Terry Teachout’s ecstatic review of pianist Roger Kellaway’s new drummerless trio makes me want to hop a plane to New York. Kellaway has lived in California for years. He is back in The Apple for an engagement at the Jazz Standard.

The three men opened the set with a super-sly version of Benny Golson’s “Killer Joe,” and within four bars you knew they were going to swing really, really hard. So they did, with Kellaway pitching his patented curve balls all night long, including a bitonal arrangement of Bobby Darin’s “Splish Splash” and what surely must have been the first time that the Sons of the Pioneers’ “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” has ever been performed by a jazz group.

To read all of TT’s hymn of praise, go here.
There’s nothing new about Kellaway’s wizardry. It’s just that for a few years his playing took a back seat to his composing and arranging. He came back into the public ear as a pianist with a flourish that coincided with the 2004 film biography of Bobby Darin, for whom Kellaway was once musical director. His solo CD of songs associated with Darin was one of the piano album highlights of last year. If you’re not a Darin enthusiast, don’t worry; you needn’t be to appreciate what Kellaway does with the music. Here’s a bit of what I wrote in Jazz Times about I Was There.

The quality of playing here is so high that it’s difficult to designate one track as an apogee among the performances. I lean toward Berlin’s “All By Myself,” with its headlong swing, orchestral depth and a shout chorus worthy of the Count Basie brass section in the Harry Edison-Buck Clayton days. But, then, “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” has Kellaway’s flawless runs and arpeggios complementing and commenting on the melody, putting that timeless ballad in a new light.

To read the entire review, go here. Kellaway followed up the solo album with a trio CD of music Darin sang, employing the drastically underappreciated guitarist Bruce Foreman and bassist Dan Lutz. If you’ve been asleep on Roger Kellaway, now’s the time to wake up.

The Before & After test I did with Miguel Zenon at the Portland Jazz Festival appears in the June issue of Jazz Times, now on news stands. Here’s a sample of his acute hearing and assessments:

3. Gonzalo Rubalcaba
“Los Buyes” (from Paseo, Blue Note). Rubalcaba, piano; Luis Felipe Lamoglia, alto sax; Jose Armando Gola, electric bass; Ignacio Berroa, drums. Recorded in 2005.
BEFORE: This is Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s group, all Cuban. Luis Felipe Lamoglia is a tenor player, but he sounds great on alto on this tune. It sounds like this is an arrangement of a Cuban traditional song. Great performance. Incredible band.
AFTER: Gonzalo is one of the most original voices on piano over the past twenty years. For me, he’s probably the most impressive pianist I’ve ever seen, in terms of playing the instrument with flawless technique and great sound. He’s one of those guys who can do anything he wants, at any moment. He’ll give you all the technique, but he also has a great feel and sensibility for improvisation.

The complete Before & After will be on the Jazz Times website eventually, with audio samples of the records he heard, but for now you’ll have to be content with the print version.

The ambitious multiple blogger Jerry Bowles has put together blognoggle, a clearinghouse for several blogs. In a message to Rifftides, he writes:

I started blognoggle pages on new music, business and politics because I realized that only a small fraction of internet users now bother with RSS readers and those who do become quickly overwhelmed by too
much information. My hunch is that web readers (particularly music lovers as opposed to techies) would much rather go to a web page where the most important and freshest posts from the best sources have already been automatically selected for them to quickly review.

A good idea. I, for one, don’t know from RSS. The blognoggle page on new music is here. Among other valuable leads, it will take you to video of an Art Tatum performance of “Yesterdays.” Tatum stuck pretty much to his virtuoso routine on the piece, but he always incorporated a surprise or two. In this case, listen for his “Salt Peanuts” fillips.
The blognoggle music page has links to Bowles’s politics and business pages. I’m adding a link to it—and by proxy, them—in the Rifftides Other Places guide in the right-hand column. Mr. Bowles is also the proprietor of the excellent Sequenza21 blog on classical music. Bravo, sir. Sequenza21 gets an Other Places link, too.

The distinguished audio expert Jim Brown saw the Rifftides piece on the possible demise of the last jazz radio station in Los Angeles and sent this reminder that the music is threatened at stations across the nation.

