Conversations with musicians are valuable sidebars to performances at the Portland Jazz Festival. They allow audiences to hear artists talk about what they do. At the Art Bar, drummer and radio host Carlton Jackson rounded up four prominent drummers and asked them:

“When every element is in perfect alignment—compatible musicians, the right room, good sound—how do you approach the music?”

Here’s some of what they said.

Jack DeJohnette: “I go into an alternate space, and once I touch a cymbal or other component of the instrument, I’m off.”

Lewis Nash: “I feel a wave of gratitude to be a part of it.”

Chris Brown: “It allows me to get back to being like a baby—that sense of wonderment, discovery.”

Joey Baron: “Clock time stops. I’m right there, right then. I never know if it’s clicking until the music starts. I enjoy surprise. I want to be a part of the surprise.”

(Above, l to r, Baron, DeJohnette, Nash, Brown)

Ms. Barber’s fans seem to admire whatever she does. The Thursday night audience at Portland’s Winningstad Theater indulged the pianist and singer’s every eccentricity. They chuckled as she spent the first two or three minutes of her set adjusting or removing her shoes. She pointed upward with a demand that someone, presumably the sound engineer, “Fix this thing.” Unhappy with something about the beginning of her first piece, she yelled a four-letter oath that materialized twice more in the course of the concert. Several people in the crowd laughed in amusement.

Following extended keyboard noodling, the bassist and drummer came aboard and the piece developed into Thelonious Monk’s “Rhythm-a-Ning.” Sipping occasionally from a cup, frequently removing and replacing her glasses, Ms. Barber soloed with sketchy melodies undergirded by rich chords that continued in support of Patrick Mulcahy’s powerful bass solo. Mulcahy was also impressive in variations on Kenny Dorham’s, “Blue Bossa.” Barber decorated the piece with a wordless vocal whose volume became alarming every time she leaned into the microphone.

Guitarist John Kregor joined Mulcahy and drummer John Deitemyer in the rhythm section for “The Storyteller” from the recent Barber album Smash. Kregor’s solos during the evening varied from conventional swing to spacey. On some, he used electronic loop effects. He was never less than interesting. Deitemyer opened “Bashful” with a tightly articulated drum statement that Barber followed with a solo composed of intricate phrases and no apparent continuity in the melodic line. She again loudly uttered the obscenity, fully amplified. The interweaving of guitar and piano was a highlight of the piece. As she did occasionally throughout the concert, Barber added wordless vocal interjections as percussion effects.

Aside from the Monk opener, the sole standard in the set was “I Thought About You,” taken slowly. She sang the seldom-used verse and then the chorus with only Mulcahy’s bass as accompaniment. It was affecting, marred a bit only by Ms. Barber’s alteration of the Johnny Mercer lyric. He wrote,

I peaked through the crack and looked at the track,
The one going back to you and what did I do?

I thought about you.

She sang, “cracks,” “tracks” and “ones.” I quibble, but messing with Johnny Mercer is not allowed.

More than one reviewer has written that Ms. Barber’s lyrics qualify as poetry. You be the judge. Here’s part of her lyric for “Scream,” also from the new CD:

“Scream / when Sunday / finally comes / and God / isn’t there . . . . the soldier / has his gun / and the war / isn’t where / we thought it would be.”

“Scream” had further intriguing guitar by Kregor, with lots of echo. The piece ended with Ms. Barber singing a long, loud note, holding it for more than a minute in a prodigy of breath control.

Following a standing ovation, the band returned for an encore whose title was not announced. It opened with a bass solo, then went into a quirky piano-guitar unison line and a fleet piano solo. Ms. Barber leaped to her feet and reached inside the piano to pull on the strings, creating several explosions of sound. Kregor employed distortion that enhanced the rhythmic qualities of his solo. The sidemen went silent and Ms. Barber closed unaccompanied on piano, with a bluesy passage among the abstractions, and faded to a quiet ending.

