The Rifftides blogroll near the end of the right-hand column now includes a link to pianist-arranger-composer Mike Longo’s new website. Longo’s site is replete with practical tips to musicians about developing and refining their craft. By way of example, it also presents videos of his trio and his New York State Of The Art big band. Here, the band plays “No More Blues,” aka “Chega de Saudade.”

 

 

 

Longo’s site contains archive clips of him playing with his mentor and former employer Dizzy Gillespie and Gillespie’s longtime partner James Moody.

 

 

As interesting to musicians as the clips—perhaps even more interesting—Longo offers suggestions for improved practice and performance techniques. Some of them are specific, as in his adamant warning not to practice using a metronome. He begins the section by cautioning that the clicking of a metronome is not a pulse.

What is a pulse anyway? The sound of your heart beating. It produces a throbbing, pumping kind of feeling as opposed to the monotonous, soulless clicking of a metronome.

Elsewhere, Longo tackles mistaken guidance about the nature of harmonic content in jazz.

One of the problems musicians have when trying to learn how to solo over changes lies in the misconception regarding chords. Chords and harmony are two separate issues. Harmony can best be described as Motion. The motion of the tones of one voicing moving into the tones of another in a melodic fashion. Chords may best be described as arrested motion.

He follows with annotated examples of how great jazz improvisers use chords to develop flowing lines of melody. Such particulars may be of interest not only to professional and developing musicians, but also to laymen interested in deepening their knowledge of how jazz is made.

It was a fine day for the ritual of draining, coiling, labeling and storing the hoses. The canal has been dry and the irrigation water off since Tuesday. That news is of no importance whatever and has nothing to do with the usual topics of this blog. Hoping to find a connection (hah), I searched for music inspired by hoses and found nothing but a semi-bawdy saloon song that ended up being about a garden hose only after implying that it was about something else. Therefore, we offer a song the first syllable of whose title is the word in question. The song, from Harry Belafonte’s best selling 1956 Calypso album, expresses the elation we felt around here after all those hoses had been stored for the winter.

 

 

 

Stumbling across that track from the Belafonte album was a reminder of what a refreshing presence he was in popular music after he decided to pursue folk music rather than jazz; in an appearance in the late forties he was once backed by the Charlie Parker quintet. The album and its big hit, “The Banana Boat Song” (“Day-oh”) launched Belafonte into a major career that included film acting as well as singing.

First, from an upstairs window looking across the valley. This is a fine time of year to live in the high desert at the foot of the Cascades.

Next, in the exquisite 1948 original adapted by Ralph Burns from a movement of his Summer Sequence suite for the Woody Herman Ochestra. This is the recording that sent young Stan Getz on his way to tenor saxophone fame. A YouTube contributor identified as ZOrkaz added the autumnal photographs.

If Johnny Mercer had written nothing but, “There’s a dance pavilion in the rain, all shuttered down, a winding country lane all russet brown,” he would be in the lyricist hall of fame for evocative imagery. Jo Stafford sang Mercer’s lyric with the perfection of simplicity. Her husband, Paul Weston, wrote the arrangement.

Stafford’s “Early Autumn” is in her collection The Big Band Sound, released on the Westons’ Corinthian label in 1993 and, happily, still available.

There is no evidence that Miley Cyrus was influenced by Jo Stafford.

Rifftides reader Ted Hodgetts writes from Ontario, Canada, with a reminder that Clark Terry’s prolonged, expensive, illness continues. CT’s medical bills are accumulating at an accelerating rate. The Jazz Foundation of America set up a special fund to help with, among other things, the substantial cost of aides who give care. The health workers make it possible for him to remain at home, where he continues to support and advise developing young musicians. For details about his situation and how to help, see CT’s website. Don’t miss his illustrated blog entries about visits from prominent colleagues and aspiring jazz artists. As you browse, you’ll be treated to an audio montage of Clark Terry solos.

If you need a reminder of the joy and power he pours into his music, here he is in 2000 with his quintet at the Jazzwoche Burghausen in Germany. You may never hear a hipper arrangement of “Over The Rainbow.”

Clark Terry, flugelhorn; Dave Glasser, alto saxophone; Don Friedman, piano; Marcus McLaurine, bass; Sylvia Cuenca, drums

It’s a bit late to recognize Christopher Columbus on his holiday but at this writing it’s still Columbus Day in the Pacific time zone. The banks and the post office were closed for the day in the land that Columbus discovered. Substantial parts of the federal government have been shut down for two weeks and our elected leaders in Washington are in political confusion. According to the latest news, there may be hope that the nation won’t go into default this week.