Although I’ve just completed a move to Santa Cruz, I did learn during a recent visit to Chicago that WBEZ, the NPR station there, has announced discontinuance of all music programs in favor of the magazine format that has dominated an increasing portion of their airtime over the past ten years or so.
While that magazine format has been mostly done well, the jazz programming segment has both shrunk and suffered a serious decline in quality. I blame both the president and general manager (Torey Malatia) and Chris Heim, his appointed music director for those ten or so years. I got out to hear jazz at least once a week. I never saw Ms. Heim in a jazz venue, nor have I talked to anyone who has. Prior to her tenure, all the jazz jocks “lived it and loved it,” in the words of the legendary Chicago DJ Daddio Daylie, and it showed in their on-air work. Under Malatia/Heim, there were tight playlists (white bread), jocks are not allowed to say much of value, and good jocks were either fired or quit. In the same time frame, a low power suburban station, WDCB, has only musicians on the air as jocks and gives them plenty of running room. As a result, the real jazz fans deserted WBEZ in droves. This undoubtedly was reflected during pledge drives. Although I love NPR and their news programming, I withdrew my support years ago in protest of the mess they were making of jazz (and told them so), and supported WDCB generously. Now that we’re here, we’ll support KCSM.
Which brings up another threat to both jazz and NPR—we can’t hear KCSM on the air here, although they’re only 50 miles away, because there’s a 10 watt translator (for an Idaho religious broadcaster) on their frequency two miles away! If you travel across the country, you’ll find this is a common problem, as religious broacasters have gobbled up both high- and low-power licenses on the fringes of the major NPR stations. This mess, for example, caused WBEZ to need to add three translators to fill in the newly created “dead zones” that they previously covered quite well. In much of the United States, it is now far easier to get saved (and be fed the political agenda of the saviors) than it is to get the news.
WBEZ is run by a board composed of the same sort of large donors that fund PBS stalwart WTTW Channel 11 (whose upper crust-focused programming earned them the moniker “Wilmette Talks To Winnetka.” That, I suspect, has a lot to do with the Legends of Jazz debacle).
Jim Brown

A Rifftides reader writes

I just came across Rifftides, as I was searching for Coleman Hawkins’ Centennial CD/DVD package. I was at a loss in identifying some of the players on the DVD, and your post from 2005 helped a great deal. Especially in introducing me to Harry Sheppard and Dickie Thompson, neither of whom I’d known previously. I’m still wondering who the piano, bass and second tenor players are, however. Any help there? Anything would be appreciated.

The pianist is Willie “The Lion” Smith. The bassist is Vinnie Burke. The other tenor saxophonist on “Jumpin’ With Symphony Sid” is Lester Young.

Thanks, as well, for your excellent blog; I’m now a reader. I especially liked your pieces on New York in spring and on the Garage (a nice place to play) and Virginia Mayhew. I know her, and agree with your comment on the
jump in her playing.
E. J. Decker
New York, NY

Oh, no, thank YOU. Just for fun, here’s a reprise of that July 7, 2005, Doug’s Pick:

Coleman Hawkins:The Centennial Collection.This two-disc CD/DVD package was part of Bluebird’s observance of RCA Victor’s 100th anniversary. The CD has twenty of the tenor saxophone patriarch’s recordings made over several decades. All of them have been reissued repeatedly. The news here is the DVD showing Hawkins in 1950s television programs with peers like Charlie Shavers, Pee Wee Russell and J.C. Higginbotham, and younger musicians, too; bassist Vinnie Burke and a very good unidentified vibraharpist among them. In fact, none of the musicians is identified, a drastic production failure. Still, the music is terrific. The piece de resistance is a jam session performance in which Hawkins and Lester Young–the most revered tenor men of their era–trade four-bar phrases on “Jumpin’ With Symphony Sid.” Seeing and hearing them together is a joy.

As he moves toward the middle of his eighty-sixth year, Dave Brubeck is not slowing down. He’s picking up speed—and honors—and preparing a major work. Today he is at his alma mater, University of the Pacific, to collect another medal. For a story about Brubeck’s whirlwind week and his new project, go here.

A story in today’s Los Angeles Times has this headline:
Straight-ahead jazz may lose its KKJZ-FM gig
And this quote:

“KKJZ is a very famous jazz station and there aren’t many more around like them,” said Frank Sinatra Jr., son of the singing legend, and a professional musician who lives in West Los Angeles. “[Straight-ahead] jazz is the biggest music in the world, except in the country (where) it was created. It would be such a big loss if they stopped playing jazz. That station is the last lighthouse in the fog.”