She got another standing ovation. Someone in the crowd shouted, “Portland loves you.”

Later at the Winningstad, alto and soprano saxophonist Kenny Garrett launched his quintet into a blitz of energy and volume that rarely subsided in a two-hour concert. With pianist Vernell Brown, bassist Corcoran Holt, drummer McClenty Hunter and the remarkable percussionist Rudy Bird, Garrett segued from one piece to the next without announcing titles. From the opening number, which seemed to have brief intimations of “Flamingo,” the set approached pure rhythm and pure sound. For enjoyment, it may have required that the listener accept it as a mystical or spiritual experience rather than one based in conventional jazz values. Garrett’s adoration of John Coltrane is unquestionable, but he has moved well beyond the Coltrane apprenticeship of his early career into a realm of his own making. Twenty-three years ago, Garrett made an album called African Exchange Student. His attachment to the roots music of Africa has grown ever more powerful.

In several instances, the efforts of the five musicians melded together; they might have been one percussion instrument, so powerful—or overpowering—was the mass of rhythmic sound they produced. At times, surges of rhythm moved the crowd to frenzied cheering. When Garrett and Hunter or Holt faced one another in simultaneous improvisation their duets were passages of relative calm, eyes in the storm of sound.

In the opening sequence Bird (pictured) played conga drums. Later, he moved through his corner of the stage from one percussion instrument to another; wind chimes, tambourine, a variety of hand-held bells, rattles and shakers. Sometimes, he strapped a wireless microphone to his head and continued drumming or playing a shaker as he sang melodies in unison with Garrett’s saxophone. Brown soloed on piano with chords so pungent that they stood out even in the swirl and urgency of percussive sound. After a solo in which Garrett made the horn sound as if it were crying, Holt applied his bow to the bass and the two faced off in a mournful duet. Then Garrett went to the edge of the stage, seemed for the first time to notice the audience and appeared to be speaking into a stand mike. His lips were moving, but no words could be heard. That bit of stagecraft may have had a point known only to Garrett.

The final piece, or the final segment of the one piece, was comparatively slow, even elegiac. Again Bird sang or hummed in unison with Garrett’s saxophone. Using gliding slurs, Garrett briefly evoked the lyricism of Johnny Hodges. It was an unexpected turn in a concert otherwise mainly devoted to intensity.

In a Portland Jazz Festival conversation this morning, host Devin Philips asked his fellow saxophonist Kenny Garrett to watch a video of himself and comment on it. The performance was 16 years ago at the Montreux, Switzerland, festival. Pianist Kenny Kirkland, bassist Nat Reeves and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts were the rhythm section. Garrett and the audience of festival-goers and Portland State University music students watched as he played several dozen choruses of John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps.” Phillips led into the screening by telling Garrett that after he saw the video the first time, “I wanted to crush my horn.”

When his 1997 self had faded to black, Garrett turned back to the packed hall and said, I think I’d better practice more. I was trying to rise above myself. Hopefully, I’ll get there.”

His 2013 quartet will play tonight in a PDX concert that has been sold out for days.

When Scott Hamilton came to prominence in the 1970s he was a jazz wunderkind unlike any other saxophonist of his generation. He was twenty-two years old when he arrived in New York from Providence, Rhode Island in 1976. Most of his saxophone contemporaries wanted to be John Coltrane, blazing trails through the post-bebop era. Hamilton wanted to be Johnny Hodges, Ben Webster, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn. He was dedicated to unadulterated swing and harmonies not altered by complex chord substitutions. His untutored natural musicianship established him in the music before he reached the age of 30. Carl Jefferson, the founder of Concord Records, became enamored of Hamilton and recorded him frequently, to the point, I recall, that a prominent record producer exclaimed, “Good Lord, how many Scott Hamilton records does the world need?” The last time I checked, Hamilton’s album count as leader or co-leader was 102.

