In 1963, Dick Gibson (1926-1998) threw a party in Denver, where he lived. An investment banker who expanded his fortune when he founded the Water Pik company, Gibson invited well-heeled friends to mingle with his favorite mainstream musicians and listen to them play. He ran his jazz parties for three decades and hired a cross section of artists that included James Moody, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, Clark Terry, Ross Tompkins, Victor Feldman, Budd Johnson, Trummy Young and Cliff Leeman, to name a few. Gibson’s parties were so successful that they inspired similar events across the country, from Clearwater Beach, Florida, to Sun Valley, Idaho.

One of the newer parties on the circuit is Jazz at Newport, held each fall since 2002 in its namesake, a town of 10,000 on the Oregon Coast. Newport’s long sandy beach, seen here, didn’t get much attention from the several hundred listeners who attended the mini-festival last weekend; a packed schedule kept them occupied. Presented by the Oregon Coast Council for the Arts, Jazz at Newport is booked, organized and straw-bossed by Holly Hofmann, who found time to play her flute only twice. She put together a roster of 23 musicians of various persuasions. Their mutual goal did not, for the most part, encompass complexity or freedom from harmony, rhythm and structure. Farthest out was the Sunday morning session by Weber Iago’s adventurous Chamber Jazz Project, and it had jazz time at its heart even as it verged on textures of modern classical music.

The festivities began on Friday evening with the first appearance by drummer Jeff Hamilton’s longtime trio with pianist Tamir Hendelman and bassist Christoph Luty. Their opening set established a standard of cohesion and hard swing, Hamilton astonishing the audience with the variety of his playing with wire brushes. In the mix-and-match spirit of the party, throughout the weekend the three would drift in and out of other combinations of players.

At a Saturday morning panel, an audience member asked how musicians who have never played together know what to do when they are combined in a spontaneous jam session.

“Jazz has a common language,” Hamilton said. “We agree on a tune, a key and a tempo. Experienced players usually adjust to one another more or less instantly.”

Allow me to expand on that with two passages from, coincidentally, the “Common Language” chapter of a book I wrote:

Pure improvisation born of absolution inspiration, a solo created out of whole cloth, is likely to be as remarkable as it is rare. Most solos are combinations of inspiration and spare parts. The creative process of improvisation is selective, and what is selected is influenced by a number of elements including the music’s harmonic structure, the tempo, rhythmic qualities, the musician’s fellow players, and his memory. His brain has a stockpile of musical knowledge, general and specific. The specifics include phrases from his own experience and that of others. They are pressed into service as quotations and worked into the new performance. Sometimes they are inserted piecemeal, sometimes merely alluded to.

Mutual access to a community body of knowledge makes possible successful and enjoyable collaboration among jazzmen of different generations and stylistic persuasions who have never before played together. It is not unusual at jazz festivals and jam sessions for musicians in their sixties and seventies to be teamed with others in their teens or twenties. In the best of such circumstances, the age barrier immediately falls.

If I had written that today rather than 20-odd years ago, the word “his” might not have popped up, especially if I’d written it after hearing Anat Cohen, Kristin Korb and Holly Hofmann at Newport. Cohen joined bassist Luty, guitarist Howard Alden and drummer Lewis Nash. Following a relaxed “Shiny Stockings,” they tore into “Limehouse Blues,” which featured a blistering soprano-guitar unison passage that Alden and Cohen had worked out in their New York encounters. Ellington’s “The Mooche” (clarinet) and Monk’s “Ask Me Now” (tenor) preceded one of the Brazilian choros (clarinet) that Cohen has been favoring lately. Riding on the energy of the rhythm section, she had remarkable power and command on all three horns. The common language principle was in full force among these four.

Pianist Monty Alexander’s first set reunited him with Hamilton, the drummer on Alexander’s celebrated 1976 live trio recording at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Hassan Shakur (formerly known as J.J. Wiggins) providing bass lines, they opened with the signature tune from Montreux, “Night Mist Blues.” It took them about three seconds to recapture their rapport and contagious swing and the audience about six seconds to roar their approval as they recognized the tune. The good feeling expanded through a six-tune set that included “Come Fly With Me” and “In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” recalling Alexander’s association with Frank Sinatra. Shakur’s bass solos captivated the audience, not for the last time during the weekend.

