Bob Brookmeyer is as forthright, and often unorthodox, in his conversation as he is in his music. Here's some of what Brookmeyer told The New York Times's Ben Ratliff about how jazz soloists often relate to the music he writes: If you give a soloist an open solo for 30 seconds, he plays like he's … [Read more...]

Love your blog... Got it from Kenny Harris* here in Bermuda. I am a tenor and soprano sax player living in Bermuda as Kenny is. Trying to keep flame alive. Damn, there are so many steel pan players here, but I guess that's what the tourists want. The real reason I emailed you is response to the … [Read more...]

John Birchard, a firmly committed Washington, DC, jazz listener who moonlights as a Voice of America correspondent, sent this report. The Rifftides staff added links. I attended a jazz concert at the Kennedy Center's "K-C Jazz Club" venue - the Baritone Saxophone Band in a Gerry Mulligan tribute. I … [Read more...]

It seems to me that most people are impressed with just three things: how fast you can play, how high you can play, and how loud you can play. I find this a little exasperating, but I'm a lot more experienced now, and understand that probably less than two percent of the public can really hear. I … [Read more...]

Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond has been awarded second place in the performing arts category for an IPPY, a 2006 Independent Book Publishers Award. Here are the finishers: Winner: Vivian Perlis and Libby Van Cleve, Composers' Voices from Ives to Ellington (Yale University … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Bob Walsh writes: What ever happened to guitarist Mundell Lowe? I saw him often in the studio band of Merv Griffin in New York. I met him at Monterey when he was a fixture in backup groups. He later took over after Monterey impresario Jimmy Lyons' s forced retirement. I recall that … [Read more...]

You've had nearly a month to memorize those old picks, so they're gone. You'll find the new Doug's Picks in the right-hand column. … [Read more...]

In jazz histories, as in all histories of human activity, small errors are repeated and become the standard version of events. Don Payne, the bassist on Ornette Coleman's first album, sent the following addendum to the Rifftides piece on Johnny Mandel's contribution to a Coleman compositon and the … [Read more...]

Bill Crow did not stop collecting jazz anecdotes when he published Jazz Anecdotes and From Birdland to Broadway. He has a column of anecdotes every month in Allegro, the newspaper of New York’s Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. With Bill’s permission, here is one that deserves … [Read more...]

The Trumpet As Metaphor You must stir it and stump it, And blow your own trumpet, Or trust me, you haven’t a chance.—W.S. Gilbert With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance. —Norman Mailer The very essence of … [Read more...]

Reading, hearing and seeing stories this week about the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival triggers memories of the festival’s beginnings and of the years I lived in the Crescent City (please, not The Big Easy). JazzFest, as it was christened at its birth in the late 1960s, began as the purest … [Read more...]

Today, favorite blogette DevraDoWrite is celebrating the first anniversary of her web log. Many happy returns. If you'd like to learn how Devra likes to horse around, go here. … [Read more...]

Within a half hour of returning from a trip late this afternoon, I got into the appropriate duds, jumped on the mountain bike and took a twelve-mile ride before supper. The route was a favorite, along one of the irrigation canals carrying the water that allows this high desert valley to bloom. For … [Read more...]

The next few days will find me consorting with friends from educational endeavors long ago; in other words, a college reunion. I leave you with the two items below. The first is brief, a bit of welcome news. The second is long, intended to bring to your attention a musician who deserves it. I'll be … [Read more...]

Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond has been named a semi-finalist in the performing arts category for an IPPY, a 2006 Indpendent Book Publishers Award. The competition: Vivian Perlis and Libby Van Cleve, Composers' Voices from Ives to Ellington Calum Waddell, Minds of Fear: A … [Read more...]

Here is an excerpt from a much longer piece that will soon appear elsewhere. More about that later. The trumpeter and sometime guitarist Randy Sandke receives neither the critical nor popular attention that goes to fellow trumpeters Wynton Marsalis and Dave Douglas—to pick a couple of names out of … [Read more...]

The new series of Prestige recordings remastered for compact disc by Rudy Van Gelder, the engineer who recorded them, is the occasion for the reappearance of one of Kenny Dorham’s finest albums, Quiet Kenny. The sound was never inadequate on a Van Gelder session, but his rebalancing and adjustment … [Read more...]

The great (adjective used advisedly) photographer William P. Gottlieb died on Sunday at the age of 89. He hadn't made a photograph with a jazz theme for decades, but that didn't matter. The ones he shot in the forties and fifties are indelible images. Once you have seen his picture of 52nd Street in … [Read more...]

I don’t pay much attention to rock and roll revival musicals because I avoid rock and roll, to the limited extent possible in a world saturated with it. Paul Paolicelli is an author, fellow journalist and former jazz trumpeter just enough younger than I to have been a part of the first rock … [Read more...]