Konitz-Brad Mehldau-Charlie Haden-Paul Motian, Live at Birdland (ECM)
8. Rudresh Mahanthappa, Samdhi (ACT)
9. JD Allen Trio, Victory! (Sunnyside)
10 (tie). Terri Lyne Carrington, The Mosaic Project (Concord Jazz)
10 (tie). Charles Lloyd & Maria Farantouri, Athens Concert (ECM)

That list is of new releases. The other categories are Reissues, Vocal, Debut and Latin. In his explanation of the poll methodology, Francis tells how he tabulated the points. I cannot imagine the hours of painstaking work he put in. To see complete results and the individual ballots of the 122 poll cats, go to the Rhapsody poll index page and begin your exploration by clicking on “The 2011 Jazz Critics’ Poll: The Results”. The index page has links to all elements of the poll and to essays and sidebar features. For what it’s worth, here is my ballot

NEW RELEASES
1.Jan Lundgren-Chuck Berghofer-Joe La Barbera,Together Again at the Jazz Bakery (Fresh Sound)
2.Ambrose Akinmusire, When the Heart Emerges Glistening (Blue Note)
3.Miguel Zenón, Alma Adentro: A Puerto Rican Songbook (Marsalis Music)
4.Jessica Williams, Freedom Trane (Origin)
5.Sonny Rollins, Road Shows, Vol. 2 (Doxy/Emarcy)
6.Rudresh Mahanthappa, Samdhi (ACT)
7.Tierney Sutton, American Road (BFM Jazz)
8.Kenny Wheeler, One of Many (CAM Jazz)
9.Matthew Shipp, Art of the Improviser (Thirsty Ear)
10.Wadada Leo Smith, Heart’s Reflections (Cuneiform)

REISSUES
1.Stan Getz, Quintets: The Clef & Norgran Studio Albums (Hip-O-Select)
2.Bill Dixon, Intents and Purposes (International Phonograph)
3.Duke Ellington, The Complete 1932-1940 Brunswick, Columbia and Master Recordings (Mosaic)

VOCAL
Tierney Sutton, American Road (BFM Jazz)

DEBUT
No choice.

LATIN
Jerry Gonzalez, Jerry Gonzalez Y El Commando de la Clavé (Sunnyside)

The wedding yesterday of our son and new daughter-in-law, under blue Florida skies, was beautiful and moving (see the January 3 post below). The bride and groom are up and away, and we are all happy beyond measure.

By necessity, blogging has been in suspension the past few days, but I have been saving a video to show you during a slow period such as this. From a 1965 CBS-TV documentary, the clip demonstrates the artistry that put so many who worked with Frank Sinatra in awe of his musicianship. It is likely that you will recognize the recording; it is one of his biggest successes. Gordon Jenkins is the conductor. The narration is by Walter Cronkite.

To once again quote Red Mitchell, “Simple isn’t easy.”

The influential Czech novelist Josef Skvorecky, an admirer and champion of jazz musicians and the freedom they represent, has died in Toronto. He was 87. Skvorecky and his wife moved to Canada after the reforms of the Prague Spring were trampled by the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. His novels portrayed the perverse absurdity of totalitarian regimes, the Nazis in The Bass Saxophone, Stalinist Soviets in The Engineer of Human Souls. In Toronto, Skvorecky established a firm that published books by dissenting writers including the playwright Vaclev Havel, who became president of the Czech Republic following the collapse of Communism. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1982. Havel later honored Skvorkecky with the nation’s highest honor, the Order of the White Lion. Havel died last month.

The Bass Saxophone, one of the most powerful short novels in all of literature, is an account of the impact of free expression on a boy whose country is under the heel of German domination in World War Two. Skvorecky’s introduction to the novella quotes the Nazi regulations controlling Czech dance orchestras during the occupation and helps set the atmosphere for the book’s absurd and moving events.

1. Pieces in foxtrot rhythm (so-called swing) are not to exceed 20% of the repertoires of light orchestras and dance bands;
2. in this so-called jazz type repertoire, preference is to be given to compositions in a major key and to lyrics expressing joy in life rather than Jewishly gloomy lyrics;
3. As to tempo, preference is also to be given to brisk compositions over slow ones so-called blues); however, the pace must not exceed a certain degree of allegro, commensurate with the Aryan sense of discipline and moderation. On no account will Negroid excesses in tempo (so-called hot jazz) or in solo performances (so-called breaks) be tolerated;
4. so-called jazz compositions may contain at most 10% syncopation; the remainder must consist of a natural legato movement devoid of the hysterical rhythmic reverses characteristic of the barbarian races and conductive to dark instincts alien to the German people (so-called riffs);
5. strictly prohibited is the use of instruments alien to the German spirit (so-called cowbells, flexatone, brushes, etc.) as well as all mutes which turn the noble sound of wind and brass instruments into a Jewish-Freemasonic yowl (so-called wa-wa, hat, etc.);
6. also prohibited are so-called drum breaks longer than half a bar in four-quarter beat (except in stylized military marches);
7. the double bass must be played solely with the bow in so-called jazz compositions;
8. plucking of the strings is prohibited, since it is damaging to the instrument and detrimental to Aryan musicality; if a so-called pizzicato effect is absolutely desirable for the character of the composition, strict care must be taken lest the string be allowed to patter on the sordine, which is henceforth forbidden;
9. musicians are likewise forbidden to make vocal improvisations (so-called scat);
10. all light orchestras and dance bands are advised to restrict the use of saxophones of all keys and to substitute for them the violin-cello, the viola or possibly a suitable folk instrument.