But, in the unforgettable words of Thomas Waller, “Son, don’t let it bother you.” Let’s try to put all that nonsense aside for the moment and remember Ammiráglio Colombo with a history lesson from Mr. Waller And His Rhythm.

Fats Waller, piano; Gene Sedric, tenor sax; Herman Autrey, trumpet; Al Casey, guitar; Charles Turner, bass; Yank Porter, drums. April 8, 1936.

Happy Columbus Day.

Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond is moving along briskly in its new digital life as an ebook. The hardcover edition has sold out. Used copies are going for as much as $335 on book and auction sites, but new clothbound copies are history. The electronic transformation is good news on several counts:

The book will continue to be available. For now, it is on Kindle. Publisher Malcolm Harris of Parkside Publications tells me that he expects to have it up on Apple and Barnes & Noble soon.

The ebook edition has all of the features of the hardbound, including the nearly 200 photographs, the chapter notes, the solo transcriptions, the discography, the extensive index and Dave and Iola Brubeck’s foreword.

The ebook edition is easily portable. The most frequent complaint about the five-pound, 10-and-a-half-by-11-inch original was, “How am I supposed to read this thing on an airplane?” Now you can, after the pilot says it’s okay to fire up your Kindle, iPad, Nook or Sony Reader.

 The ebook sells for less than a third of the list price of the original hardcover edition.

Among other honors, Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond won an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award and the Jazz Journalists Association Book of the Year Award. Here are a few of its plaudits:

Scrupulously researched and written with an attractive combination of affection and candor, it casts a bright light on Desmond’s troubled psyche without devaluing his considerable achievements as an artist. “Any of the great composers of melodies—Mozart, Schubert, Gershwin—would have been gratified to have written what Desmond created spontaneously,” Mr. Ramsey says. Strong words, but Take Five makes them stick. —Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal

The telling is lyrical, funny, nostalgic, provocative, and allusive — just like a Paul Desmond solo.”
 —Gary Giddins, author of Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of its Second Century

Doug Ramsey, the saxophonist’s friend for 20 years before Desmond’s death in 1977, constructs the full person as well as digging out much more of his writing than was known. A major piece of jazz scholarship, the book cuts no corners. —Ben Ratliff, The New York Times

Desmond was fascinated by electronic technology. We can only imagine his delight if he knew that his life story had been digitized.

To order the Kindle edition, please go here. To listen to Paul sounding the way he looks above, play this video.

Summertime, CTI, 1968. Paul Desmond, alto saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Airto Moreira, drums; Joe Beck, guitar; Wayne Andre, Paul Faulise, Bill Watrous, Kai Winding, trombone; John Eckert, Joe Shepley, Marvin Stamm, trumpet; Ray Alonge, Tony Miranda, French horn; Don Sebesky, arranger.

Jim Wilke will devote his Jazz Northwest broadcast on Sunday to a musician who has been the bartitone saxophone anchor in a significant number of great bands and, on baritone and alto, a mainstay of jazz in the Pacific Northwest. Here’s the announcement:

Saxophonist Bill Ramsay is a Northwest treasure who’s been both leader and sideman in dozens of bands, not only in this region but also internationally. He recently played concerts in Brazil with former Count Basie Band members. He’s played with many of the best known bands ever – Basie, Ellington, Goodman, Les Brown, Quincy Jones, Grover Mitchell, Maynard Ferguson and others. He was a regular at Red Kelly’s in both Tumwater and Tacoma, is co-leader of the Ramsay-Kleeb Band, a founding member of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra, and in the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame.

Bill Ramsay shouts encouragement to the front line of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra: Travis Raney, Jay Thomas and Dan Marcus, at Tula’s (photo by Daniel Sheehan)

Now in his 80s, he’s as vital as ever, teaching summer jazz workshops at Jazz Port Townsend, on call as a quick sub with numerous major names, and playing pops concerts with the Seattle Symphony. In this tribute concert two sides of this versatile musician are showcased, his powerful baritone sax soloing and his arrangements for this specially assembled septet. In addition to “Rams” fronting the group, you’ll hear Travis Raney on alto and tenor sax, Jay Thomas, trumpet; Dan Marcus, trombone; John Hansen, piano; Chuck Deardorf, bass; and Greg Williamson, drums. The concert was presented by Earshot Jazz as part of the current Earshot Jazz Festival, which continues through mid-November.

