Good things go around and come around, if we’re lucky. Many good things having to do with jazz show up on the Daily Jazz Gazette of the Mosaic Records website. Michael Cuscuna and the Mosaic staff post stories and performances of lasting value. Their latest alert concerns—for starters—Sir Charles Thompson, Johnny Hodges, Larry Young, Gerry Mulligan, Stanley Turrentine, Cootie Williams, Billie Holiday, the encounters of baritone saxophonists Nick Brignola and Pepper Adams and, I’m happy to say, Paul Desmond. Mosaic links to a 2015 David Brent Johnson Night Lights program on Indiana Public Media. I was a guest on that show. David played a cross-section of Desmond’s recordings from the 1970s, and we talked about Paul.
To hear the broadcast, go here.
Click here to explore the Mosaic <em>Daily Jazz Gazette</em>.
Bassist Bill Crow’s column “The Band Room†is an event New York musicians look forward to each month. It appears in Allegro, the newspaper of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. As readers of 
in the American songbook. He liked to group songs in a set by themes. Sometimes a medley would be all songs about rain, sometimes about happiness, sometimes about a color, or once in a while just songs by the same composer. He would explore each tune harmonically, wandering from stride to bebop to romanticism, and usually making everything swing like mad.
Pianist Don Friedman died of pancreatic cancer at home in New York City on June 30. He was 81. Friedman was treasured by fellow musicians for the subtlety and strength of his support as an accompanist and for the daring ingenuity of his harmonies. He was equally at home with traditionalist Bobby Hackett; modern mainstreamers Clark Terry, Chet Baker and Lee Konitz; and free jazz iconoclasts Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy. This Friedman quotation from my notes for his last album, 
died on June 17 in New York. A London studio musician who moved to the United States in 1973 to work with Maynard Ferguson’s big band, he played with Chet Baker, Buddy DeFranco and the big bands of Bill Watrous and Harry James, among others, before he joined Brubeck. In the Brubeck quartet, he occupied the slot long filled by Joe Morello and, like Morello, specialized in soloing on Paul Desmond’s composition “Take Five.â€
Three days following Jones’s death, pianist Sir Charles Thompson died at the age of 98. As talented as an arranger and leader as he was at the keyboard, Thompson was one of the great mainstream eclectics, bridging the swing and bebop eras. A combo he led and recorded in 1945 included bop saxophonists Charlie Parker and Dexter Gordon and swing trumpeter Buck Clayton. Lester Young, dubbed Thompson “Sir’ Charles to give him parity with Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Here, he solos with a band led by tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins that also includes Harry “Sweets†Edison on trumpet, Jimmy Woode on bass and Jo Jones on drums.
Hollenbeck’s little band has unity of thought, purpose and execution more often found in long-lived classical ensembles than in jazz. The difference, of course, is improvisation. Yet, Hollenbeck’s skills as composer-arranger, leader and drummer are so finely honed that it is often a challenge to differentiate between his canny orchestration and all-out blowing. Listeners who let Claudia’s music wash over them, pick them up and carry them along are likely to disregard the difference and find the immersion rewarding. “Nightbreak,†Hollenbeck’s drastically slowed adaptation of the 
An annual Rifftides reminder
Not to bore Rifftides readers with internet trivia, but two more days of extended conversations with Apple technicians seem to have led us out of the digital black hole that captured us for a few days.
Charlie Parker has never disappeared from the consciousness of serious jazz listeners. This two-CD collection, due out on Friday, could go a long way toward helping new generations discover the stunning purity and power of Parker’s creativity. Subtitled “The Unissued Takes,†the album brings together 69 unissued tracks and released masters that the alto saxophonist recorded for the Verve label from 1949 to 1952. For close listeners, annoyance at the stop-and-go sequence of takes gives way to wonder at Parker’s genius. The contexts range from quartet to string orchestra. Emerging jazz players will benefit from immersion in a primary source of modern music. A couple of recent articles have acknowledged Parker’s enduring importance while also pointing out that in the culture at large he is no longer recognized as a seminal artist who remade jazz. To read them, go 
His abilities honed by studies at the Eastman School of Music and Juilliard, 29-year-old pianist Chris Ziemba is in demand on the New York scene. His debut recording as a leader discloses a varied compositional sense and a canny choice of sidemen. Ziemba, bassist Hans Glawischnig and drummer Jimmy MacBride are a keenly interactive trio. Michael Thomas joins them on alto saxophone for Ziemba’s evocative “The Road Less Traveled†and his boppish “Little T,†and on bass clarinet in the reflective title tune. “Escher’s Loops†seems to concern itself with symmetrical aspects of the work of the Dutch artist M.C. Escher. Ziemba’s keyboard touch and harmonies support the concept. The only piece not by Ziemba is Harry Warren’s 1945 classic “I Wish I Knew.†Ziemba’s arrangement incorporates a bass line leading to a solo in which Glawischnig is simultaneously incisive and relaxed. 
I once wrote about the Roland Kirk of the days—â€long before he added ‘Rahsaan’ to his name, before he became famous, when he was a tornado roaring out of the Midwest, totally blind and full of insight, playing three saxophones at once, whistles, flute and siren at the ready on a chain around his neck. Kirk was organized turbulence stirring the air with music.â€
André Previn told me a story about touring in Europe in the 1990s with his trio that included bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Mundell Lowe (pictured, Previn and Brown). One of their performances was in Vienna’s venerable Musikverein, where Previn had often been guest conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. Some of the members of the orchestra attended the concert. Afterward, he said, the lead player of one of the Philharmonic’s sections visited him in the green room backstage.
In an impressive display of her talent as a singer and songwriter, the daughter of prominent Swedish musicians Anders Bergcrantz and Anna-Lena Laurin debuts as a leader, with her parents as members of the band. Iris Bergcrantz’s voice is notable for its sweep from low chest tones to the top of the soprano range and for her flexibility in applying it in a milieu that embraces jazz and aspects of the most adventurous contemporary classical music. 
The title belies the pain of the loss that inspired Matt Wilson’s essentially jovial—even jocular—album. The drummer assembled a dozen of his musical colleagues to celebrate his wife Felicia, who died of leukemia two years ago. “Flowers For Felicia†and “July Hymn,†are instances of quiet remembrance amid 17 tracks that embrace the keen musicianship, spontaneity and humor (often raucous) that are core elements of Wilson’s musical and personal style. Pieces like “No Outerwear†and “25 Years Of Rootabagas†match Wilson’s disciplined, outré approach to life and work. The enthusiasm and abandon of his solo on “Schoolboy Thug†typify a philosophy embraced throughout the album by trumpeter Terrell Stafford, cornetist Kirk Knuffke, saxophonists Joel Frahm and Jeff Lederer, bassist Martin Wind and accordionist Gary Versace, among others. In his brief notes, Wilson writes that, “Felica …was all about love.†So is this album. 
of drummer Mel Lewis’s Jazz Orchestra—originally the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra. When I wasn’t playing, I would often stop in to hear their weekly Monday-night gigs at NYC’s famed Village Vanguard. (A tradition that the band, now the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, continues to this day, after over fifty years.)