The first of two late-night jam sessions took place in a long, narrow restaurant at the Shilo Inn on the Newport waterfront. The sound system crashed, so the set went mostly acoustic except for some jury-rigged miking for Korb’s vocals. Her colleagues were Terell Stafford, trumpet; Howard Alden, guitar; and Lewis Nash, drums. They opened with “I’ll Close My Eyes,” then did Sonny Rollins’ “Pent-up House,” Stafford unleashing his first torrents of high notes that were to have the audience applauding and cheering him all weekend. The subtlety of his intriguing alternate harmonies on Ellington’s “Just Squeeze Me” got less reaction from the audience, but plenty from the musicians. Korb’s vocal on “Take The ‘A’ Train” featured her clever lyrics and on “My Romance,” her quick thinking. The illumination flickered and dimmed as she approached the part of the lyric that goes, “Nor a dance to a constantly surprising refrain,” so she instantly substituted “…surprising light change” and got a laugh. The session ended with Nash not only drumming but also scatting the blues as Alden and Korb provided propulsion. Alden and Stafford took it out with the classic “Walkin’.”

The Saturday morning panel of Hamilton, Korb and Stafford had Hofmann as moderator and participant. They tackled the perennial question: is there a young audience for jazz? “Yes,” Hamilton said, “but not here. They can’t afford it. You have the money to come here for a few days,” he told the audience, average age well above 50. “They don’t.” He said that the youngsters are listening in new clubs that cater to them. Stafford said he is encouraged by the numbers of young people attending festivals like Lionel Hampton in Idaho and Port Townsend in Washington. As for inner city kids, the consensus was that clinics and courses are available to them, but to learn about jazz, they have to want to learn, and they are fixated on hip-hop. If that’s a generalization, it’s not much of one.

The Saturday afternoon sets began with each of three musicians playing alone. Hendelman did a medley of tunes by Ray Noble that ended with a fleet “Cherokee.” Korb’s bass solo was on “Green Dolphin Street,” and so was her vocal; she accompanied herself, occasionally drifting into bass-voice unison lines. Hamilton, Alexander and Portland vibraharpist Mike Horsfall each played an unaccompanied solo. In the duo segment that followed, Alden and Cohen opened and closed with pieces from the 1920s. Cohen was on soprano for Duke Ellington’s “Jubilee Stomp” and Jelly Roll Morton’s “Shreveport Stomp.” The middle of their set included Django Reinhardt’s “Nuages,” the guitarist and the clarinetist floating through the famous melody as if on a cloud. Stafford and pianist Mike Wofford followed with “Taking a Chance on Love.” There was a lot of Clifford Brown in the beginning of Stafford’s solo, then growls and note bending by a trumpeter who makes judicious use of his flexibility and range on the horn. If his playing was often spectacular at Newport, the flash was never at the expense of taste or musicality. Wofford’s and Stafford’s counterpoint chorus and tag ending on “Close Your Eyes” stay in the mind, as does Wofford’s rich 16-bar solo on “Old Folks,” which led to a suspended ending complete with a “Country Gardens” quote from Stafford. Remember—spare parts are allowed.

In trio sets, Korb took Luty’s place in the Hamilton Trio, singing and playing and locking up nicely with the drummer and Hendelman. Luty then joined Howard Alden and Lewis Nash, opening with Bud Powell’s “Strictly Confidential.” Using brushes, Nash was flying through the breaks. Alden led the trio through two pieces by one of his guitar heroes, Barney Kessel. In a three-generation guitar continuum, Kessel’s “I Remember Django” honors one of his inspirations. Alden captured the spirit and sometimes the letter of both of his predecessors. On “64 Bars on Wilshire,” taken at warp speed, Alden simply wailed, powered by Luty’s and Nash’s teamwork.