Jazz Northwest is recorded and produced by Jim Wilke exclusively for 88.5 KPLU. The program airs Sundays at 2 PM Pacific time, and a podcast of the program is available at kplu.org following the broadcast.

Despite his refusal to correct the spelling of his last name, Mr. Ramsay and I manage to maintain cordial relations when we meet.

Congratulations to George Wein, who will be honored on Thursday with an award for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities. The honor comes from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities in recognition of Wein’s stewardship of the Newport Jazz Festival since 1954 and the Newport Folk Festival since 1959. The council cites his launching of what “became the first jazz festival in America and started an era that has inspired music events around the world.” At 87, Wein is still organizing festivals and still playing piano with his Newport All-Stars. At the celebration in downtown Providence, Christina Bevilacqua of the Providnce Athenaeum will also be awarded a prize, for Creative Achievement in the Humanities.

News has arrived that bassist Butch Warren died over the weekend in Washington, DC. He was 74. Warren was a veteran of bands led by Kenny Dorham, Dexter Gordon, and Thelonious Monk. He recorded with them, Herbie Hancock, Donald Byrd, Sonny Clark and other stalwarts of the Blue Note label at the height of its influence.  His years back in Washington, his home town, were marked by physical and psychiatric illness, interrupted by occasional returns to active music making. A Washington Post article by Marc Fisher reprises Warren’s career and recent troubles.

Warren’s strength and drive are an important element in the success of this version of Monk’s “Evidence,” taped in Japan in 1963. Charlie Rouse is the tenor saxophonist, Frankie Dunlop the drummer.

 

Trumpeter Bobby Shew sent a photograph made on a cruise in the Caribbean in 1994.

From left to right, we see Louie Bellson, Gerry Mulligan, Shew and bassist Keeter Betts. Mr. Shew’s note reads, in part:

No real story re: this photo, except that we were all on a jazz cruise together for Hank O’Neal. I was with Louie’s quintet as was Keeter. Somehow we were all in conversation and someone snapped this shot, luckily! I think Gerry died shortly after this photo was taken.

Mulligan died in early 1996.

(Addendum, 10/11/13: Rifftides reader Alex Cohen writes from New Zealand, “I’m the ‘someone’ who snapped this shot and sent it off to Mr Shew last week.”)

 

The Rifftides staff is off to Seattle to hear the Emil Viklicky Trio tomorrow evening at a new club, The Royal Room. The Czech pianist is flying in from Prague for a one-nighter with Clipper Anderson on bass and Don Kinney on drums. The same Pacific Northwest sidemen joined him for a Seattle appearance last year and one at The Seasons in Yakima in 2010. For Rifftides reports on those occasions, go here and here.

The following night, I’ll hear bassist Dave Holland’s quartet at Jazz Alley. Holland’s two-night gig is part of a tour following the release of a new CD with his quartet known as Prism, which is also the title of the album. His regular members will be along; pianist Craig Taborn, guitarist Kevin Eubanks and drummer Eric Harland. I’ll try to remember to take a note or two on each occasion and let you know if anything interesting happens.

Vacate for a short time, and the postman brings more music than anyone could begin to listen to without abandoning sleep or risking madness. The stack of packages on the left is the accumulation of three days away. In addition, three times that number has piled up since the whaling expedition to Canada. Each package contains at least one CD hoping for a review or a mention. I hate to break it to those who contribute to the flood of mostly unsolicited albums, but it is impossible to sample, much less write about, more than a tiny percentage of them. I wonder if I’m missing the next Charlie Parker. One has no option but to be selective. Here is the latest selection.

Billy Mintz, Mintz Quartet (Thirteenth Note)

Mintz’s range as drummer, composer and setter of moods is on full display in this recording. The variety in his 12 compositions runs from ballads with stately, mysterious, melodies (“Beautiful You,” “Retribution”) through a sort of Detroit boogaloo (“Cannonball”) to what might be called free jazz (“Shmear”) but for its perfectly conceived and executed piano-saxophone melody leading into and out of the fun and games. The multiplicity of rhythms and tonal colors Mintz achieves in “Ugly Beautiful,” would alone make this a candidate for drum record of the year, but every track reflects virtuosity with the instrument and mastery of time. He deserves mention with such percussion painters as Paul Motian and Shelly Manne, and with contemporaries like Joey Baron, Jack DeJohnette, Joe LaBarbera and Matt Wilson.

