The weather continues magnificent in the US Pacific Northwest.
Many thanks to a surprisingly high number of Rifftides readers for their good wishes following this week’s self-indulgent health reports. My doctor today put me on a course of antibiotics. I have taken the first installment and persuaded myself that I feel better already.
Longtime reader Jim Brown sent a comment that led to the embedding of an encounter between Art Tatum with Ben Webster. It observes our weather theme. To read the comment and hear a great performance, go here and scroll down.
The Resonance label continues its parade of previously unissued recordings with this jewel by Shirley Horn, a supremely gifted pianist and singer (1934-2005). By the time of the 1988 performance in the music room of her favorite Las Vegas hotel, Ms. Horn, bassist Charles Ables and drummer Steve Williams had honed themselves into a group of uncommon tightness and empathy. They generated seductive swing at the slowest tempos, as in this album’s vocal versions of Lil Armstrong’s “Just For a Thrill†and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Meditation.†In outright piano trio swing, Horn is at her peak in Randy Weston’s “Hi-Fly,†an extended “Isn’t It Romantic,†“Blues for Big Scotia†by her early piano influence Oscar Peterson, and an amused romp through Cole Porter’s “You’d Be So Nice to Come To.†This is a welcome addition to Horn’s discography.
them for a concert in Copenhagen that also included the Swedish singer Monica Zetterlund. New to Evans and his repertoire, Riel met him and Gomez in the studios of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation.
The rich history of jazz in Scandinavia began more than a century ago. During the swing and bebop eras Sweden, Denmark and Norway produced major soloists, composers and arrangers. The emergence of Kathrine Windfeld’s big band brings assurance that the region’s new talents have the potential to equal achievements of players like Lars Gullin, Bengt Hallberg, Åke Persson, Jan Johansson, and writers of the stature of Bengt-Arne Wallin, Gösta Theselius and Harry Arnold. The evidence indicates that Ms. Windfeld, a Dane, could establish an equally impressive career. Her band’s first album has the musicianship, joy and drive of their performance at Sweden’s Ystad Jazz Festival a month ago. Ms. Windfeld tightly integrates the sections, but a feeling of looseness prevails. Among memorable solos are those from trombonist Petter Hängsel, trumpeter Andres Bergkrantz, tenor saxophonist Ida Karlsson and the leader at the piano. 
end until September 22 this year, many Americans and our close neighbors in Canada consider that Labor Day, or Labour Day, marks the close of the season. This three-day weekend, they pile into their automobiles. Now that regular gasoline averages around $2.20 per gallon, motor trips are considerably less of a pain in the wallet than they were as recently as 2012, when gasoline hovered well above four dollars. Americans range through the land to camp out, have picnics, visit lakes and ocean beaches, get sunburned and watch fireworks. This being an election year, some in search of enlightenment or entertainment go to rallies and listen to candidates. It is also a day when many working people go to work because the stores that employ them have huge Labor Day sales. The irony.
by the handle Swel1954 has identified a quote in Desmond’s celebrated solo on “The Way You Look Tonight” from 
After all their years together, take it for granted that pianist Hersch, bassist John Hébert and drummer Eric McPherson listen intently to one another and mesh with elegance on every level. However, taking for granted anything about the Hersch trio can only open you up to surprises. Many of the surprises here involve time. There are no Dave Brubeck excursions into 9/8, Charles Ives flings with 15/16, or other unconventional time signatures. Instead, Hersch, Hébert and McPherson flex the time, vary it, sometimes improvise with it as surely as they do with harmonic content, and never lose forward motion. Hersch’s “Serpentine†is a prime example. The trio’s Village Vanguard playlist contains Thelonious Monk’s “We See,†Jimmy Rowles’ “The Peacocks,†Paul McCartney’s “For No One,†and among several Hersch compositions a delicious solo piano encore, “Valentine.†Close listening to this album brings great rewards. 
few minutes ago. It is a B-flat blues called “Honesty,†composed by trombonist Dave Baker and played by a sextet led by George Russell (pictured). We hear seven musicians thoroughly experienced in the post-bop mainstream who were also immersed in the freedom that in 1961 was introducing new colors into jazz. Indeed, Russell had been an encourager and trailblazer of that freedom since he wrote for Dizzy Gillespie in the late 1940s. His 1950s and ‘60s work featuring pianist Bill Evans, trumpeter Art Farmer and tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, among others, is some of the best of the music of those decades, written with the soloists’ characteristics and personalities in mind.