The Rifftides staff thanks the veteran Newport photographer Nancy Jane Reid for letting us use her pictures of some of the sessions. There’s more coming about Jazz at Newport, but for now, I gotta get me some Zs (© Dave Frishberg).

Thanks to the dozens and dozens (and dozens) of Rifftides readers who sent birthday messages via Facebook and other social media. How the word got out, I have no idea, but you folks certainly know how to make a guy feel that maybe this blogging stuff is worth the effort.

“Schedule permitting” I wrote in the previous exhibit, “I hope to work in a bit of blogging.” The schedule did not permit. The Oregon expedition was a jam-packed (ahem) four days that allowed the Rifftides staff (plus one) time to sleep a little and to eat now and then, often on the run. It’s life on the road.

I hope tomorrow to bring you a compact account of the Jazz at Newport Festival on the Oregon coast. For now, let me tell you about Rebecca Kilgore and Dave Frishberg Thursday evening at the Touché in Portland. They performed two sets at the entrance end of that long, narrow restaurant. I have heard better pianos, but rarely better piano playing than Frishberg’s that night. I cannot recall Becky Kilgore in finer form, live or on record.

Their first set consisted of 18 songs from the stockpile of hundreds that the two have amassed in their 15 years or so of collaboration. A few highlights:

—The richness of Frishberg’s chord changes behind Kilgore on “A Fine Romance.”

—Kilgore’s blues inflections in her second chorus of “Easy Street” and the entirety of “Baby All the Time.”

—The relaxed swing phrasing of Kilgore’s chorus following Frishberg’s meaty piano solo in “You’re Getting to Be a Habit With Me,” with the counterpoint of her rhythmic shoulder hunches and Frishberg swaying gently on the bench.

—The verse of “You’re a Lucky Guy.” I’ve known the song since I first heard Louis Armstrong’s 1939 recording, but had no idea that it has a verse. “I love verses,” Frishberg said later. He and Kilgore have sensors that seek out rare verses. The one to “I’m Shooting High” is about singing in the shower—sample lyric: “I begin by making up my mind that it’s my lucky day”—an ideal vehicle for Kilgore’s essentially sunny performance disposition.

—The set ended with eight Irving Berlin songs, including some nearly forgotten, “After You Get What You Want, You Don’t Want What You Get,” for instance, and “Everybody Knew But Me,” which has a great verse and is not sunny. The Berlinfest also included “It’s Over,” “Lazy,” “Better Luck Next Time,” “The Best Thing for You” and “Russian Lullaby.” Berlin’s versatility and variety were amazing. What his songs have in common is that they have hardly anything in common. But that night they had Kilgore and Frishberg.

Without going into a play-by-play of the late set at the Touché, I’ll simply tell you that as good as the first set was, the second was better. Swing, phrasing, subtlety, mutual support and interaction, spontaneous key changes—everything worked. From Frishberg’s stompin’ solo and Kilgore’s vocalese riffs in “Stompin’ at The Savoy” through his Ellington references and her exquisite phrasing in “I’m Just a Lucky So and So” to the best “Detour Ahead” I’ve heard since Mary Ann McCall to their melodic variations in “My Ideal,” it was one of the most perfect performances I’ve ever heard from two people.

When it was over, I asked Kilgore if the set felt as good as it sounded out front. “Oh, yes,” she said, gazing into the distance with a dreamy look, as if she missed it already.

Tomorrow, the Rifftides staff plus one will hit the road to Oregon. The first stop is Portland, where we’ll hear Dave Frishberg and Rebecca Kilgore at the restaurant called Touché. In this album, they concentrated on Frank Loesser. Advance word is that at the Touché, they will tackle some of Irving Berlin’s more obscure songs.