Mintz’s colleagues are tenor saxophonist John Gross, bassist Putter Smith and pianist Roberta Piket, who also plays organ, and sings on one track. Whether giving body to the long dark tones of “Retribution” or jabbing and darting, as he does in “Dit,” Gross’s daring conception and huge tenor sound command attention throughout. “Flight” is an exercise in quietness, Mintz opening at length with a drummer’s equivalent of sketching before Gross and Smith join him in a brief sotto voce colloquy. Mintz’s resumé includes work with Lee Konitz, Charles Lloyd, Eddie Daniels and Alan Broadbent. Gross was a mainstay in one of Shelly Manne’s most adventurous bands, recorded a memorable trio album with Dave Frishberg and Charlie Doggett and has a track record with musicians as diverse as Ornette Coleman, Lionel Hampton and Toshiko Akiyoshi. Smith is a veteran of work with Broadbent, Thelonious Monk and Bill Perkins, among many others. He resounds in his double-stop support on “Retribution.” Piket, whose own discography has nine albums, plays beautifully on that piece, as she does in her recent solo album.

Despite their substantial backgrounds and high standing with jazz insiders—especially musicians—the members of the Mintz Quart are below the radar of many listeners. This stimulating and accessible album could change that.

 

…And Briefer

 

Kenny Burrell, Special Requests (And Other Favorites) Live At Catalina’s, High Note

“Age is an issue of mind over matter,” Mark Twain wrote. “If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” It didn’t seem to matter to Burrell when he recorded last November at Catalina’s jazz club in Los Angeles. Just past his 82nd birthday, the guitarist combined the wisdom of his years with the swing and taste that have guided him since he was one of the contingent of young musicians from Detroit who energized jazz in the early 1950s. With tenor saxophonist and flutist Justo Almario, pianist Tom Ranier, bassist Tony Dumas and drummer Clayton Cameron, Burrell’s program includes “Killer Joe,” “In A Sentimental Mood,” ”Little Sunflower” and his charming vocal on Duke Ellington’s and Bobby Troup’s “The Feeling of Jazz.” He moves the audience to quietness with Ellington’s “Sunset and the Mockingbird” and moves them in quite another way, with a swinging stop-time unaccompanied solo, on his classic blues “Chitlins Con Carne.”

Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, Imagery Manifesto (Lefkowitz-Brown)

It is doubtful whether age matters much to Lefkowitz-Brown; at 24, the passage of years is probably not a preoccupation. A tenor sax prodigy who was winning national awards by the time he was 15, the upstate New Yorker is a 2010 graduate of the Brubeck Institute, now working in New York City. His sextet is made up of some of New York’s leading-edge young musicians, here playing 10 of his compositions. Since I first heard him in Rochester when he was 17, I’ve known that Lefkowitz-Brown was one to keep an ear on. With his early promise in full bloom, it is reassuring that he has nurtured his individuality and not succumbed to the post-Coltrane sameness that has made automatons of many in his generation. His conception, tone and control are impressive. He writes interesting tunes that do not function merely as frameworks for blowing; they leave melodic statements. He has surrounded himself with gifted peers: trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, guitarist Travis Reuter, pianist Sam Harris, bassist Linda Oh and drummer Kenneth Salters. Lefkowitz-Brown dovetails beautifully into the end of O’Farrill’s solo on “With Bated Breath.” The two achieve a remarkable blend in their unison playing on the piece. Ms. Oh’s bass provides both power and lyricism. This recording comes as encouraging news about where jazz may be headed.