The world may not need Scott Hamilton records, but the evidence says it wants them. They keep selling, and he keeps filling concert halls and clubs. Last night at the Portland Jazz Festival, he filled Jimmy Mak’s, one of the primary listening spots in a city whose number of jazz clubs seems to belie speculation that the music’s audience is declining. He plays by ear—distinguishing him from the mass of musicians his age who tend to be rigorously schooled in harmony—and he plays with passion and humor. Hamilton is a quoter. In the course of “Cherokee,” for instance, he included, among other references, snatches of “Raincheck,” “Tangerine” and “March of the Siamese Children.” Hamilton appeared with pianist Dave Frishberg, bassist Dave Captein and drummer Gary Hobbs.

In the set I heard, Hamilton got off to a happy start with Hodges’ “Squatty Roo,” then floated into “In a Sentimental Mood,” his roomy, slightly grainy tone putting a bit of an edge on the Duke Ellington melody. In his solo, Frishberg was a pointillist, fragmenting the chords while building a lyrical solo. Through the eight tunes of the set, Frishberg’s work emphasized the wisdom of simplicity. Sometimes he seasoned the simplicity with note-bending and explosive little left hand surprises. Captein’s power as a bassist does not preclude precision and rapid articulation. Throughout the evening, he demonstrated his flexiility, notably in double stops in his solo on Ellington’s “Love You Madly.” Hamilton toasted Captein by quoting from “Cocktails for Two.” Hobbs solidified the reputation he developed when he was with Stan Kenton. He displayed plenty of power last night, but his most riveting moments were relatively quiet ones when he used brushes in exchanges with Hamilton and Frishberg.

Hamilton threw Frishberg a curve by calling the rarely performed Ellington ballad “Tonight I Shall Sleep With a Smile on My Face,” whose chord structure is unconventional and demanding. It turned out that Frishberg had never played the song. Hamilton went to the side of the stage and found a lead sheet. Frishberg studied the chords intently as he played the tune for the first time. The piece closed with Hamilton sustained and ethereal on a high note. Frishberg sighed deeply, shook his head and slumped in relief. Hamilton grinned with satisfaction at the success of the performance and the prolonged applause. Then he instructed the rhythm section, “B-flat,” set a riff, and the quartet played out on the harmonies of “I Got Rhythm.” They earned a standing ovation that lasted for a minute or two after they left the stand.

Further thoughts on the evening:

The softness and reflection of a Hamilton-Frishberg duet on “I Surrender Dear” was disturbed more than once by audience applause. Sometime, appreciation is more appropriately shown by silence.

Now and then a Portland MAX light rail train glided by just beyond the club’s big windows facing 10th Avenue. The passengers gazed in as we looked out at them. A woman on the train waved.

It’s good to be back in Portland.

Blogger and trumpeter Bruno Leicht (pictured) posts a video-laden retrospective of the imperishable Sonny Rollins creation “Airegin” in three manifestations involving the composer, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Chet Baker and great rhythm sections. What a tune.

Recommended. To see it, go here.

The Portland Jazz Festival, a ten-day extravaganza that fills the city’s theaters, clubs and restaurants with music, has been underway since last Friday. Tomorrow, the Rifftides staff will wend our way down US 97, turn right on I-84 and head west to Portland through the Columbia River Gorge—spectacular at any time of year—to catch the last half of the festival. Go here for a complete list of the musicians we have missed in the first days and others we will try to fit into a packed listening schedule. The first performance I plan to tell you about will be by tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton at Jimmy Mak’s, one of Portland’s principal jazz clubs. Hamilton’s co-conspirators will be local citizens with national reputations; pianist Dave Frishberg, bassist Dave Captein and drummer GaryHobbs.