Then, we head southwest to Newport, a coastal town of about 10,000 whose main occupations are in tourism, fishing and wood products. It is the home of the other Newport jazz festival, the small, intimate one. Among the musicians at Newport Jazz 2011 will be the Jeff Hamilton Trio, Terell Stafford, Holly Hofmann, Mike Wofford, Monty Alexander, Hassan Shakur, Anat Cohen, Howard Alden and Kristin Korb. To see the full list and schedule, go here. I look forward to again hearing the PDX Jazz Quintet, aka PDXV, and my first exposure to the Weber Iago/David Valdez Chamber Jazz Project. I’ve been asked to say a few words now and then in the course of the weekend. Schedule permitting, I hope to work in a bit of blogging.

There is confirmation that slightly more than a month after he celebrated his 90th birthday, trumpeter Uan Rasey died late last night. Heard on the sound tracks of dozens of motion pictures, Rasey was acclaimed as one of the most gifted trumpet artists of the twentieth century. André Previn, who was Rasey’s colleague in the MGM studio orchestra in the 1940s and ’50s, offered a birthday accolade typical of those who knew and worked with him:

He was not only the best trumpet player working at the film studios in Hollywood, but also a kind and good friend.

For a summary of Rasey’s career and to hear one of his most celebrated solos, go to this Rifftides piece posted on his birthday, when 40 trumpeters appeared outside Rasey’s house to serenade him with “Trumpeter’s Prayer.” His grandson, Tristan Verstraten, told me this evening that his grandfather died peacefully in his sleep at Woodland Hills Kaiser Hospital in Los Angeles, where he had been taken after his heart and kidney problems worsened. Three of his children were with him.

Recalling Rasey’s spirit and character, Mr. Verstraten told this story:

When he was 89 years old, he learned that his seven-year-old granddaughter Taylor had no way home from school because her mother had been delayed. Rather than let her wait, possibly for a long time, he called Access Paratransit. Blind and in his wheelchair, he got into the Access van and traveled three miles to the school. When he got there, he wheeled himself into the school, found Taylor and took her home in the van. Then, when they got to the house he fixed her a meal, and when Taylor’s mom got home, she found the two of them partying, having a great time.

There will be no funeral service, Mr. Verstraten said, but a celebration of life, “a shindig,” will be scheduled in a couple of weeks.

On the heels of the announcement that he will be a Kennedy Center honoree later this year, Sonny Rollins appeared on the Tavis Smiley Show on PBS. He discussed his career, his philosophy and why he feels that the Medal of Arts is not going to him alone.

“It’s the people who came before me,” he told Smiley. “When I accept this honor, it’s for Count Basie, who got one. It’s for Duke Ellington, who didn’t get one. It’s for Lester Young, who didn’t get one. It’s for Thelonious Monk, who didn’t get one. So, I’m standing up there and I say, ‘Thank you for this honor, thank you. I appreciate it. But I understand that I’m them. We’re talking about this music now. I appreciate it for everybody who bled and died and suffered and still made this great music come about.’”

Here’s the video of the entire 24-minute segment.

This is short notice—sorry about that—but on his Jazz Northwest at 1:00 pm PDT today, Jim Wilke is presenting the Jeff Hamilton Trio with Tamir Hendelman and Christof Luty. Wilke recorded them this summer at the Port Townsend Centrum Jazz Festival. To hear Hamilton and company, go here and click on “Listen Live.” If you are in the Seattle-Tacoma area, you can listen on KPLU-FM at 88.5 If you miss the broadcast, the program will be in Wilke’s archive at this address.

Rifftides reader Svetlana Ilyicheva writes from Moscow:

Maybe it will interest you (I learned about it about a week ago myself):

In summer 1967 there was an international film festival in Russia. An American actress, Sandy Dennis, came to Moscow escorted by her husband bari saxophonist Gerry Mulligan.* Gerry was immediately taken to the Youth Cafe, a” hotbed” of jazz in Moscow. (BTW, Leonard Feather wrote about this cafe in his book). A jam session was arranged where Gerry had to play alto, as they hadn’t found a decent baritone and borrowed a brand-new golden Selmer from one of the sax players. If you click the link and scroll the text until you see the photo of Gerry (а dark figure close to Gerry is a popular Russian sax player, Alexei Kozlov. The photo is from his collection). Just above the photo you will see an MP3 of a recording where Gerry played with KM-Quartet. (As the recording belongs to the collection it is not allowed to be downloaded). It had certainly been a glorious moment for the Russian jazzmen of that time.

The recording above the one I described is that of “KM-Quartet” with Vagif Sadikhov at piano, whose 65th birthday is going to be celebrated by the Moscow jazz community and whose talent was appreciated by many a jazzmen ( Benny Green, Johnny Griffin among them).

Here is the link: http://jazzru.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/vagif-sadikhov-65/

The unique recording belongs to the collection of the late Arkady Petrov, musical expert, one of the elders of Russian jazz journalism and the first Soviet Jazz broadcaster.

*(Mulligan and Sandy Dennis were together for more than ten years but never married—DR)

Frank Driggs, a tireless jazz researcher and historian who collected photographs familiar to millions, died this week at the age of 81. In the 1950s as a producer for Columbia Records, Driggs oversaw the organizing and reissuing of historically important recordings by Billie Holiday, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington and Gene Krupa. In 1991, he won a Grammy for Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings, the recorded work of the seminal blues singer and guitarist. He began documenting the history of jazz at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University when Marshall Stearns was its director.

As a collector, Driggs gathered more than 100,000 photographs that he cataloged primarily in his head. He was able to retrieve them when academic institutions, publishers and authors needed them. Photographs from his archive fill the book Black Beauty, White Heat, which he co-authored with Harris Lewine. Several of the photos in my biography of Paul Desmond are from the Driggs collection. His friend and associate Donna Ranieri told The Associated Press that Driggs was found dead of natural causes in his apartment in Manhattan on Tuesday.

Tomorrow is the first day of fall in the northern hemisphere. Coincidentally, Emil Viklický, who lives in an eastern precinct of the hemisphere, recently alerted me to new video of a performance last spring at the Prague Castle. Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic, hosted a tribute to Miles Davis. It was a concert in the Jazz na HradÄ› series that the president initiated, with Viklický’s help, at the Czech counterpart of the White House.

The musicians are Viklický, piano; Jon Faddis, trumpet; Jaroslav Jakubovic, baritone saxophone; Tom Barney, bass; and Lennie White, drums. The tune is—what else?—”Autumn Leaves.” Following the performance, a bevy of beautiful Czech women presents flowers to the musicians, President Klaus goes on stage to offer his thanks, and White speaks for the band. It’s a class act, all the way around.

For another performance from the same concert, and background about Klaus’s concert series, go here.

Pat Metheny and Larry Grenadier and a truckload of equipment are on a 26-city tour. They warmed up the other night with a first stop at The Seasons Performance Hall in Yakima, Washington. The tour will end in mid-October with a week at the Blue Note in New York City.

The equipment played a major role in Metheny’s and Grenadier’s two-concert evening at The Seasons, but their most satisfying moments came when they dialed down the amplification, ignored the panoply of digitally driven instruments occupying the back of the stage and achieved the intimacy that Metheny said was his goal for the music. His solo on the piece that began the second concert, “All the Things You Are,” ranks with the best playing I’ve ever heard from him. His final chorus of ascending chromatic figures was an expression of sheer joy.

The guitarist’s name and reputation were the draw that nearly filled the hall twice. It may be that Grenadier was unknown to most of the audience when they walked in. By the end of the evening, the energy, musicianship and power of his bass playing made it unlikely that they will forget him. Introducing Grenadier, Metheny said, “He’s the only one I’d do this kind of tour with.” Grenadier managed to retain the woody acoustic essence of his instrument despite excessive amplification in a hall with near-perfect natural sound properties. The melodic inventiveness of his solos often matched Metheny’s. His rhythmic drive supplied consistent excitement. The blues groove of “Soul Cowboy” led Metheny to exquisite subtlety in his single-note lines. The nuances continued in his quiet accompaniment of a Grenadier bass solo that moved some listeners to audible “Yeahs” and a few indiscreet whoops.