Bill Anschell, Impulses (Blow Hard Music)

If Raymond Scott (1908-1994) had survived into the full flowering of digital music, he might have produced something resembling Impulses. Like Denny Zeitlin, Anschell is a superb jazz pianist with a fascination for the possibilities of electronic music championed by pioneers like Scott, Robert Moog, Herbert Deutsch and Jean-Jacques Perry. No one familiar with Anschell’s alter-ego Mr. P.C. will be surprised that there are elements of whimsy—even a belly laugh or two—in this electronic project fashioned on his computer. Scott might have recognized himself in the headlong felicities of “Shifting Gears,” but humor is only a surface feature of what Anschell creates in Impulses. Rhythms, notably those from South India on “Shifting Gears” and “For Ranga” and those from rock and roll (and possibly the Black Lagoon) on “Mustang Sally” are essential to its success. So, too, are a marshaling of sounds that can resemble a symphony orchestra one moment and mice scurrying behind walls the next. Everywhere is evidence of Anschell’s thorough grasp of modern harmony. His ethereal treatment of John Coltrane’s “Naima” is a lovely case in point.

Randy Weston, Blue Moses (CTI)

This love child from Weston’s romance with African music and culture was reissued in a remastered CD version a couple of years ago. Somehow, I managed to lose track of it in the stacks. I have made up for that absence by playing the CD repeatedly. It is addictive. My phonograph needle wore the 1972 LP nearly white. Fortunately, laser beams don’t erode CDs. The album features Freddie Hubbard on trumpet and Grover Washington, Jr. on tenor saxophone. Drummer Billy Cobham and bassist Ron Carter are in the rhythm section with Weston on acoustic and electric piano. The percussionists include Airto Moreira. Hubbard and Washington are at the peaks of their careers here, brimming with confidence and power. The big band arrangements, packed with pzazz and canny voicings, are by Don Sebesky. Rudy Van Gelder’s engineering caught the music’s excitement and full range, from the massive bottom tones of the trombones to the delicacy of Hubert Laws’ flute. It’s the kind of all-star sonic fiesta that CTI’s Creed Taylor cherished, and it’s good to have it back. The 37-minute playing length of the album is a refreshing reminder that simply because a CD can hold 80 minutes of music doesn’t mean that it must. Sometimes, less really is more. Pete Turner’s astonishing cover photograph is not as spectacular in digipak size as it was on the jacket of a 12-inch LP, but it is startling nonetheless.

 

Further Rifftides listening reports will appear in good time. For additional recommendations, see Doug’s Picks in the right column.

Around the same time in 1966 that pianist Steve Kuhn made The October Suite with Gary McFarland (see the post two items down), he was one of a more or less impromptu intergenerational group. Kuhn played a college concert with two of his contemporaries, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Marty Morell, all in their twenties. They accompanied the headliners, two of the music’s brilliant eccentrics. Trumpeter Red Allen was only 58, clarinetist Pee Wee Russell 60, but they had been around since shortly after jazz began, honing styles so personal that no one has ever been able to imitate them. The concert ended up on an album long out of print and never reissued as a CD. If you’re lucky, you might find a used copy. Here is “Blue Monk.”

Haden continues as leader of his busy Quartet West. Morell’s career has covered classical percussion as well jazz drumming with the Bill Evans Trio and the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Kuhn records often and performs frequently at clubs and festivals, as he did slightly less than a year ago at the Festival Bach de Montréal. J.S. Bach, the old improviser, might have been pleased at Kuhn’s insertion of bebop quotes into his minuet. Aidan O’Donnell is the bassist, Billy Drummond the drummer.

News comes of the death of Oscar Castro-Neves, one of the leading guitarists to emerge from Brazil’s bossa nova movement. As samba music moved north in the 1960s and became a powerful element in US popular music and jazz, Castro-Neves was an important player, coach, producer and catalyst. After hearing him at Seattle’s Jazz Alley with pianist Kenny Werner and harmonicist Toots Thielemans in 2005, I wrote:

Thielemans and Werner, long established as a formidable duo, became a virtual chamber orchestra with the addition of Castro-Neves’ guitar. There were moments at Jazz Alley when the piano, guitar and harmonica melded into chords so expansive and deep, it seemed impossible that they came from only three instruments. The authenticity of Castro-Neves’ Brazilian rhythms and bossa nova spirit were an essential part of the set’s air of happiness.

Here is Castro-Neves on the Ramsey Lewis PBS show, also in 2005, on the occasion of his friend and collaborator Ivan Lins winning two Grammys. He plays and sings Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Waters of March.”

Go here for all of that Rifftides review. Read an obituary in The Los Angeles Times.