Later in the week: Matt Wilson’s Arts and Crafts, Kenny Garrett, Steve Kuhn, George Cables, Patricia Barber, Jack DeJohnette, Greta Matassa, Steven Bernstein’s Sex Mob, Nancy King, Terri Lyne Carrington, Esperanza Spalding and Geri Allen. Those are some of the major events, most of them in downtown Portland theaters. The challenge will be to also at least sample appearances by a few dozen of the Pacific Northwest’s fine resident artists; David Friesen, for instance, Randy Porter, Mel Brown, George Colligan and——well, hit the “Go Here” link in the above paragraph and see what the festival’s artistic director, Don Lucoff, and Portland’s club owners have put together.

Sleep may not be an option.

At 92, Yusef Lateef continues to earn universal admiration not only for his artistry as a saxophonist, flutist, oboist and composer, but also for the warmth of his personality and eagerness to share his musical knowledge, which is wide and deep. Thanks to Rifftides reader Harris Meyer for alerting me—and you— to a recent installment of the radio program American Routes. Lateef told host Nick Spitzer about his career, his music and his philosophy. In his early development as a professional, like scores of other musicians Lateef came under the wing of one of the great teachers in jazz, Dizzy Gillespie. He talked with Spitzer about what he learned from Gillespie, Sonny Stitt and Cannonball Adderley, how he became a leader, and his faith’s influence on his music.

The interview is at the end of a two-hour broadcast of American Routes. The show on New Orleans station WWNO also contains performances by Robert Randolph, Lena Horne, Clifton Chenier and Aaron Neville, among others. It’s a gumbo. To hear the entire program, go here. To listen only to the Lateef segment, click on “Listen To Hour 2” and advance the Routes Radio slider to :38:56. The recording that ends the hour comes from Lateef’s 1961 album Eastern Sounds.

Then come back and watch a grainy kinescope from Japan featuring Lateef on oboe in 1963. His accompanists are the Adderley rhythm section: pianist Joe Zawinul, bassist Sam Jones and drummer Louis Hayes. Cannonball and Nat were off to the side, listening. The sound quality would send Rudy Van Gelder into shock, and the kinescope dies during Jones’s solo, but Lateef makes the clip worth seeing and hearing.

The John McNeil part of the post immediately below brought to mind an omnibus Rifftides piece from three years ago in which McNeil and his bandstand associates played an important part. The entry had to do with a splendid popular song from the 1940s and its transformation into a jazz vehicle. The staff found video that was unavailable in 2010, compensating in part for the copyright removal of another performance.

Skipping along through 65 years of the history of a superior popular song gives us an idea of its evolution as a subject for jazz improvisation. Indeed, two of our examples provide an idea how jazz improvisation itself has evolved. The song is “Aren’t You Glad You’re You?” by Johnny Burke (words) and Jimmy Van Heusen (music). As Father O’Malley, Bing Crosby introduced it in the 1945 film The Bells of St. Mary’s.

Crosby had a substantial hit recording of it the same year. Among the singers who did covers (did they call them covers in those days?) were Frank Sinatra, Doris Day and Julius LaRosa. Later, Bob McGrath and Big Bird sang it…often… on Sesame Street. Their version is afield from our discussion, but if you’re interested, you can hear it by clicking here.

“Aren’t You Glad You’re You” is a perfect marriage of optimism and sunshine in the lyrics, melody and harmony. It has a couple of chord changes that are unexpected enough to spice it up for blowing, and it’s fun to sing or play. LaRosa’s record enjoyed a good deal of air play in the early 1950s and works nicely for our purpose. He takes mild liberties with the lyrics, employs interesting phrasing and radiates the song’s happy outlook.

Sorry about that, but I can’t be sorry about copyright holders protecting their interests. LaRosa’s version of the song, worth seeking out, is on this CD compilation. Read Amazon’s fine print and you’ll see that some new copies are selling for less than used ones.

There may have been jazz versions of “Aren’t You Glad You’re You” before 1952, but the first one I know of was on Gerry Mulligan’s initial quartet album for Pacific Jazz. Mulligan had gone from insider favorite to general popularity with his pianoless quartet co-starring Chet Baker. In the early 1950s it was not illegal for jazz to have general popularity. Mulligan, baritone saxophone; Baker, trumpet; Chico Hamilton, drums; Carson Smith, bass. YouTube, for reasons best known to its contributor, gives Chet the credit and the cover shot.