Rudy Van Gelder, who recorded thousands of albums by musicians including some of the most important in jazz, died today at 91. As a young man, Van Gelder began recording in a room in his parents’ house in Hackensack, New Jersey. Among his recordings were early albums by Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. He was a practicing optometrist, but he said in recent years that when he first found himself in a recording studio, he had a feeling that “this is what I should be doing.” He went on to acquire the most sophisticated equipment and learned to use it to create what was sometimes labeled the Van Gelder sound. There was widespread speculation about how he achieved that sound, but he never disclosed his recording secrets. He ultimately left optometry and established his own studio in nearby Englewood Cliffs. Over the years he engineered classic sessions by Gil Mellé, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver and dozens of others. Van Gelder’s work made up substantial portions of the output of the record companies Savoy, Prestige and—especially—Blue Note.
After his studies at The New School in New York ended a couple of years ago, alto saxophonist Steven Lugerner returned home to the San Francisco Bay area and took Jackie McLean with him. Not in person, of course; McLean died in 2006, and Lugerner never met him, but the young man became immersed in McLean’s music. The audacity of McLean’s attack is apparent in everything that Lugerner plays. The aggressiveness, rough edges and incisiveness of McLean’s conception are apparent from his successor’s first solo, in “On the Nile.†If Lugerner’s pugnacity goes a bit over the top in the piece, trumpeter JJ Kirkpatrick brings the
emotional heat down in the transition to his solo, and there is an interlude of relative calm before Kirkpatrick cranks the energy back up. McLean composed three of the six tunes on Jacknife. His frequent trumpet companion Charles Tolliver wrote two. Another is by drummer Jack DeJohnette.
On an instrument often dismissed as a novelty, Thielemans’ advanced musicianship and individuality made him a respected colleague of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman and George Shearing, with all of whom he played. In Shearing’s quintet, he played both harmonica and guitar. Thielemans inspired a number of younger musicians to concentrate on the harmonica. In the 1950s, saxophonist Eddie Shu added the harmonica to his performances, as did Howard Levy later. Contemporary players include Grégoire Maret, William Galison, the young Swedish musician Filip Jers and the German virtuoso Hendrik Muerkens. None of them has achieved Thielemans’ popularity or the level of familiarity he attained through exposure on movie soundtracks, guest shots on albums by Billy Eckstine, Billy Joel and Julian Lennon, and appearances on television’s Sesame Street. For a thorough review of Thielemans’ career, 
The loss today of the harmonica virtuoso makes this survey of his career poignant and rewarding. Two CDs with thirty-eight tracks, most previously unreleased, follow Thielemans from 1946, when he was a 23-year-old guitarist with a Belgian swing band, to a 2001 harmonica performance of “What A Wonderful World†with pianist Kenny Werner. In the late 1940s and early ‘50s, when many European musicians were struggling with the style, Thielemans had a firm grasp of bebop. Playing through the decades with George Shearing, Hank Jones, J.J. Johnson, Elis Regina, Mulgrew Miller, Shirley Horn and a few dozen others, Thielemans is astonishing on both instruments, but it’s his harmonica that brings grins of joy.
The Rifftides 
Bobby Hutcherson, whose vibraphone playing developed deep and complex harmonies, died on Monday at home in Montara, California. He was 75. When Hutcherson came to prominence in the early 1960s, he was in the forefront of young musicians already adept at bebop but seeking greater freedom. He expanded his instrument’s range of tonal colors, with particular attention to dramatic use of resonance, and he was open to ideas pioneered by free jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman. Along with saxophonists Eric Dolphy and Joe Henderson, pianist McCoy Tyner, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and other musicians in their twenties, Hutchinson flourished rhythmic and harmonic adventuring beyond bop conventions. In the title tune from his 1965 album 
In Thad Jones’s “Little Rascal On A Rock,†pianist Charlap, bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington summon up the dynamics of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis big band’s 1976 debut recording of the piece. Their twenty years together have given them sensitivity to one another that allows the strength and subtlety needed for such a feat. Charlap and the Washingtons are masters of a kind of jazz piano trio playing that recalls Ahmad Jamal, Hank Jones and George Shearing at their peaks. With jazz often stuck in place or flailing around, it is encouraging that this trio has high exposure and acceptance. Charlap includes welcome rediscoveries of neglected songs by Harry Warren, Harold Arlen and Burton Lane; a joyous Tiny Grimes blues; and what may be the world’s slowest, most endearing solo piano version of “On The Sunny Side Of The Street.â€