Exotica reigned in the first concert with Metheny’s unaccompanied performance of “The Sound of Water” on an elaborate custom instrument. George Van Eps used to call his guitar a lap piano. Metheny could fairly describe his 47-string guitar as a lap orchestra. Darned if he didn’t approximate the sound of water.

After speaking about his long love of music-making through electricity—”My first instrument was a wall plug”—Metheny announced that he and Grenadier would indulge in pure improvisation. They began as a duo but were soon joined by an illuminated device that flashed and sounded gongs in rhythm. Then with swift drama, the road crew lifted black covers off an astonishing array of equipment—an accordion, a marimba, a glockenspiel, sets of cymbals, a bass drum, a conga drum, a snare drum, ranks of jugs filled with varying levels of mineral water, and a few things it was impossible to see from the cheap seats. It was the orchestrion, or Metheny’s computerized variant of it, controlled through solenoids actuated by his guitar and several foot pedals.

Well, it didn’t work too well at the first concert. At the second, all of the synapses of the electronic brain were firing and we got a wild few minutes of rhythmic and visual display complete with echo, looping repetition, a percussion fiesta and accordion sounds that sometimes approximated trumpets. In one section, as Metheny wailed away, Grenadier used his bow to set a bass riff. It was fascinating and funny, a kind of musical vaudeville. When it ended, Metheny said, “That’s impossible to explain, so we’re just gonna keep playing.” And they did. In the course of the evening, they visited several of Metheny’s greatest hits, among them “James,” “Bright Size Life” and “Farmer’s Trust.”

What Metheny said would be the closing number turned out to be a highlight of both concerts. It was Dizzy Gillespie’s “Con Alma,” with no orchestrion supplements, fine solos from both musicians and a tag ending in which they anticipated one another beautifully. There was an anonymous-sounding Metheny solo encore, but it was the pure music of “James,” “Con Alma, “All the Things You Are,” “Autumn Leaves” and a few other pieces that lingered in the mind as the orchestrion entertainment extravaganza faded away.

In this video from the 2009 Umbria Jazz festival in Italy, Metheny and Grenadier play the kind of music they made in the quieter moments at The Seasons. If you don’t understand Italian, you may want to fast-forward to 1:15

If you’re interested in knowing more about the orchestrion, go here for Metheny’s explanation and demonstration.

In his newest column, Mr. P.C., the jazz advice columnist, tackles the controversial issue of jazz as a disappearing resource. In answer to a question, he offers possible solutions, including this one:

But conservation alone won’t be enough; we must turn to alternative, renewable sources of jazz. These, of course, are colleges and conservatories, which efficiently convert tuition dollars into vast numbers of jazz performers and composers able to crank out low-grade jazz in tremendous quantity. There’s no end to the number of programs our planet can accommodate, and no limit to the number of notes their graduates will produce.

To explore the problem further with Mr. P.C., you can find him on All About Jazz, but if you go to his Facebook page, you get the bonus of a realistic drawing of him consulting a troubled musician. In the column he also addresses a drummer’s counting habit and the dilemma of a musician’s wife looking for a way to communicate with her husband.

We have it on reasonably good authority that under the name Bill Anschell, Mr. P.C. moonlights as a pianist. You may see a resemblance to the man in the drawing. Here, soprano saxophonist Brent Jensen accompanies Anschell, and vice versa.

For an account of a previous Anschell-Jensen encounter, go here.

Steve Cerra (pictured), the proprietor of Jazz Profiles, found himself desperate for material and put me in an unaccustomed position——on the answering end of an interview. The results are posted on his excellent blog, which you can reach by clicking here. If you make it through that piece, you’ll arrive at Steve’s news posts about Ernestine Anderson and Carmel Jones.

When we posted the Rifftides observance last month of Bill Evans’ birthday, a reader suggested that we follow up on the anniversary of his death, which was September 15, 1980. Here is Evans with his last trio—Marc Johnson, bass; Joe LaBarbera, drums—playing the piece he wrote in memory of his father.

The new batch of Rifftides recommendations covers CDs by one saxophonist inspired by Paul Desmond, another inspired by his native land and a bassist who is simply inspired. We also suggest an intimate DVD performance by Gerry Mulligan and a book about the life of the woman who inspired “Pannonica,” “Nica’s Dream” and “Nica’s Tempo.” Please scroll down the right-hand column to Doug’s Picks. Temporarily, due to digital circumstances I have yet to fathom, they are also immediately below in the main column.

Graham Collier died last night at home in Greece. A British composer, author and bandleader on the forward edge of modern music, Collier was 74. Early reports are that he succumbed suddenly to a massive heart attack or stroke. From the announcement by Birmingham Jazz:

Graham Collier had a major influence on British jazz, being one of the first contemporary jazz composers to write extended works for a large ensemble, and one of the first jazz people to receive commissions and tours funded by the Arts Council. He also played an important role in the development of the Loose Tubes Big Band of the 1980s which came out of a big band workshop that Graham ran at the time. He also established the Jazz Course at the Royal Academy of Music in London and and many of the key jazz musicians of the 2000s are graduates of that course.

For a Collier biography and discography, click here.

One of his seven books was a Rifftides recommendation in 2009:

Graham Collier, The Jazz Composer: Moving Music Off The Paper (Northway). The title reads like that of a textbook, but this evaluation of the art is accessible to any layman with ears. Contradicting conventional wisdom about some composers, Collier nudges Thad Jones from his pedestal, for instance, and shrugs off Bill Holman with minor praise. He puts in perspective Ellington’s habit of borrowing and praises Gil Evans nearly without reservation. Whether or not you agree with Collier, he backs his positions with evidence and references and makes readers think hard about what they listen to. This is an important book.

From around the same time, here is my review of a Collier album released in 2009:

Graham Collier, directing 14 Jackson Pollocks (GCM). Long before he wrote his recent book, Graham Collier’s music made it plain that Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Gil Evans were profound influences on his work. Collier followed Ellington’s and Mingus’s lead in fashioning pieces with his soloists in mind rather than the common concept of arrangements into which a leader could plug whatever soloist was at hand. As for Evans, I must say that I heard in Collier’s earlier recordings more of the Evans of “La Nevada” or “El Matador” – roiling, abstract patterns under soloists — than of the tonal tapestries in, say, Sketches of Spain. I still do. Collier amalgamated his inspirations into an orchestral style that coalesced at a moment in the late 1960s when musicians and listeners in Great Britain were ready to expand their ideas about what constituted jazz.

Collier was his own bassist for years before he concentrated entirely on composing, arranging and leading. Among the members of his bands were adventurous players including saxophonists John Surman and Art Themen, trumpeters Kenny Wheeler and Harry Beckett and drummer John Marshall. In directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, Collier reaches distillation of the notion that the orchestra, the written music and the improvising soloist comprise a trinity, each element inseparable from the other. The music makes obvious what the CD title means, unless you don’t know who Jackson Pollock was.

The two-CD set consists of music recorded at concerts in London in 1997 and 2004. Themen, Marshall and the astonishing Beckett are among the players, along with pianist Roger Dean, bassist Jeff Clyne and others who long since absorbed Collier’s ethos of individual independence amidst collective dependence.

The music has something in common with the free jazz that emerged in the United States in the sixties, but where free jazz often fell by the weight of its pretensions of liberation from guidelines, Collier’s coalesces around his frameworks. His composing and arranging dictates, or suggests, shape, harmonic character and rhythmic direction of the solos. He infuses much of his music with wry humor at which titles like “Between a Donkey and a Rolls Royce” and “An Alternate Low Circus Ballad” can only hint. In any case, humor is only an element In Collier’s work, important but minor. He produces serious music that makes demands on its listeners and gives generous compensation to those who welcome it on its terms.

At the bottom of the opening page of Collier’s website there is a link to a 13-minute audio montage that can serve as an introduction to his music.