Cut in a sequence of pages flying off a calendar and, whaddaya know, it’s November, 2009, and the John McNeil-Bill McHenry Quartet is on the stand at the Cornelia Street Café in New York. Joe Martin is the bassist, Jochem Rueckert the drummer. It may seem that after the melody chorus, our intrepid modernists leave Mr. Burke’s chord scheme behind but, as I keep telling you, listen to the bass player. If McNeil seems amused by McHenry’s initial solo flurry, it’s for good reason.

McNeil and McHenry did not include “Aren’t You Glad You’re You?” in Rediscovery, their CD excursion into the bebop and west coast past. Perhaps it will show up on the sequel. Perhaps there will be a sequel.

Have a good weekend. Aren’t you glad you’re you?

And you thought kumquats have had no effect on popular culture.

How about a kumquat, my little chickadee?—W.C. Fields, My Little Chickadee (1940)

You’re…standing…in…my…KUMQUATS—The Fantasticks (1960)

We should be dancing, I agree, my little kumquat—The Stunt Man (1980)

In Los Angeles, we had a kumquat tree. Every winter it gave us a crop of the tangy little citrus globules. After we moved north to apple country, I missed the kumquats. One day a couple of summers ago, my wife returned from a shopping expedition with a fledgling kumquat tree in a pot. She found it at a Home Depot, of all places. What the heck, she said, it may not survive in this climate, but it’s worth a try. In spring, summer and fall, we keep it on the deck. In winter, it sits in front of the French doors leading to the deck. Last February, we had 24 small kumquats. This season, there are 53, some now big and ready to eat, others small, green and growing. I’m happy.

If you want to know more about kumquats—and who doesn’t?—listen to the rather unusual man in this video. Hurry back.

You may notice that there is no kumquat music in this post. If you do a web search using the term “kumquat songs,” you will understand why.

That concludes this special Rifftides kumquat report. Viewers’ kumquat komments are welcome. Use the “Speak Your Mind” box at the end of the post.

Mr. McNeil, a trumpet player given to wryness in his musical and non-musical pursuits, sent the photograph below, accompanied by this message:

I ran across this olde picture of the loft jazz scene in NY in ’72.

Under cross-examination, he confessed that the picture was, in fact, taken the night of February 6, 2013 at ShapeShifter Lab, a non-retro performance space in the heart of downtown Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York. That accounts for Mr. McNeil’s up-to-date appearance. But what accounts for the other guys looking as if they are really in 1972? They are Jeremy Udden, alto saxophone; Aryeh Kobrinsky, bass; and Vinnie Sperazza, drums. The photographer was Elvind Opsik, who played bass that night with another band. McNeil suggests that Opskind may have processed the grainy black and white photo “with some kind of gritty app—‘Igrit,’ or ‘GritMeDaddy.’” We may never know.

Here is John McNeil with bassist Jorge Roeder in a piece called “Dover Beach,” uploaded to YouTube by guitarist Julian Lage about a year ago.

For previous Rifftides posts and videos involving McNeil, visit this archive page.

Following a week of uncertainty and speculation, the death of 80-year-old trumpeter Donald Byrd has been confirmed. Haley Funeral Directors in Southfield, Michigan today published an online obituary. The notice said that a private funeral for Byrd will be held this week. Neither the funeral home nor the family is releasing further information. Last week, a nephew announced that Byrd died on February 4 in Dover, Delaware, but Byrd’s immediate family maintained silence that continues.

The February 8 Rifftides post reviewing Byrd’s career is two items down in the queue. We have erased the question mark in the headline.