Happy October. I can think of no better way to welcome my favorite month than to remind you of a splendid recording named for it. Gary McFarland (1933-1971) composed and arranged October Suite for the pianist Steve Kuhn. They recorded it in 1966. Almost immediately, the LP on the Impulse! label went into hiding. Well into this century, a CD version finally appeared. The quality of October Suite earns it renown far beyond what it has received. Many recordings of McFarland’s music, and of Kuhn’s, have attracted more attention. Few have October Suite’s consistent beauty. None has its success in melding musical idioms, with the possible exception of McFarland’s 1963 collaboration with pianist Bill Evans. October Suite has mistakenly been labeled Third Stream, but no categorical description captures its elegance. The suite can fairly be called, without reference to genre, a minor masterpiece of writing by McFarland and of playing by Kuhn and a small chamber orchestra. Bassist Ron Carter and drummer Marty Morell are important to the success of the performances.

No tracks of the suite seem to have appeared as videos in the usual places. On Vimeo, Kristian St. Clair has posted a segment of his documentary about McFarland’s short, productive career and the unsolved mystery of his death. Gene Lees once called McFarland an adult prodigy. A similar term might be applied to Kuhn, who was 28 at the time of the recording. In the documentary, composer-arranger-saxophonist Bill Kirchner discusses McFarland’s talent, and Kuhn comments on his collaboration with McFarland. The film includes passages of Mark Masters conducting music from October Suite for his 2007 McFarland tribute album Wish Me Well, which has Kuhn reprising his role.

…the approach—letting the classical instruments function on their own terms simultaneously with jazz men following their own idiom—may well stimulate other composers and performers from both fields to explore different combinations of equals.

In the past 47 years, despite McFarland’s and Kuhn’s example, there has been in music much less of that symmetry that we might wish.

For Douglas Payne’s biography of Gary McFarland, go here. For one of Steve Kuhn, go to his website.

Now that we have added pianist George Colligan’s stimulating Jazztruth to the Rifftides blogroll (the blogroll is ‘way down in the right column), the staff found a way to introduce Colligan’s playing to readers who may not be familiar with his vigor and inventiveness. He and alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw performed a tribute to Wayne Shorter a couple of years ago at the Tel Aviv Jazz Festival. It was a prescient booking by the Tel Avivians—two steadily rising younger artists playing music by one of the idiom’s most honored veteran composers. Colligan (pictured left), a former New Yorker, has established himself as a major presence in Portland, Oregon’s thriving music community. Shaw (pictured right) grew up in Philadelphia and makes his headquarters in New York.

With Boris Kozlov on bass and Donald Edwards on drums, we hear and see a quartet of musicians attracting increasing recognition. One of the tunes they thoroughly explored in Tel Aviv was Shorter’s 1965 composition “Speak No Evil.”

Tony Bennett/Dave Brubeck,The White House Sessions Live 1962 (Columbia/RPM/Legacy)

Riding on the success of hit records, in August of ’62 Brubeck and Bennett had a good night in the shadow of the Washington Monument. They played in the Sylvan Theater for college students who had interned in the nation’s capitol that summer. That morning at the White House, President John F. Kennedy thanked the youngsters. The concert constituted an additional bonus for their work. In the last flowering of an era when recordings of the quality of “Take Five” and “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” could be best sellers, the audience was attuned to the Brubeck Quartet and to Bennett and his trio. At the end, they got an extra treat, an unplanned and successful collaboration

In the previously unissued recording, Brubeck’s full-bodied keyboard style and expansive harmonic chops are up, but he also solos with single-note lines in a personal style that helped to set him apart from bebop pianists. He, Paul Desmond, Eugene Wright and Joe Morello perform four pieces that find the quartet at the top of their game in a period when the band had become one of the music’s great successes. Desmond is notably expansive in “Nomad,” and “Thank You” (“Djiekuje”). In “Castilian Blues” Morello’s solo is restrained, almost lyrical, before he builds it to a crescendo.

With his regular accompanists, the Ralph Sharon Trio, Bennett features “San Francisco” and other songs that were doing well for him, among them “Just in Time,” “Make Someone Happy” and the inevitable “Rags to Riches.” The highlight of his own set, however, is Julie Styne and Stephen Sondheim’s “Small World.” Bennett delivers it with a poetic sensitivity that, when he chooses to use it, puts him in a class with Frank Sinatra as a ballad singer.

Then, Bennett sits in with Brubeck, Wright and Morello. They all rise to the spontaneous and unrehearsed challenge. In four songs, Bennett sings with a collaborative jazz spirit that he had only occasionally found on record in the past and that would not reach full flower until years later in his albums with Bill Evans. On this night, he and Brubeck surprise each other, literally in the case of “Lullaby of Broadway,” when Bennett suddenly says “Dave Brubeck” by way of informing the pianist that he should solo. “Chicago,” gets a shuffle beat. Bennett is almost operatic in the final chorus of “That Old Black Magic,” but that doesn’t keep him from swinging. Following a stately first chorus by Bennett on “There Will Never Be Another You,” the time doubles and Brubeck plays a fleet solo that ranks with his best on record. Hidden in a vault for nearly fifty years, this music is as fresh as the night it was made.

Karolina Strassmayer & Drori Mondlak—Klaro, Small Moments (Lilypad)

In their third album together, their second as co-leaders, the spaciousness and delicacy of Karolina Strassmayer’s alto saxophone meld with the understated power of her husband Drori Mondlak’s drumming. The results are creative tension and whirling currents of surprise beneath the often-placid surface of music made by the spare combination of saxophone, drums, guitar and bass. Strassmayer is Austrian. Mondlak is an American of Polish parentage, born in Mexico City. In Strassmayer’s soloing, without quoting or making direct reference to John Coltrane, she nonetheless makes clear that the example of his boldness and lyricism helped to shape her concept. Her Coltrane tinge is apparent throughout, dramatically so in harmonic intervals and the shape of her phrasing in “Call of the Forefathers.” Nowhere in the album does Strassmayer’s own personality shine more radiantly than in her unaccompanied cadenza near the end of “Seven Minutes in Heaven;” a full minute of melodic invention and subtle dynamics.

The precision, speed and reserved strength of Mondlak’s drumming are reminiscent of Joe Morello in his early years with Dave Brubeck. Although his uses of brushes and cymbals to color the music are major strengths in this quartet, he leaves no doubt that he is a full-service sticks drummer. In “Last One Standing” his technique is apparent in the tempo changes, breaks, and interplay with the veteran German bassist Ingmar Heller. With Heller, Mondlak’s longtime American guitar colleague Cary DeNigris provides not only harmonic support but also imaginative soloing that ranges from delicate single-line improvisations to the energy and slightly acerbic distortions of his tone on “Last One Standing.” This international quartet’s blend of consistent quality and adventurousness gives it staying power. It is one of the most interesting small groups at work today.

Anders Bergcrantz Plays The Painter by Anna-Lena Laurin (Vanguard Music Boulevard)

Except for the universality of the music, there is nothing international about the collaboration among trumpeter Anders Bergcrantz, his wife composer Ann-Lena Laurin, and the Norlands Opera Symphony Orchestra. They are all thoroughly Swedish. Laurin, one of Sweden’s brightest composers, is trained in the classics, experienced in jazz and not limited to classical forms and traditions. She found inspiration for her five-movement work The Painter in the art and troubled life of Vincent Van Gogh, as the titles of the suite suggest: “Cypresses,” “Absinth Minded,” “Sunflower,” “Touches” and “Twilight.” The music incorporates a jazz rhythm section of pianist Robert Tjäderkvist, bassist Patrik Grundstrom and drummer Ulrik Ording. When jazz time-feeling is required, the orchestra under conductor Mats Rondin achieves that attribute so rare in symphony players, particularly in string sections. There are passages of grand symphonic sweep, as well as ensembles that Laurin endows with textures found in jazz orchestration. A brief section of the introduction to “Twilight” may be a reference to the sound tapestries of Gil Evans.

In this report from the 2012 Ystad Jazz Festival, I commented on “Bergcrantz’s spacious tone throughout, regardless of speed or range…” Perfectly placed and engineered in the audio landscape of this recording, he is impressive on all of those counts. The passion and technical control of his playing in the “Sunflowers” movement justify pianist Richie Bierach’s assessment that Bergcrantz “…is one of the top trumpet players in the world today.” He manages to squeeze out notes in “Touches” that incorporate humor without distracting from the sober intent of the movement. He personifies the tragic implications of “Twilight,” opening with breath-only notes and what sounds like the mouthpiece alone. Then, his performance blooms into a full-throated threnody. His horn is supported by Laurin’s orchestration heavy on percussion and layers of repetition akin spiritually, if not harmonically, to riffs in a mournful blues.

In the days of the Third Stream movement, attempts to marry classical and jazz forms often had awkward results. Without self-consciousness, Laurin’s and Bergrantz’s The Painter finds a credible and moving synthesis of the two genres.

One’s not half of two; two are halves of one. ― E.E. Cummings

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things. —Heraclitus

What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life–to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting? ― George Eliot, Adam Bede

The video below is about the horn played by the great Duke Ellington alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges (1906-1970). The voice in the commentary is that of Frank Wess, a major saxophonist of the generation following Hodges who is an active player at the age of 91. Mr. Wess explains that he owns the Vito saxophone, number 5000, and used it when he played lead alto for the Toshiko Akiyoshi orchestra. You needn’t be a saxophonist to appreciate the intricacy and beauty of the instrument. Tomoji Hirikata, a senior technical specialist in New York for the Yamaha instrument company, created something approaching a minor work of art when he crafted this video and placed it on YouTube. You will hear Hodges playing “Wabash Blues” with Ellington, piano; Harry Edison trumpet; Les Spann, guitar; Al Hall, bass; and Jo Jones, drums. The second piece is “Day Dream” with the Ellington orchestra.

Have a good weekend.

Rifftides has been more or less dormant the past few days, for good reason. You can’t blog and herd whales at the same time. Well, truth be told, we weren’t herding, just watching. Several Ramseys and other folks from various parts of the world watched orcas, also known as killer whales, off the coast of British Columbia and Washington State. Choppy waters south of Vancouver had the prow of the boat airborne and returning to the surface in a series of hull-shuddering slaps before the waters calmed just as we encountered two family groups of orcas. They were transient whales, our guide told us, passing through the Strait of Georgia where it meets Puget Sound. Not part of either family but tagging along was a magnificient young male with a six-foot dorsal fin. He swam apart from the families, tolerated but not welcomed by them.

This mother and her calf were part of one of the families.

We spent several minutes watching a group of sea lions. Part of the diet of 0rcas, they showed no interest in moving off the spit where they had sought rest and refuge.

The orcas surfaced singly or in groups to take in air.

They submerged for minutes at a time to feed or, perhaps, to evade the attention of pesky whale-watching boats full of humans. As we saw the speed and power of those beautiful animals, we understood why the sea lions elected to stay on their little stretch of sand and rock.

None of our transient killer whales breached and gave us a show like this. They seemed intent on their journey. Being so near our two whale families and their big male follower was satisfaction enough, thanks to the skillful seamanship of Captain Bryan and the knowledge of our naturalist, Joan. There are several whale watch outfits sailing out of the Vancouver area, but Vancouver Whale Watch was ours and they gave us a splendid day among the orcas.

A few jazz musicians who sang on the side became so popular as vocalists that their instrumental careers all but disappeared. The brilliant and influential pianist Nat Cole (pictured left) is the most prominent example. Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae began their professional lives as pianists. Diana Krall’s (pictured right) success as a singer dominates her career to the point that her ability as a pianist is often overlooked. In the cases of Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, Fats Waller, Chet Baker, Shirley Horn and John Pizzarelli, their singing and playing have more or less equal standing, but I have long been fascinated and often moved by jazz artists whose singing was occasional. Jimmy Rowles is at the top of that list. Benny Goodman rarely sang, but he was an appealing vocalist. The same is true of Zoot Sims, Eddie Condon, Lester Young and James Moody, even truer of Red Allen, Dizzy Gillespie, Jack Sheldon, Clark Terry, Grady Tate and Red Mitchell. Most experienced listeners could come up with their own lists.

Whether or not they have pipes that would send a Carnegie Hall vocal coach into ecstacy, seasoned jazz players usually bring phrasing, timing and rhythmic feeling shaped by their instrumental work, as well as an understanding and appreciation of lyrics. All of that came to mind after I was sent a link that led to a YouTube video of Mike Greensill. He is best known as the husband and accompanist of the wonderful singer Wesla Whitfeld. Here is the video, with an introduction by Mr. Greensill.

While we’re at it, let’s go back to 1936 and listen to an instrumentalist who managed to keep his playing in the foreground even after his singing—and his clowning—made him a popular phenomenon.

Whether Fats Waller, like Nat Cole, would have pushed the piano aside to concentrate on his success as an entertainer, we will never know. He died in 1943 at the age of 39.