Among the Czech musicians who knew Skvorecky well is the pianist Emil Viklický, who supplied material the novelist used in The Engineer of Human Souls. For an account of their connection, see this Rifftides archive post. The Wikipedia entry about Skvorecky contains a fairly comprehensive account of his career and literary output

For the next several days, blogging will be a sometime thing, if it happens at all. Mrs. R. and I are plunging into activities surrounding and including our son’s wedding in Miami. The ceremony will be by the pool of a lovely old art deco hotel on South Beach.

It is wrenching to forsake the January pleasures of the interior Pacific Northwest, but for those we love no inconvenience is too great, even sand in our shoes, stone crabs and mojitos in our diets—and that moon.

We’ll be back——eventually.

Steve Cerra, pictured on the left, is the proprietor of the endlessly informative and entertaining Jazz Profiles blog. His latest profile is of Paul Desmond, concentrating on Desmond’s RCA Victor recordings with Jim Hall. Desperate for material, Steve fills out the feature with liner notes I have written over the years to accompany Desmond albums. At the end is a montage of portraits of the artist with a soundtrack from the Desmond Blue album. Cerra excels at those video constructions. To see (and listen to) the Desmond profile, go here.

Following the Desmond opus, be sure to scroll down for Steve’s profiles of two great arrangers, Robert Farnon and Manny Albam. As always, he incorporates musical examples.

As 2011 wound down, American music lost two octogenarians who were dramatically different except for what they had in common, insistence on getting to the heart of the matter without compromise. Sam Rivers died in Orlando, Florida on December 26 at the age of 88, Barbara Lea the same day in Raleigh, North Carolina, at 82.

Rivers was a formidable saxophonist, flutist and composer. He had a university education in harmony, theory and composition, played blues with T-Bone Walker, worked with Miles Davis for a time, and became a leading figure in the avant garde. Rivers’ 1964 Fuchsia Swing Song, now a collectors item, melded experimentation with established values. His composition “Beatrice” from the album quickly joined the standard jazz repertoire. According to Rivers’ daughter Monique, he remained active as a performer and teacher until virtually the eve of his death and recorded material for dozens of albums yet to be released. Rivers was a lifelong prober beneath the surface, unsatisfied with routine, using his intellect and daring in equal measure to discover mysteries.

Here are Rivers and his quartet at the 1989 Leverkusener Jazztage in Germany, playing “Beatrice.” Rael Wesley Grant is on bass, Darryl Thompson on guitar and Steve Mcraven on drums.

Like Sam Rivers, Barbara Lea knew music inside out; she had a degree from Wellesley in music theory. Rivers was devoted to chance taking. Ms. Lea’s integrity was based in fealty to the song. She fervently believed, and said in interviews, that a singer’s business was to sing the song, not to use the song to sell herself. If it seemed to some listeners that she was too low key to be entertaining, her masterly phrasing, intonation, sense of time and understanding of the songwriter’s intentions persuaded others that her interpretations were definitive. She was sometimes described as a cabaret singer, but like Lee Wiley, whom she admired, Ms. Lea was a favorite of jazz musicians. Dick Sudhalter, Johnny Windhurst and the members of The Lawson-Haggart Jazz Band (on this album) were among her devoted fans and colleagues. There is regrettably little of Barbara Lea on video, but here’s a fine performance of “Sweet and Slow” with the trumpet obbligato and solo by Doc Cheatham. It’s from the 1984 Manassas, Virginia, jazz festival.

For The New York Times obituary of Sam Rivers, go here. For the Barbara Lea obituary, go here.

Happy New Year to all Rifftides readers around the world.

For your listening, viewing and reading pleasure, the Rifftides staff offers recommendations of three CDs that differ dramatically from one another, an intimate Chet Baker DVD, and the autobiography of an irrepressible jazz institution. Please see the right column under Doug’s Picks.