Does the gloomy weather have you depressed? Can’t face having to shovel another foot of snow? Still paying off your Christmas credit card binge? Here’s a perfect remedy: Fats Waller in 1934 with Gene Sedric, tenor saxophone; Herman Autrey, trumpet; Harry Dial, drums; Billy Taylor, Sr., bass. I’ve always been impressed with Autrey’s ability to insert lovely little obligato licks among phrases of Waller’s vocal. Sedric, “Honey Bear” to his friends, was a marvel of warm playing.

See? You feel better.

“Don’t Let it Bother You” is included in this CD collection. No modern home should be without it.

Have a nice weekend.

On several blogs and websites, a man name Alex Bugnon, a nephew of trumpeter Donald Byrd, is quoted as saying that Byrd died on Monday in Dover, Delaware, his home in recent years. According to the reports, Bugnon said that other members of Byrd‘s family were keeping the death of the 80-year-old jazz artist under “an unnecessary shroud of secrecy.”

I have tried to get at least one further confirmation; a coroner’s report, word from an immediate family member in Delaware, a funeral home announcement. The closest I have come is assurance from reporter Mark Stryker of The Detroit Free Press that Bugnon is Byrd’s nephew. Based solely on Bugnon’s claim, The Free Press has gone with the story, as have NBC News, The Guardian and The Huffington Post, among many other outlets. Hoping that they are right, hoping that they are wrong, so has Rifftides.

Byrd was part of a generation of youngsters who exploded out of Detroit in the 1950s to make a major impression in jazz, injecting high levels of musicianship and energy into the New York jazz scene. The Motor City coterie also included baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams, guitarist Kenny Burrell drummer Elvin Jones and pianists Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris.

While in high school Byrd played with Lionel Hampton and during his Air Force service sat in with Thelonious Monk. His first job with a name group after he moved to New York was in 1955 with pianist George Wallington’s Quintet. The association accelerated Byrd’s career and that of his front line partner, saxophonist Jackie McLean, here with Wallington, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Art Taylor in Oscar Pettiford’s “Bohemia After Dark.”

From Wallington’s band, Byrd moved to Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, then to the Max Roach group. He worked frequently in the 1950s with John Coltrane, Red Garland, Lou Donaldson and Gigi Gryce and in the ‘60s with Sonny Rollins, Hampton, Monk, Coleman Hawkins and others, and led his own quinet. He recorded prolifically. Byrd and his Detroit pal Pepper Adams were close musically and personally and in the late fifties and early sixties shared leadership of a quintet that bore their names. The album cover in this video lists the players. Thad Jones, another of those remarkable Detroiters, wrote the tune.

In his Free Press obituary, Mark Stryker hit the right tone in describing Byrd’s style.

Byrd’s warmly burnished sound, fluent technique and aggressive-yet-graceful swing was rooted in the style of Clifford Brown, but his gangly, rhythmically loose phrasing was a unique calling card right from the get-go. As Byrd matured in the late ’50s and early ’60s, he tempered his hummingbird flourishes with a cooler sensibility and phrasing that recalled Miles Davis.

Byrd was graduated in music from Wayne State University in 1954. He later earned a masters degree from the Manhattan School of Music and a doctorate in music education from Columbia. His academic career paralleled his work as a player and sometimes moved it to the back seat. He served as an instructor at New York’s High School of Music and Art and taught at several universities, among them Rutgers, North Carolina Central and Delaware State. When he was at Howard University in Washington DC in the 1970s he formed, and produced records by, a band called The Blackbyrds that included some of his students. His own earlier Black Byrd album for Blue Note became a hit in the pop soul genre. In many of the stories that appeared today, much is made of rap and hip-hop performers sampling Byrd’s pop music for their own albums, as if that legitimized him.

What legitimized Donald Byrd was his work as a fine post-bop trumpet player, bandleader and composer and his dedication to music education. His installation in 2000 as a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master confirmed the importance of those contributions. So does this:

Donald Byrd, RIP.