Collier titled a 2007 composition “From Acorns” for Derby Jazz, an organization that promotes development of jazz in the British city of Derby. Collier conducted a band of young musicians with two guest soloists, his colleague the veteran trumpeter Harry Beckett and pianist John Bailey. Collier constructed the piece so that some of the inexperienced youngsters were required to improvise free solos. In discussing the music, he synthesized some of his forthright philosophy about how jazz should be made and—at the end—how it should be supported.

Graham Collier, RIP. At Rifftides, we shall miss his e-mail messages and his resolute comments. The many recordings he left mean that we won’t have to miss his music.

Dick Bank has produced a dozen albums led by or featuring the pianist Jan Lundgren. He sends a communiqué about a Lundgren performance in tandem with Bengt Hallberg, a fellow Swedish pianist 34 years his senior. In the bebop years, Hallberg was a favorite pianist of visiting players including Stan Getz, with whom he was featured on Getz’s influential recording that introduced “Dear Old Stocklholm” to American listeners. Many commentators consider Lundgren the successor to Hallberg in touch, harmonic acuity and melodic invention. Mr. Bank writes:

Friday, September 9 at 7:30 at the venerable Konserthuset in Stockholm,

Together Again For The First Time!

Bengt Hallberg and Jan Lundgren.

The Konserhuset is sold out (1200 capacity). They’ll be playing tunes like “All the Things You Are,” “Lover Man,” “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Sophisticated Lady,” plus original compositions for two pianos.

Jan is quite thrilled about it. Hallberg is the last living icon from the golden years of Swedish jazz. He will be 79 on Tuesday (same day as Mel Tormé and Dick Haymes and the day after Jesse Owens!

Jan previously recorded with Swedish jazz legends Arne Domnérus and Putte Wickman. Finally, he is paired with Hallberg. Sadly, it won’t be recorded.

It was ten years ago that Jan and Pete Jolly recorded Collaboration, which critic Alun Morgan called, “The best two-piano album, both technically and musically, ever produced.”

For more information about the event, go here. If you happen not to read Swedish, there’s an English translation option. If you read neither, Konserthuset makes available translations from Afrikaans to Yiddish. What, no Zulu?

Digging with their usual efficiency, the Rifftides staff has discovered that although the concert will not be recorded, Lundgren and Hallberg have made a two-piano album. It seems to be available at this website.

If you have forgotten or never heard the liquidity of Hallberg’s work, there is a prime example from 1953 in his accompaniment and solo in this recording by Clifford Brown and Art Farmer with the Swedish All Stars. The first trumpet solo is by Farmer. The other players are Lars Gullin, baritone saxophone; Ã…ke Persson, trombone; Arne Domnérus, alto saxophone; Gunnar Johnson, bass; and Jack Norén, drums. The tune is “Falling in Love With Love.”

Jimmy Rowles is an idol of a broad range of musicians and listeners. For more than four decades, he was in demand by premier jazz artists and conductors of studio orchestras. He was a favorite pianist of Ben Webster, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Benny Carter, Barney Kessel, Gary Foster and Harry Edison, to name a few of those who cherished his touch, swing and harmonic genius. Rowles is gone, but his influence lives on in the work of Bill Charlap, Alan Broadbent, Jan Lundgren and Bill Mays, among scores of other pianists, and also because of recordings of his compositions; Wayne Shorter’s version of “502 Blues,” for example, and Stan Getz’s of “The Peacocks” (with Rowles on piano). He is also memorable for his nonpareil accompaniments of singers including Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Carol Sloane and—early in Rowles’s career—Bing Crosby.

Rowles died 15 years ago in Southern California at the age of 77. Now, his son has taken his father’s and mother’s ashes to where he feels his parents always wanted to return. Jim Kershner tells the story and a good deal of Rowles’s history in Jimmy’s and Dorothy’s hometown paper, the Spokane, Washington, Spokesman Review. To read it, click here.

Many musicians and listeners treasured Jimmy equally for his singing and his piano playing. He put the two talents together unlike anyone else. Here’s a good way to remember him.

Rowles was a master at recalling or unearthing wonderful half-forgotten songs. He sings several of them on his 1994 Lilac Time album, which is itself becoming a rarity.