The story is about what may be the next major step in the decimation of jazz on radio in the United States. Stations across the country are cutting back or abandoning jazz programming. They include independent broadcasters and many National Public Radio affiliates that have dropped NPR’s Jazz Profiles, Jazz Set, and Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz. KKJZ’s owner, the Long Beach branch of California State University, is soliciting proposals designed to put the station under management that will make it what the chairman of Pacific Public Radio calls “a cash cow ” for the university. Pacific Public Radio is the current operator of KKJZ and one of five radio companies asked to submit proposals.
To read the Times story, go here.
To listen to KKJZ on your radio in the Los Angeles area, tune to 88.1 FM. To hear it on your computer, go here.
The provost and senior vice president of Cal State Long Beach, the station’s license holder, is Dr. Dorothy Abrahamse, e-mail dabraham@csulb.edu

What can be hoped of an art which must necessarily depend on the favor of the public—of such a public, at least, as ours? Good work may, does sometimes, succeed. But never with the degree of success that befalls twaddle and vulgarity. Twaddle and vulgarity will always have the upper hand.
—Max Beerbohm, Saturday Review, September, 1908
We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart;
But, the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: It’s
clever, but is it Art?
—Rudyard Kipling, The Conundrum of the Workshops

John Birchard writes from Washington, DC.

Reading TT’s disgusted remarks about the American Masters Nat King Cole show brought to mind the only time I saw Cole in person.
It was 1956. I was in Uncle Sam’s Air Force, stationed at Craig AFB outside Selma, Alabama. A jazz fan friend of mine and I learned that Cole would be coming to Birmingham as headliner of a tour that included June Christy, the Four Freshmen, Ted Heath’s British band and comedian Gary Morton, who later would become more widely known as Lucille Ball’s husband. We got tickets and drove to Birmingham, eagerly anticipating a show that turned out to be both more and less than we bargained for.
Alabama in ’56 was still very much a Jim Crow state. The audience for the Cole concert was divided by race—whites for the early show, blacks to attend the late one. The evening started enjoyably enough. The artists went through their tunes and jokes until it was time for Cole to appear. The curtain went up on the Trio, with Nat seated at the piano, turned half-way toward the audience, floor mic between his knees. The audience greeted him warmly and he began to sing. Suddenly, there was noise from the rear of the hall, quickly followed by four men, two in each aisle of the Auditorium, racing toward the stage. They leaped onto the stage, one of them tackling Cole, knocking him off the piano bench onto the floor.
There was instant chaos. the audience on its feet, screaming. Before you could blink, there were what seemed like a hundred cops onstage, grappling with the four white men, dragging them away. Now, the audience was shouting, cursing. My friend and I were, of course, stunned at what had happened and now, a couple of Yankees in a strange land, we were scared that the all-white audience might be calling for Cole’s blood. But no, they were angry at what had just taken place, calling for the scalps of the rednecks who had attacked Cole and ruined the evening.
In the midst of the confusion, the curtain had come down, Nat and his guys had disappeared and the crowd was milling about when the curtain rose again, this time on a scene of musicians from the Ted Heath band scrambling into their chairs. Amidst the chaos, someone had ordered Heath to play the national anthem and, to add to the bizarre quality of the night, the Brits launched into “God Save the Queen”.
That was the end of the show. Cole was slightly injured in the fracas and considerably shaken up by this ugly homecoming to his native state. There was a second show for the black audience, but Cole did not sing. He appeared on stage to apologize for not performing, but of course his fans understood. Later, we learned from newspaper accounts that the four racists who launched the attack were local Klan members who cooked up this plan. They did some jail time for assault abd battery or some such minor charge. The Birmingham police apparently had been tipped off that there might be trouble at the concert and were stationed backstage. Cole’s biography includes more details for anyone interested.
I have long regretted that it was my only chance to enjoy Nat Cole live, but on the other hand it was a bit of history.

Mr. Birchard is a news broadcaster for the Voice of America.

artsjounal.com neighbor Terry Teachout suggests that I pass along an item from his About Last Night. As a followup to recent Rifftides discussions about the quality of television music programming, here it is—a public service:

If you missed last night’s PBS American Masters documentary on Nat King Cole, don’t even think about catching a replay. Not only was the script a dumbed-down, once-over-lightly account of one of the most significant careers in the history of American popular music, but the show contained next to no uninterrupted footage of Cole in performance. In between the snippets was a numbing succession of talking-head interviews with such irrelevant celebrity interlopers as Whoopi Goldberg and Carlos Santana. Rarely have I endured so witless a piece of junk. Avoid it at all costs.