Eubie Blake made himself even more famous well into his 90s when he said, “If I’d known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.” He died on February 12, 1983 at the age of 100 years and five days. More famous? Yes, he had been widely known for decades as a pianist, bandleader and composer. Blake’s “Memories of You,” “I’m Just Wild About Harry” and “Charleston Rag” were among a string his of hits that began with an early one for Sophie Tucker, “It’s All Your Fault.”

When ragtime made a comeback in the 1950s, so did Eubie, and the comeback lasted until he died. Here he is in Berlin in 1972 when he was a mere 89 year old, charming an audience with a medley of his best-known songs.

Taking the birthday tribute a step further, let’s hear one of best of the dozens of versions of Blake’s “Memories of You,” by Clifford Brown with strings.

Thank you for Eubie Blake.

Robert Farnon

By Jeff Sultanof

Robert Farnon composed several film scores, of which the best known is the music for Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951). The trombonist, composer and arranger J.J. Johnson told me that a theme from the film, “Lady Barbara” was one of his favorites. Johnson eventually recorded it with Farnon. We hear a bit of the theme in this scene from the motion picture with Gregory Peck and Virginia Mayo.

Farnon recorded a long-running series of albums for U.K. Decca, released in the U.S. on the London label. Quincy Jones later produced Farnon albums for Phillips. Over his long career, Bob arranged and conducted for Frank Sinatra, Joe Williams, George Shearing, Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Jerry Lewis, Sarah Vaughan, and Tony Bennett.

I first heard of Farnon when I was 18 years old. I didn’t know anything about him, and couldn’t find his albums. I discovered that the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center had them, and when I heard them I was astounded. I wanted to study the scores, but soon learned that there had been a disastrous fire at Chappell’s offices in 1964, and most of them seemed lost. Chappell published several of his compositions in orchestral editions, but the only scores were piano-conductor guides, and all of those publications were long out of print and unavailable. In some cases, no copies of some of his best-known compositions were to be found in the United States. How could a case be made for a composer whose work was all but invisible, at least in this country?

I corresponded with him, and met him at a Farnon Society meeting. On that occasion, I offered to create new scores of his music; the music that was published for sale had numerous errors. Eventually, I edited 45 compositions and arrangements. Farnon approved them. Publishing them is a tricky proposition because the rights scattered when Chappell sold off its music library. Let’s just say it’s complicated, but it was wonderful to bathe in this glorious music and to work with Bob.

Farnon was a very gracious individual, proud of the fact that many professional arrangers respected and loved his music. But privately he expressed to me regret and, sometimes, anger. Decca lavished more promotion and ad space on other artists. He felt that the company never properly promoted him and he felt the same way about Chappell. Those of us who know his many compositions feel that with regard to orchestral performance, his music should be as popular as Leroy Anderson’s, but that simply has not happened. Despite accolades from such arranger/conductors as Andre Previn and John Williams, to my knowledge neither has performed his music. They could give it a much-needed push, exposing it to other conductors and encouraging them to program it.

For many years, copies of Farnon’s London albums were hard to find; arrangers learned not to lend them out, because they would probably not be returned. That changed when Dutton Vocalion issued them as two-fers on CD some years ago, and today it is very easy to get MP3s of classic Farnon recordings. All of them are worth hearing, but The Emerald Isle, From the Highlands, and Sunny Side Up are indispensable. The albums he made with Bennett were poorly promoted, but they are among the finest of this artist’s long discography. The album with Sinatra was recorded when Frank was in poor voice from touring, but “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” is exquisite.

It was wonderful to know Robert Farnon. It is encouraging to realize that new generations of arrangers manage to find him and be inspired by him. His legacy continues. That’s the most that an artist can hope for.

As always, the Rifftides staff is grateful to Jeff Sultanof for sharing his expertise and insight.