The Rifftides staff unaccountably overlooked a memo designed to alert us yesterday to an important birthday. Bill Crow, bassist, tubist, author and occasional correspondent to this blog, became 84 years old on December 27. He continues to gig on both of his instruments and to write, among other things, his Band Room column in Allegro, the newspaper of New York musicians union local 802. Now that he is 84 and one day, we wish Bill all the best now, in 2012 and for a long time thereafter.

Here is Mr. Crow in the Gerry Mulligan quartet with Art Farmer and Dave Bailey at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958. It’s from Bert Stern’s film Jazz on a Summer’s Day. The piece is Mulligan’s “As Catch Can,” recorded the same year in the album What Is There To Say?

Asked in an exchange this morning on the Jazz West Coast listserve why all of those beautiful girls were flipping over the bass player, Mr. Crow replied, “Because he was so young and handsome.”

Was?

We lost Hoagy Carmichael on this date in 1981. We have not lost “Skylark.” Here’s Carmichael in 1956 singing one of his most beloved songs. The words are by Johnny Mercer, the alto saxophone solo is by Art Pepper, the trumpet by Don Fagerquist.

The song is from Hoagy Sings Carmichael With the Pacific Jazzmen, his classic album with arrangements by Johnny Mandel—a basic repertoire item.

Our new stove chimes a catchy riff that has been challenging me to recognize it. Finally, it hit me: the stove’s timer chirps the first four bars of Duke Ellington’s “Creole Love Song.” This is a remarkable coincidence or the engineering staff at KitchenAid has the hippest designer in the appliance business. Either way, it’s a bit of serendipity with which I am happy to be greeted every morning when my tea has steeped.

I don’t have a recording of the timer, but here is the first—and many listeners think the best—of Ellington’s many recordings of “Creole Love Call,” from October 26, 1927. The band was Ellington, piano; Bubber Miley and Louis Metcalf trumpets; Joe “Tricky Sam” Nanton, trombone; Otto Hardwick, Harry Carney and Rudy Jackson, reeds; Fred Guy, banjo; Wellman Braud, bass; Sonny Greer, drums. The vocalist, at once ethereal and earthy, is Adelaide Hall. Gunther Schuller has written of the “radiantly singing New Orleans-styled solos” by Miley on trumpet and Jackson on clarinet.

I’ll never catch up, but here are a few 2011 CDs I wanted to report on before the year gets away.

John Basile, Amplitudes (StringTime Jazz)

Basile has a series of agreeable conversations with two other guitarists, both of whom—through the wonders of digital overdubbing—are also Basile. Multiple tracking by a solitary musician goes back to Bill Evans (tape, 1963) and well beyond, to Sidney Bechet’s “Sheik of Araby” and “Blues of Bechet” (lacquer discs, 1941). What’s different here is that Basile and an engineer accomplished the feat somewhat more conveniently, with the use of an iPhone app. So much for the gee-whiz aspect of the recording. Forget the process and listen to the music, which is typical of Basile’s swing, melodicism and harmonic resourcefulness. In approaches as varied as the rhythm guitar and walking bass in Jane Herbert’s “It’s Nice to be With You,” the pointillism of Basile’s own 12-tone “First Row,” the samba inflections of Jobim’s “Fotografia” and the pleasingly abrasive spectrum distortions in “My Funny Valentine,” Basile manages a variety of moods and textures while maintaining the sensibility of the album. Among other highlights, he reminds us that in the right hands, or sets of hands, “Moon River” isn’t worn out; it’s still a great tune to blow on. In a single chorus of Bernstein’s “Some Other Time,” he captures the tune’s air of hopeful resignation.

Sir Roland Hanna, Colors From a Giant’s Kit (IPO)

Even casual YouTube surfers who find videos by the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra are likely to be captivated by the piano introductions, interludes and endings played by Roland Hanna. Serious followers of that band know Hanna, drummer Lewis and bassist Richard Davis, as one of the great rhythm sections. His advanced technique melded with his harmonic imagination and knowledge of the jazz tradition to make him also one of the music’s most complete solo performers. Long before he founded IPO records, Bill Sorin made unaccompanied recordings of Hanna. The pianist died in 2003, and this year Sorin compiled 14 of those performances in this collection. The album is a vibrant addition to the label’s previous three Hanna albums and to his extensive discography, which dates from the late 1950s. The pieces include standards by Ellington, Strayhorn, Coltrane, Victor Young and Ray Noble, and four Hanna compositions. His “20th Century Rag” reflects love for a central pre-jazz tradition, tinted with ironic chord voicings that might have made Shostakovich smile. He treats Coltrane’s “Naima” and Strayhorn’s “Chelsea Bridge” as rhapsodies. His introduction to Ellington’s “In a Mellotone” is a riff that works perfectly for the piece but almost makes the listener wish that Hanna had developed it as a composition of its own. He invests “Cherokee” with a bluesy introduction, then proceeds at a pace slower than the customary hurricane bebop tempo, allowing himself thorough examination of the song’s interior qualities. It’s a lovely album.

Dubravka Tomsic, Mozart Works for piano (IPO)
Dubravka Tomsic, Chopin Works for piano (IPO)

Roland Hanna was a keen student of classical piano literature and of the principal classical pianists of his day. It is unlikely that he was not aware of the great Slovenian pianist Dubravka Tomsic. For all of her prowess, high regard among her peers, fame in Europe and reputation as one of Artur Rubenstein’s favorite protégés, Tomsic was surprisingly little known in the United States until the 1990s. Much of her recording has been for relatively obscure European labels that are hard to find. Sorin, the IPO Records chief who championed Hanna, has followed her work for years. He issued an album of her interpretations of Franz Liszt in 2001. He brought her back to New York to record two CDs released in 2011, one of Chopin, one of Mozart. Chopin fascinated many jazz pianists, among them Hanna and Bill Evans, and continues to influence young jazz musicians. If you wonder why, Tomsic’s readings of the massive Sonata No. 2 in B flat Minor, four scherzos and the famous Berceuse may give you answers. In three sonatas and the Fantasia in D Minor, she discloses the energy, command and variety in Mozart’s piano writing. Whether or not you customarily follow classical piano, these are highly recommended.

The Angel City Big Band featuring Bonnie Bowden, An Angel City Christmas

If you’re looking for a collection of Christmas songs well sung and played in nicely crafted arrangements, this one meets your criterion. The arrangers include Tom Kubis, John LaBarbera and Ralph Carmichael, the singer is the unfailingly cheerful and gratifyingly in-tune Bowden, and the songs are all proven classics. If for nothing more than Bowden’s astonishing high-register unison vocalese with the trumpets on “Let it Snow,” this would be one of my new seasonal favorites. Over the years, I have grown tired of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “The Christmas Song,” Nat Cole and Mel Tormé notwithstanding. Bowden and the Angel City crew of skilled studio craftsmen restored them for me. She does a great job with the verse to “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve.”

In addition to Christmas jazz around the clock Christmas Eve and Christmas day, the internet radio station known as The Jazz Knob will present several instances of the late radio host Chuck Niles’s reading of “‘Twas The Night Before Christmas.” Niles was a Southern California jazz disc jockey from 1957 until his death in 2004. His presentation of the classic Christmas poem became a tradition in the Los Angeles area. For the schedule of readings and to listen to The Jazz Knob any time, go here.

Carol Sloane posts infrequently on her blog, Sloanview. When she puts something up, it’s worth reading. Sloane and Bob Brookmeyer were close friends for a time. Her recollections of him are fond and frank. The piece is illustrated with a candid photo of the two of them, Jimmy Rowles and Tommy Flanagan. To read it go here.

Shortly before Alan Broadbent moved from Southern California to New York, he told the Los Angeles Times:

People are making more out of this than they need to. The bulk of my work is as a touring musician, and I can do that from anywhere.

One of Broadbent’s shorter tours these days is on the train into Manhattan from his new home in the northern suburbs. It remains to be seen how much time he will be able to devote to playing in clubs there, but it worked out well when he took his trio into the Kitano Hotel. In the video of this performance of one of his favorite songs, through the window behind him you will see traffic on Park Avenue. You will also see bassist Putter Smith, Broadbent’s longtime California colleague, and drummer Mike Stephans, who, like many musicians working in New York, lives in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.

Rummaging through Rifftides for posts about Bob Brookmeyer, I found that he is mentioned dozens of times and is the focus of several pieces. You can rummage on your own by entering his name in the “Search this website” box just below the artsjournalblogs logo. This one from 2008 concentrates on a rarity among Brookmeyer recordings.

An earlier post is a review of a daring new Brookmeyer album. It begins:

Like Brahms and Bartók late in their careers, Bob Brookmeyer has achieved increased profundity by clarifying his musical palette. The tensions and conflicts that continued to roil his compositions as he emerged from a period of electronics and experimentation in the first half of the 1990s may not be gone, but if they linger they do not dominate.

To read the whole thing, go here.

To know Brookmeyer better by way of hearing him talk about his music and career, you can do no better than listen to the NPR Jazz Profiles program produced by Bill Kirchner first broadcast in 1999. Find it on Bob’s website by going here and scrolling to the bottom of the page. Among the site’s other interesting attractions is an illustrated list of 42 important Brookmeyer albums, with links to their availability.

Why miss an opportunity to hear more of Brookmeyer’s music? Here’s the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra with his stunning arrangement of “St.Louis Blues.” The soloists are Jones, Brookmeyer, Jerome Richardson, Jones and Roland Hanna. YouTube fades it away, but not before we get the essence of the writing and some fine soloing.