He didn’t llike it.

Very interesting (fascinating actually) subject, I think. Doug, I am thrilled that you are exploring the origins of the Jazz Messiahs and the emergence of Ornette Coleman. Pianist Don Friedman mentioned to me that this band played several gigs in the Pacific Northwest and Vancouver during this period, late 1957 (just prior to his joining a newly formed Buddy DeFranco group for an east coast tour). I have been searching many years for a possible recording made of the Jazz Messiahs from a CFUN Canadian Radio broadcast in late 1957. The group for this broadcast supposedly consisted of Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Don Friedman, Ben Tucker(filling in for Don Payne), and Billy Higgins. Another interesting tidbit as told to me by Don Payne….he recalls Scott LaFaro filling in for him on bass with this group on at least one occasion. I look very much forward to more of your writing on this topic.
Mark Ferrante, New York

If new information surfaces, we’ll report it. For Don Payne’s followup to the original posting, go here.

Matthew Lurie writes from Chicago:

I just thought I’d drop a line and link to an article I wrote about Legends of Jazz for Time Out Chicago. Because Ramsey Lewis is from here (as are the rhythm section of Larry Gray, Willie Pickens, and Leon Joyce) and the show was shot here, we viewed it as our special Chi-town duty to try and address some of the problems of the show.

Did he ever. Two samples:

The younger musicians who do make it in the show (Chris Potter, Roy Hargrove and Kurt Elling) perform beneath themselves despite herculean efforts to the contrary—they can’t escape the stylistic straitjacket the producers have imposed.

The problem with Legends is that jazz, the most quintessentially spontaneous music, is treated like a still photograph of someone who’s already dead and gone.

To read all of Lurie’s review of the series, go here.

Coincidentally, on the heels of yesterday’s Rifftides piece about the Legends Of Jazz television series, an e-mail message alerted me to a video performance that demonstrates the visual restraint, taste and directorial discretion that is missing in the Legends series. It is a solo piano performance by Denny Zeitlin of “What Is This Thing Called Love,” preceded by a few minutes of free playing as an introduction. It was videotaped at the 1983 Berlin Jazz Festival, with Zeitlin at a C. Bechstein concert grand.
Just as good writing should make the reader forget that he’s holding a book, good television presentation of music should make the viewer forget that he’s watching television. In the Zeitlin video, the setting, lighting, camera work and director’s shot changes are in partnership with the music, never calling attention to themselves or to production values. Even a cutaway shot of the Bechstein’s inner working makes sense with the improvisation. Pianists interested in Zeitlin’s technique are rewarded with sequences of his long fingers at work, the keyboard shot at a perfect angle for study. Since the subject here is not Zeitlin’s playing, suffice it to say that his improvisation is brilliant. Listen for the recurring Coltrane reference.
The only distracting notes come not from Zeitlin’s piano but from visual plugs for his latest solo album and his website.They momentarily fill the screen while he’s playing and break the spell. It is a minor flaw, but a crucially placed minor flaw. Commerce would have been served less jarringly when the music ends. But it is Zeitlin’s website and his call. To view the video, go here and look for the download instructions for Windows, Mac or iPod. With a broadband connection, the download takes more than a minute.
The full-screen option results in a slight loss of visual quality, but I found that expanding the picture, moving back a few feet from the monitor and cranking up the sound gives a sense almost of being there. To make the picture bigger, click on the box to the left of the X in the upper right corner of the realPlayer window.

Doug:
I watched the Legends of Jazz episode that featured Jim Hall and Pat Metheny and found it disappointing. Jim and Pat and associates played fine–as expected, of course. But the overall “happy talk” tone was rather shallow and not very enlightening; for that, the producers and writers are responsible. Jim’s good-natured grouchiness was a relief.
And for a show that’s supposed to be educating a mostly novice audience about jazz, there were some obvious balls dropped. Like identifying the titles of songs, for example. Only Jim & Pat’s duet on “All the Things You Are” was identified. When Jim played “My Funny Valentine,” couldn’t they have at least printed the title on the screen? These days, you can’t expect an audience under age 60 to know even so-called standards, especially if they’re played rather abstractly.
And wouldn’t it have been nice for someone to introduce bassist Christian McBride and drummer Antonio Sanchez? The only identification they received was in the closing credits, which went zipping by in small print. Again, I fault the producers.
I know that we’re all supposed to be grateful nowadays for getting any jazz on television. But classic jazz TV half-hours like the 1959 Miles Davis & Gil Evans show (produced by Robert Herridge without a superfluous word) have me spoiled. Or the Ralph Gleason Jazz Casual shows. Music shows that don’t seem like game shows.
—Bill Kirchner

Last July, Rifftides examined the pilot program for the Public Broadcasting System series Legends of Jazz. Here is part of that posting.

It was a charming and engaging program. It lacked the intensity, focus and video artistry of the immortal 1957 The Sound of Jazz on CBS-TV, Ralph Gleason’s Jazz Casual series of the sixties and the Jazz At The Maintenance Shop programs directed by John Beyer for PBS in the late seventies and early eighties. But, after all, it was a pilot and a promo. We may hope that when the series hits in the fall, it will reflect the values of those earlier programs—creative camera work for directors who know how to use it, good sound, lighting without gimmicks, and a minimum of explanation (The Sound of Jazz, the best program of its kind, ever, had almost no talk). In his notes for the long-playing record of the music from that show, Eric Larabee wrote that because of the artistic, if not commercial, success of the television program, there was talk of a series. He said that Whitney Balliett and Nat Hentoff, the critics whose taste and instincts guided the show, should remain in charge.

But one wonders if the miracle can happen twice. Part of the reason that Balliett and Hentoff were let alone was that no one in high authority really understood what they were up to. Now the secret is out and there will be many hazards.

Larabee was right. No successor to The Sound of Jazz, let alone a series, emerged. That does not mean that it couldn’t happen.

Nearly a year later, has it happened? No. Since the 1950s, television has accumulated so many layers of technical advances, production oversight, marketing skills, promotion know-how and showbiz values that even if a producer wished in his deepest being to create a program with the straightforward simplicity of The Sound of Jazz, it is doubtful that he could prevail over what television has become: slick.
Thus, Legends of Jazz is slick. And entertaining. I mean that in the kindest way. In format, it resembles Ralph Gleason’s Jazz Casual. Each program in the series is a half hour. In TV time, a half hour is 24 minutes and 27 seconds. The host is pianist Ramsey Lewis, who does a relaxed job of briefly interviewing the principal performers. The rest of the time, minus opening and closing credits, is devoted to music.
Some of the highlights of the shows I have seen on the air or on DVD:
Alone at the piano, Chick Corea generating as much swing in “Armando’s Rhumba” as if he were driven by a rhythm section.
Benny Golson on tenor saxophone, pouring himself into a performance of his “Killer Joe.”
Clark Terry in his incarnation as “Mumbles,” playing and mumbling beautifully, ending with “If I keep talking like this, I might get elected.”
Singers Kurt Elling and Al Jarreau, inventive on “Take Five,” surpassing what either might have done alone.
In another duet, Dave Brubeck and Billy Taylor collaborating at two grand pianos on “Take The ‘A’ Train” with humor, grace and the wisdom of 85-year-olds.
Dave Valentin in a flute performance full of Latin rhythm and pzazz, marred only by a few seconds of showboating at the end.
John Pizzarelli in an astonishing moment of vocal accuracy and control as he executes doubletime in guitar-voice unison during his solo on “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.”
Roy Hargrove expresssing astonishment in conversation when Chris Botti describes his record company’s elaborate promotion scheme: “What record company is that?”
To be inclusive and reach the wide audience marketing studies encourage, the program presents a range of music including genres that have accreted around jazz without quite being jazz. It gives us the master alto saxophonist Phil Woods not with one of his peers—say, Bud Shank, Charles McPherson or Jackie McLean (who was alive when the show was taped last year)—but with the smooth-jazz player David Sanborn. The producers team Clark Terry and Roy Hargrove with the pop-jazz trumpeter and singer Chris Botti, rather than with Ryan Kisor, Jeremy Pelt, Terell Stafford or one of a dozen other top-flight young jazz trumpet artists. Jane Monheit, a creation of publicity, is the one female vocalist in the series; not, for example, Karrin Allyson, Diane Reeves, Nancy King, Tierney Sutton or Meredith d’Ambrosio—singers steeped in jazz. Under the “contemporary jazz” label, Legends of Jazz brings together the rock-jazz-soul-funk fusion experts Marcus Miller, George Duke and Lee Ritenour. They are good at what they do. They are entertaining, and so are the urban blues singers and guitarists Robert Cray and Keb’ Mo’.
Maybe those are the kinds of compromises producers must make in the 21st century to get a “jazz” television program on the air. Or, it could be that they believe Sanborn, Monheit and Ritenour are jazz artists.
A word or two about production: The sound is excellent. The lighting on the performers is superb. The shifting, often pulsating, colored light effects in the background are a distraction from the music. The quick shot changes, swooping pans and frequent zooms are irritating. Television producers and directors brought up on action films and cartoons believe that pictorial stillness and calm are to be avoided at all costs. The seasick viewer pays the costs. Constant motion is de rigueur, and if there’s no motion in the subject, directors produce it by moving the camera. The car-chase mentality of shooting and cutting now extends to all television, even news programs. One of the wonderful things about The Sound of Jazz and Jazz Casual was that the camera and the director served the music, drew the viewer into it, allowed us to observe people simply doing what they do best. There should be no distractions.
The house band of pianist Willie Pickens, bassist Larry Gray and drummer Leon Joyce, Jr., deserves more credit than a lightning roll-by in the end titles. How about spoken credit by Ramsey Lewis or the old-fashioned, and effective, technique of superimposing their names in the lower third when they appear on screen? That may not be acceptably hip in the post-MTV school of television production, but it sure lets you know who you’re seeing and hearing.

Django Reinhardt died on this date in 1953. He was forty-three years old. Reinhardt melded jazz and the wild élan of the gypsy music he grew up with in Belgium and France. He began to be noticed in 1930 when he was twenty. By the mid-1930s he, violinist Stephane Grappellii and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France were sensations of Europe. By the end of the decade Reinhardt was also working and recording with Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Dickie Wells, Rex Stewart and other leading American jazzmen.
A few of his compositions—“Nuages,” “Djangology,” “Manoir de Mes Reves”— are in the basic repertoire. He was memorialized by John Lewis with one of the greatest jazz compositions, “Django.” The spirit and style of Reinhardt’s playing influenced innumerable guitarists, and several groups have patterned themselves on the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, but there has never been anyone like Django. If you need a reminder of or an introduction to his artistry, go to redhotjazz.com, scroll down to “Oh, Lady Be Good” and hear the joy Reinhardt and Grappelli generated shortly after they found each other in 1934. The site offers thirty-eight other QHCF tracks as RealPlayer downloads (complete recordings, not mere samples). This four-CD set at a bargain price is a fine survey of Reinhardt with and apart from the QHCF.

The May issue of Allegro, the monthly publication of the New York local of the American Federation of Musicians, has reviews by Bill Crow of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, the reissue of Gene Lees’ superb biography The Worlds of Lerner and Loewe, and the first volume of Don Rayno’s Paul Whiteman, Pioneer in American Music.
From the review of the Whiteman book, a dart in the side of conventional wisdom:

This account refutes the accusations that accumulated in the jazz press in later years that Whiteman was an exploitative entrepreneur who squelched jazz luminaries in his band like Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Trumbauer. Joe Venuti is quoted as saying, “Don’t ever make fun of Paul Whiteman. He did great things for American music. He took pride in having the finest musicians in the world as sidemen, and he paid the highest salaries ever paid.”

To read the reviews, go here, then scroll down and click on Book Notes.

The You Tube website has put up a seven-minute video of the Dave Brubeck Quartet playing Brubeck’s “London Flat London Sharp” at the North Sea Jazz Festival. Sound, production qualiy, camera work and direction—except for one brief asleep-at-the-switch moment—are excellent. Bobby Militello’s alto solo is one of the most cogent I’ve heard from him. It’s interesting to watch Brubeck digging Michael Moore as he comps for Moore’s bass solo. The first half of Brubeck’s own solo is about as close to daintiness as you’re likely to hear from him, but before it’s over, he unleashes both hands on the piece’s substantial harmonies. To see and hear it, go here. The same page of the site has two video performances of “Take Five” by the classic Brubeck quartet with Paul Desmond, Gene Wright and Joe Morello and one by the current group.

While you’re there, don’t miss Elis Regina singing Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Aguas de Marco.” This is the irreplaceable Elis in solo, apparently a predecessor to the video of her doing the song with Jobim.