As Jeff Sultanof makes clear in the first segment of his two-part essay for Rifftides, the most accomplished composers and arrangers looked up to Robert Farnon (1917-2005). To the left, we see him between two of his admirers, Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Carter. Early in his career, both offered him encouragement and advice and, later, became fans. The sheer skill of Farnon’s craftsmanship would have been reason enough for envy, but he combined mastery of technique with a creative imagination that gave him range from the most subtle harmonic magic accompanying singers to the surging power of epic seaborne motion picture battles.

Mr. Sultanof is treasured by professional musicians for his analysis and editing of scores and for his writing and teaching about composers and composing. He has also written for Rifftides about Pete Rugolo, Gerry Mulligan and Russell Garcia.

Robert Farnon

By Jeff Sultanof

In today’s colleges and universities around the world, students and teachers continue to explore the world of big band and orchestral arrangements, analyzing them in classrooms, writing them, or both. It is a fascinating journey to see and hear how many different kinds of sounds and structures can be created using the same instrumentation that has been formulating and evolving over many, many years.

Somewhere along the line, anyone familiar with Nelson Riddle, Billy May and the many other legends of arranging in the popular music idiom, eventually finds the name of a man who never became very well known, at least in the United States. It’s a different story in Europe because his BBC broadcasts were heard there. Professionals everywhere, however, regard Robert Farnon as the best of them all.

I will deal only with the basics of his career. You are invited to explore the Robert Farnon Society website, the internet home of the organization that celebrates and promotes Farnon’s work as well as that of other composer/arrangers.

Farnon was born in Canada on July 24, 1917 (coincidentally, I was born on the same day in 1954, something Bob and I used to joke about). He came from a musical family. His brothers Brian and Dennis also became world-class musicians. Bob was a trumpet player and joined the CBC Orchestra as lead trumpet for broadcasts under the direction of Percy Faith. When Faith left the CBC, Farnon took his place, and his arrangements were heard all over Canada. Farnon also composed two well regarded symphonies, one of them played by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Considering them juvenilia, he later withdrew them, although some of the themes in those works were recycled for other compositions.

During WWII, he became a Captain in the Canadian army, and was commissioned to assemble an Allied Expeditionary Force orchestra from Canada to be sent overseas to entertain the troops. His was the equivalent of Glenn Miller’s American AEF ensemble and George Melachrino’s English band. The three men were great friends, and would meet at Miller’s office, which was a room at the Mt. Royal Hotel in London. The British music world recognized Farnon’s talents, and he often moonlighted as arranger for such leaders as Ted Heath and Geraldo.

During and after the war, Farnon’s ensemble broadcast regularly. Some of those recorded programs were found many years later. Farnon was not exactly thrilled at their rediscovery and availability on CD, as he had been forced to arrange the newest songs by transcribing them over short-wave radio broadcasts, and the lyrics and music were sometimes incorrect. This makes his work all the more remarkable; some arrangements, including “Laura,” are from that period, although commercially recorded several years later. “Laura” is considered one of his masterpieces. He continued to perform for it many years.

Once he was discharged, Farnon faced a major decision: stay in England, return to Canada, or perhaps go to the United States (Miller had encouraged him to come to the U.S.—it is tempting to think of Miller and Farnon working together). He decided that it would be better to stay in England. In 1946, he was invited to write for Chappell’s music library service. For such libraries, composers wrote music for possible use in radio, motion pictures and later television, music ranging from full-scale compositions that could be used as themes, or short segments to be used as transitions. This turned out to be the break of his life. Over the years, he wrote hundreds of hours of music for the library, and many of the compositions such as “Portrait of a Flirt” and “Journey Into Music” were heard all over the world. The David Susskind Show, a talk program emanating from New York, used Farnon’s “Gateway to the West” as its theme. In Europe, Farnon became known as a ‘light’ music composer. John Wilson conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra in one of those exquisitely written pieces.

In his second installment, Jeff will discuss Farnon’s music for motion pictures and his work with Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Oscar Peterson and George Shearing, among many others.

Following up the Butch Morris post two items below, this announcement just arrived: