This is Charlie Parker’s birthday. If he had lived, he would be 92. I wish that he had taken better care of himself.

Here’s a segment from Ken Burns’ film Jazz.

With less than a month of summer to go (in the northern hemisphere), this is timely.

If it has been a while since you have heard “Summer Sequence,” the brilliant suite composed by Ralph Burns for Woody Herman—or if you have never heard it—this is your lucky day. Rifftides reader Roger Hunter’s comment on our recent Hi-Los post triggered a search for a recording of that timeless piece by Herman’s First Herd. To read Mr. Hunter’s comment and hear the music, go here and scroll down to the end of the comment section.

East of the mountains, we live in apple country ——and pear, peach, cherry and hop country. Those dark green areas in the picture above are orchards typical of those that cover the hills and valleys. The orchards were quiet on Sunday during our photo expedition, but before long they will be alive with pickers and the warehouses full of packers preparing fruit for shipping all over the world. The Washington Apple Commission is predicting the second biggest harvest ever, nearly 109 million bushels. These are Red Delicious, no longer the dominant variety but still hugely popular.
Many growers have torn out acreages of Red Delicious and replaced them with Gala, Pink Lady or Fuji, some of the newer varieties with crisper textures or sweeter taste, or both.
I wonder what Wayne Shorter’s favorite is.

They also grow pears around here, not quite in the profusion of apples, but they are an abundant cash crop.Music referring to pears is rare. There might be none if Eric Satie hadn’t responded to critics who accused him of writing music that had no form. He called this Trois Morceaux en Forme de Poire (Three pieces in the Form of a Pear). Here are Robert and Gaby Casadesus.

Regarding the Singers Unlimited item in the following exhibit, Rifftides reader David Perrine writes:

The Singers Unlimited was an updated and expanded (via technology) version of Puerling’s previous group the Hi-Lo’s (which in a later edition also included Don Shelton as one of the four voices.) While Fischer probably wasn’t involved with “In Tune”, he did write instrumental arrangements for both groups and one of the Hi-Lo’s finest tracks is a Fischer piece called “Summer Sketch” from the “and all that jazz” album.

The Hi-Los And All That Jazz (1959) is an indispensable album, but Columbia Records dispensed with it. It has been out of the catalogue for more than 20 years, last reissued on CD—nearly in secret—in 1991 by the label’s Sony Music Special Products division. Amazon offers a few used copies for less than twenty bucks, but the album is rapidly disappearing. Marty Paich’s Dek-Tette accompanied the Hi-Los. The horn soloists were among the west coast’s major players; Jack Sheldon, Bud Shank, Herb Geller, Bill Perkins, Bob Enevoldsen and Vince DeRosa. Gene Puerling’s liner notes mention that he, Fischer and Marty Paich each wrote vocal arrangements for the date, although he doesn’t identify the arrangers track by track. “Summer Sketch” is almost certainly Fischer’s arrangement for the voices, and I have a hunch that “Then I’ll Be Tired of You” is, too. It seems to have his harmonic earmarks. This may be the definitive version of that great Arthur Schwartz song (lyrics by Yip Harburg). Sheldon demonstrates with his trumpet work on the bridge section of the final chorus that “just” playing the melody can be the most creative option for a soloist——if he has tone, phrasing and taste like Sheldon’s.

Bill Kirchner sent a description of his next program in the Institute of Jazz Studies “Jazz From The Archives.” He will feature a vocal group with close ties to jazz, that for more than a decade reached a wide audience with its rich series of recordings and continues to amass new fans. Here’s Bill’s announcement.

Between 1971 and 1982, The Singers Unlimited (pictured left to right, Bonnie Herman, Len Dresslar Gene Puerling, Don Shelton) recorded fifteen albums, mostly with varied instrumental backups. The innovative vocal writing by Puerling featured extensive studio overdubbing using as many as 27 voices; for this reason, the group never appeared live. They performed rich, difficult harmonies flawlessly and were a major inspiration for the popular vocal group Take 6.

We’ll hear several of The Singers Unlimited’s albums: one a cappella, and others with instrumental arrangements by Robert Farnon, Clare Fischer, and Rob McConnell.

The show will air this Sunday, August 26, from 11 p.m. to midnight, Eastern Daylight Time.

NOTE: If you live outside the New York City metropolitan area, WBGO (88.3 FM) also broadcasts on the Internet at www.wbgo.org.

To further whet your interest, here’s a sample, with orchestral accompaniment by Farnon and a video biographical sketch of the composer, a certain Velvet Gentleman. If Mr. Kirchner includes it in his program, perhaps you won’t mind hearing it again.

Every once in a while, a reader asks how to find items in the Rifftides archive. Rummaging through the blog’s seven-year history, you may discover interesting things you missed. Here’s a way to get started. Scroll down to the “Older Posts” function at the bottom of the main page. Click on that command and it will take you to the previous 20 posts. Click on it again, you will see another 20, and so on back through the mists of time to the primitive beginnings of this blog in June of 2005.

There are two other ways to search Rifftides:

1. Scroll down to “Archives” in the right-hand column. Select the month and year you want to see.

2. Enter a name or term in the box under the artsjournalblog logo at the top of the right column and click on “Search.” I tried it with Count Basie and came up with 83 Rifftides items about Basie or mentioning him. Happy exploring.

Here’s a reward for paying attention to our little tutorial. Among web videos featuring two-piano performances by Basie and Oscar Peterson, this one is a rarity. It comes from a 1974 Peterson concert in Prague. The bassist is Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen. The drummer is most likely Ed Thigpen. The video is grainy and unclear. The music is not.

The subject line of Scott Weiss’s e-mail was “trumpet stuff.” His message included a link to video Weiss took of Bobby Shew and Carl Saunders. For decades, the trumpeters played together in big bands including those of Buddy Rich, Bill Holman and Bob Florence. On his website, Weiss quotes Shew as saying that he and Saunders have been, “thick as thieves since around 1961.” In a rare combination of talents, each of them is a major improvising soloist also capable of the most demanding lead trumpet work.

Shew and Saunders have been stalwarts not only in jazz, but also in southern California film, television and recording studios. Since Shew moved from Los Angeles to his native New Mexico a few years ago, they cross paths less frequently, but when they do, to borrow Louis Armstrong’s phrase, “chops is flyin’ everywhere.” On this occasion, they took turns also playing drums. The 2003 gig was at a Camarillo, California, club called Michael D’s, now defunct. Bob Florence was the pianist, Dave Carpenter the bassist.

For more of Shew, Saunders and other trumpet players, see Scott Weiss’s YouTube page and his website.

The death a week ago of Annie Kuebler prompted a flood of tributes from writers, academics and researchers who benefited from her expertise, kindness, unfailing good humor and friendship. Ms. Kuebler was the archivist at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. Her name is unfamiliar to most jazz listeners, but they are likely to have learned indirectly from her about the music by way of books, articles, blogs and liner notes written by people she helped. Annie died August 13 of a brain hemorrhage. She was 61. Matt Schudel’s obituary in The Washington Post summarizes her career and the tragedy she overcame to turn her life around to become, among other accomplishments, the leading scholar of the work of Mary Lou Williams.

From the earliest days of Rifftides, here is a small example of Annie’s contributions to the literature on jazz.

A Little “Rifftide” Geneology
July 19, 2005 By Doug Ramsey

Annie Kuebler, the Mary Lou Williams archivist at the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, gives us further insights into “Rifftide.” That is the 1945 Coleman Hawkins recording that inspired the name of this blog. She does not say that Hawkins stole the tune from Williams, only that it is likely to have been lodged in his mind when he played on a little-known record date with Mary Lou a couple of months before his own session. In the mid-forties, Hawkins and Williams were major swing era musicians encouraging and aiding the younger players who were developing bebop. Hawkins gave Thelonious Monk one of his most important early jobs as a pianist. Wiliams had a profound influence on the new music’s pianists. She told Ira Gitler in an interview for his book Swing To Bop, “We were inseparable, Monk, Bud Powell and I. We were always together every day, for a long time.”

Here is the note Ms. Kuebler sent us about “Rifftide.”

On December 15, 1944, Moe Asch recorded six cuts titled Mary Lou Williams and Her Orchestra in New York City. Williams’s arrangement of “[Oh] Lady Be Good” is nearly identical to Hawkins’s “Rifftide”–and one doesn’t need a musicologist to explain it. It just takes a listen. The only real difference is the breaks to accommodate the various musicians.

Originally recorded on 78 rpm Asch 552-3 as a three record set, the recording is now available on CD on the Chronological Classics Series # 1021, Mary Lou Williams 1944 -1945. The personnel for four of the cuts is Hawkins – tenor sax; Joe Evans – alto; Claude Green – clarinet; Bill Coleman – trumpet; Eddie Robinson – bass; Denzil Best – drums; and, of course, Williams on piano.

Obviously, this recording precedes “Rifftide,” attributed to Hawkins, from Hollywood Stampede on February 23, 1945. I don’t believe enough time had passed that Hawkins forgot the source, but that’s an opinion. Since my music manuscript archivist career began with Duke Ellington’s Collection, I am not judgmental about these things — just like to lay the facts out. In such matters, I am always reminded of Juan Tizol’s reply when asked if Ellington stole songs, “Oh, he stole. He’d steal it from his own self.”

Hope this helps. Thank for naming your website after a great underrated artist’s arrangement.

Before she joined the Institute for Jazz Studies five years ago, Annie Kuebler spent twelve years at the Smithsonian Institution. There, among many other achievements, she accomplished the massive task of organizing the manuscripts in the Smithsonian’s Duke Ellington collection. Her contributions to preserving large segments of American art and culture are invaluable.

Thanks, Annie

In response to readers’ requests, Rifftides has added a way to subscribe by e-mail. Scroll down to the third item in the right column and follow the easy instruction.

First of all, I never strive for identity. That’s something that just has happened automatically as a result, I think, of just putting things together, tearing things apart and putting it together my own way, and somehow I guess the individual comes through eventually.

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can’t explain it. They really can’t translate feeling because they’re not part of it. That’s why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not. It’s feeling.

Jazz is not a what, it’s a how. If it were a what, it would be static, never growing. The how is that music comes from the moment, it is spontaneous, it exists at the time it is created. And anyone who makes music according to this method conveys to me an element that makes his music jazz.

Before the 83rd anniversary of Bill Evans’ birth fades away, at least in this time zone, let’s listen together to “Gloria’s Step,” a masterpiece from his 1961 Sunday At The Village Vanguard album. The trio, of course, was Evans, bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian.

Evans died on September 15, 1980.

Rifftides reader Red Sullivan (pictured), who is Irish, plays the flute and lives in Rio de Janeiro, wrote a comment and question about the Swedish folk song cum jazz standard mentioned in the review of the recent Quincy Jones celebration at the Ystad festival. Others may be interested in the music that prompted his curiosity. The comment and reply are posted with the Jones item four exhibits down. For those who might otherwise miss them, here they are:

And Miles very wonderfully and prominently took up “Ack Värmeland du sköna,” too, for his perfect, important, Columbia Records album ‘Round About Midnight – overlooked album sometimes, but as great a statement as that classic quintet ever made. EVER! So, is the “Ack Värmeland” there inspired by Getz directly, do you happen to know? i.e. Chicken or Egg…? (Nor should it be any surprise to anyone that Miles may well have taken his cue from Getz. He really adored Getz…. After all, he had good taste in music!).

So: What was Miles connection to the Swedish theme: Getz, or personal?

The Getz recording with pianist Bengt Hallberg, bassist Gunnar Johnson and drummer Jack Noren was on the Swedish Metronome label. Shortly after they made it in 1951, the Prestige label released it in the US under the title, “Dear Old Stockholm.” It quickly became familiar to American musicians, including, no doubt, Davis, who recorded it in 1956. The Getz recording observes the song’s original folk-like AABA structure, with its unusual four-bar B section. Davis altered the song by adding interludes that may have been suggested by Gil Evans. The booklet for the Columbia Legacy reissue of Davis’s ‘Round About Midnight album identifies the piece as “traditional, arranged by Stan Getz,” but the Getz recording does not have the interludes. Purists prefer the unadulterated original, but the altered Davis version is pervasive. It is the one that musicians’ fake books have adopted.

For the record (heh-heh), here is the 1951 Getz version. For anyone unfamiliar with Hallberg, this is a perfect way to hear why his keyboard touch and harmonic concept captivated so many listeners.

Von Freeman had everything it took to be a world-famous tenor saxophonist. He chose, instead, to remain in his native Chicago for his entire career. Appearances at a few jazz festivals in the US and abroad were the main exceptions. Freeman’s death on August 11 was announced today. He would have been 89 on October 3.

Freeman shared many of the influences that affected such contemporary Chicago tenor artists as Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin, Eddie Harris and Fred Anderson. Like theirs, his playing had grit and toughness, particularly in the lower register. It also had wily humor, bent notes and idiosyncratic turns that made his work unlike that of any other saxophonist.

“They said I played out of tune, played a lot of wrong notes, a lot of weird ideas,” Freeman told The Chicago Tribune in 1992. “But it didn’t matter, because I didn’t have to worry about the money—I wasn’t making (hardly) any. I didn’t have to worry about fame— I didn’t have any. I was free.”

Freeman may have been unknown to the general public, but musicians and dedicated listeners admired him extravagantly. His reputation among the cognoscenti resulted in his being named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master this year. Though he could work subtle and sophisticated magic on standard songs, the blues tinged nearly everything Freeman played. Here he is with his young Chicago rhythm section at the 2002 Berlin Jazz Festival in an E-flat blues that goes deeper than tinges.

Freeman’s colleagues in the New Apartment Lounge Quintet were guitarist Mike Allemana (who uploaded that video to YouTube);
 Jack Zarra, bass; and Michael Raynor, drums. “Blues for Sunnyland Slim” was included in the album Vonski Speaks, recorded at the Berlin concert.

For a comprehensive Freeman obituary, see Howard Reich in The Chicago Tribune.

Von Freeman, RIP.

Video has shown up on YouTube of the last two minutes of the Quincy Jones tribute at the Ystad Jazz Festival in Sweden. (See the item below for details). The celebration ended with the audience joining the musicians and vocalists on stage in singing “We are the World” and Jones thanking everyone, in English and idiomatic Swedish.

More from the Ystad, Sweden, Jazz Festival, as the week wound down.

BENNY GREEN

Benny Green’s Ystad Theater concert previewed music the pianist is preparing for his next record. His trio played some of Green’s new pieces for the first time, giving the set an air of discovery and, occasionally, of a rehearsal. A few seconds into a fast tune titled “Flying Saucer,” Green declared a false start, called a halt, counted off a new tempo and started over. Following the opening melody chorus he got fully into the performance, legs angling away from the piano to the right, upper body leaning to his left, cranking up the swing, grinning at bassist Ben Wolfe and drummer Rodney Green. Among Green’s new compositions, the lively “Cactus Flower” and “Priestess,” a ballad, have the potential to become standards.

A contingent of young listeners toward the front of the theater seemed transfixed by Green, who is 49 but, even with the beard he has sported lately, looks at least 15 years younger. The pianist’s technique is formidable. He could probably execute Hiromi-style pyrotechnics, but in the tradition of his bebop forbears his focus at any speed is on the development of narrative lines. One of his heroes was Sonny Clark, whose name Green made the title of a new tune. Taking the piece at a fast clip, he captured Clark’s essence in the melody and in his improvisation. Rodney Green soloed using wire brushes at blazing speed.

Coming out of Wolfe’s solo on “The Asphalt Shuffle”, all of the players laughed, evidently at something he played. It was not the only time during the concert that the three reacted to inside information. It happened during “Golden Flamingo” with its powerful Ben Wolfe solo. The trio’s camaraderie seemed to draw the audience in.

CHINA MOSES AND IKIZ

The singer China Moses appeared with Ikiz, a Swedish quintet led by Robert Ikiz, a drummer born in Turkey whose music education was at the Swedish Royal Academy. Moses, the daughter of Dee Dee Bridgewater, sings with enthusiasm reminiscent of her mother, blues phrasing and audacity inspired by Dinah Washington and an easy relationship with the band and her audience. At the Ystad Saltsjöbad concert, Moses shared billing and attention with the Ikiz group, which included impressive soloists in trumpeter Carl Olandersson and tenor saxophonist Karl-Martin Almqvist.

DEE DEE BRIDGEWATER

Almqvist is also a featured soloist with the powerful Norrbotten Big Band from the north of Sweden, which backed Bridgewater in her Billie Holiday tribute at the Ystad Theater. For background on Bridgewater’s “To Billie With Love” project, see this Rifftides review of her appearance at this year’s Portland Jazz Festival. In Portland, working with her quartet, she achieved intimacy and spontaneity. In Ystad, riding on the power of the big band, she reflected more of the Holiday who sang with the Count Basie and Artie Shaw bands than the subtle singer who bonded with Lester Young in the famous Okeh combo recordings. In any case, Bridgewater’s aim is not to imitate her idol but to honor her in a program of pieces associated with Holiday. And so she did, from the opening “Lady Sings the Blues” through a dozen of Holiday’s signature songs.

With arrangements by her former husband Cecil Bridgewater and Norrbotten leader Hâkan Broström, she was particularly effective when she related directly to the band’s soloists. With the rest of the band sitting out, Bridgewater and bassist Martin Sjöstedt collaborated on Holiday’s first hit, “My Mother’s Son-in-law,” interacting and trading phrases to the amusement of one another and the audience. In “A Foggy Day,” it was a tossup as to which solo was more musical, Bridgewater’s scatting or Dan Johansson’s on flugelhorn. “You’ve Changed,” taken at just the right languid tempo, had a splendid Almqvist tenor solo and a Bridgewater ending that was much more Sarah Vaughan than Holiday. Other notable solos came from Broström on alto saxophone and trombonist Peter Dahlgren. “Fine and Mellow” picked up steam as it progressed and ended with a Bridgewater vocalese lick in unison with the band, a thrilling moment. After “Them There Eyes,” and roses presented to all hands, the capacity crowd called for an encore and got “All of Me,” the Norrbottens genuinely digging Dee Dee’s scat solo.

(All photos by Lars Grönwall)

Back from Sweden jet-lagged but unbowed after 10 time zones and 16 hours in the air, the Rifftides staff is alternating work and naps, some voluntary. (Pictured: above the Baltic Sea.)

Over the next couple of days, I’ll give you brief impressions of performances in the final days of the Ystad Jazz Festival.

An economy-size pianist with massive technique, Hiromi Uehara performs using only her given name, a la Eldar or Madonna. With skill that evidently knows no limitations of speed or control, she dazzled a capacity Ystad audience in a repertoire that included several pieces from her 2010 solo album Place To Be. From time to time, she employed fists, forearms and elbows, but there was nothing random about her unorthodox style; no unintended dissonance. Although she has played around the world, this was her first appearance in Sweden.

Hiromi slid into “I Got Rhythm,” hinting at the tune before giving the piece a power infusion that took her to the edge of mania and recalled no one so much as Mel Henke (1915-1979), another pianist who specialized in entertaining keyboard displays that verged on the athletic. Introducing “BQE,” she said it was inspired by trips on New York City’s crowded Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Descriptive music, “BQE”’s cleverness and adroitness were in spirit akin to Raymond Scott’s cartoon scores and certain pieces by his quintet. I must stress the unlikelihood that Hiromi, who was born in 1979, was directly influenced by Scott’s or Henke’s mid-century recordings, but it’s not impossible for a woman so eclectic. In “Old Castle By a River in the Middle of a Forest,” Hiromi reached into the piano, strumming strings and rapping the keyboard to create an atmosphere of mystery. She introduced harmonies that might have been influenced by Brahms or John Lewis’s “Django,” possibly by both. She worked several variations using those chords, but when the piece ended, the impression was of display, not the story-telling of first rate improvisation.

The shade of Errol Garner hovered over Hiromi’s invention on the Pachalbel Canon. After an amusing interlude of swirling glissandos in her right hand while the left played calypso, she channeled Garner’s insistent rhythmic comping to a rewarding conclusion and a standing ovation. Her encore was an unannounced 16-bar piece that swung hard and included a solo in which she used one hand on the keys while the other muffled the piano’s strings. All 10 fingers—or was it 20?—back on the keyboard, face wreathed in smiles, she manufactured a long vamp with a tremolo ending that brought the audience to its feet for another ovation. The rhythmic clapping laced with a few unreserved Swedish shouts and whistles lasted at least five minutes, but the crowd’s demand for a second encore was in vain.

In a hallway after the concert, I heard a prominent festival musician tell a colleague, “I play the piano, but holy _____!”

Next time: reviews of further Ystad concerts, including one by a rather different pianist, Benny Green.

TOMASZ STANKO

Resplendent in houndstooth jacket, tight jeans and two-tone buckle shoes,Tomasz Stanko took to the stage and attached a wireless microphone to his trumpet. He offered a half smile to the welcoming audience, nodded to his colleagues and launched into the first of four unannounced pieces that took the Ystad Jazz Festival into the rarified atmosphere of Stankoland, where adventure is the rule. Inspired by free jazz, Stanko achieves creative independence within musical forms, however flexible those forms may be. He heads a quartet of young men who delight in taking chances. They needn’t worry about outpacing their leader in spontaneity and risk; in middle age, he is the chance-taker-in chief.

In Ystad, Finnish drummer Olavi Louhivuori whipped the band through the hour-and-a-half set with the energy of an uncoiling cobra and independence of limbs that might be the envy of an octopus. There was remarkable visual contrast between the dervish Louhivuori, his calm fellow Finn Alexi Tuomarila at the piano, and the Polish bassist Slowomir Kurkiewicz, who has the demeanor and power of a friendly bear. Supporting Stanko, they provide the carpets of rhythms that he rides on forays into and beyond the upper atmosphere. Stanko’s fund of trumpet resources ranges from a low register tone rich as warm honey to shrieks of split notes at the top of the horn. He can be lyrical one moment, demonic the next.

Little that Stanko plays could be called typical, but here’s what happened in one piece: It began with bowed bass and a vaguely Middle Eastern piano and trumpet melody. Louhivuori executed swirling drum patterns as Stanko swooped and darted above Tuomarila’s chords. Kurkiewicz shifted to plucking the strings for a bass solo, the tempo moved up, trumpet and piano did a moment of call and response before executing a tricky unison line, then Stanko was off, alternately drifting and darting for several minutes on shifting currents generated by the rhythm section. Tuomarila soloed at moderate length with free ideas served by controlled technique that reflected his conservatory training. Following a chattering drum solo and a second, short, bass solo, the unison melody line reappeared. Piano and trumpet added a new theme in the form of a phrase repeated several times, and the piece slowly dissipated into silence.

After the last tune, a volunteer in a festival tee shirt presented each of the musicians a large red flower as the audience rose and began the insistent call for more that seems to be a trademark of this festival. The encore, in ¾ time, had a folkish quality whose chord voicings were somehow evocative of Bill Evans. The solos by Stanko and Tuomarila offered assurance, rather than the stimulation that had been characteristic of most of the concert. It was an instance of Stanko’s gift for making difficult music accessible.

MARE NOSTRUM

Hearing Mare Nostrum with half an ear, a listener might think that the group is providing pleasant incidental music in the background. Beneath the trio’s often placid surface are life, movement and an intriguing melding of jazz and classical traditions with the Scandinavian, French and Italian sensibilities of its members. In the care of Jan Lundgren and Richard Galliano, piano and accordion have the harmonic and expressive resources of an orchestra. A daring and deceptively relaxed improviser, trumpeter and flugelhornist Paoli Fresu contributes tonal variety and shares Galliano’s and Lundgren’s crafty interaction. Since their first recording as Mare Nostrum, the three individual stars have deepened their relationship and their music.

Seeing them perform, a listener familiar only with their record began to understand the closeness and interactivity of their music. In the group’s namesake piece written by Lundgren, Fresu sat, foot entwined around calf, intent on Lundgren’s solo as if searching for clues to what he might play when it was his turn. Throughout the concert, Galliano and Lundgren paid similar attention to one another and to Fresu. Fresu’s “Principessa” (sp) and “Valsa di Retorni,” Galliano’s “Chat Pitre” and “Liberty Waltz,” Lundgren’s Vårvindar Friska” and “Love Land” all benefited from mutual interest in which group results seem to matter as much as individual solo performance. That is a phenomenon not unknown but relatively rare in small group jazz that is primarily a soloist’s art. Comparison with the Modern Jazz Quartet comes to mind.

Among the highlights: in “Love Land,” the fleetness of Fresu’s undiluted bebop solo on flugelhorn; the ensemble’s unity in Quincy Jones’s theme from “The Getaway,” with the composer looking on from his box seat; the audience’s palpable concentration during variations on Ravel’s “La Mer l’Oye;” the encore, “I Wish You Love,” in which the group generated a blues atmosphere and surprising tempo changes.

Perhaps because he was playing in his own town, but equally likely because was playing so well, Lundgren’s solos generated sustained applause. Anyone witnessing Galliano’s virtuosity is unlikely to walk out making accordion jokes, and anyone truly listening to Mare Nostrum is unlikely to think of what they do as background music.

One of the premier events of this festival was the appearance of a pair of world-class Swedish pianists separated in age by 34 years. One is a cultural hero of his nation. The other is reaching that status. 46-year-old Jan Lundgren, artistic director of the festival and a resident of Ystad, greeted Bengt Hallberg, 79, onstage for a concert back to back on 9-foot grand pianos. Hallberg was the pianist on the legendary 1953 record sessions that this festival’s honorary guest, Quincy Jones, arranged for Clifford Brown, Art Farmer and a group of Swedish all-stars. He was known then, and has been since, for harmonic resourcefulness, the fine shadings of his keyboard touch and a stunning melodic gift.

In terms of those facets, Lundgren has been correctly identified as Hallberg’s successor. However, to describe his current relationship to Hallberg as that of student to master—as a reviewer of the Friday concert did—is to dismiss Lundgren’s growth and development over the 18 years since his debut. One of the leading jazz pianists of his generation, he has demonstrated his individualism in his own trios as well as with such major figures as Bill Perkins, Herb Geller, Benny Golson, James Moody, Putte Wickman and Arne Domnerus.

Having worked together several times since Back To Back, the album that established their occasional partnership, Hallberg and Lundgren have achieved an easy camaraderie that flows through their music. Hallberg’s touch is firmer than it used to be, possibly in compensation for a hearing difficulty, but it is still the envy of pianists everywhere, for reasons evident in the opening “All The Things You Are” and the Hallberg original “Autumn Walk.” They alternated two-piano pieces with solo performances, one moving to a throne-like chair at the rear center of the stage to listen to the other. In his first solo turn, Lundgren created a medley of Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss” and Quincy Jones’s “The Midnight Sun Will Never Set,” which he dedicated to its composer, sitting in a box seat nearby. Hallberg alone played his composition “Back-Inside,” which had a melodic affinity with popular ballads of the 1920s and ‘30s—”Blue Turning Grey Over You” came to mind—but a subtle modern harmonic sensibility.

Lundgren’s second individual medley began with “’Round Midnight” and ended with a “Yesterdays” in which he managed to strongly hint at Art Tatum without being an imitator. Together on “Autumn Leaves,” Lundgren and Hallberg conjured up counterpoint filled with contrary motion that made the performance a standout moment in a standout concert. That led the audience to a standing ovation and the rhythmic clapping that demands an encore. Following the presentation of sunflowers, the pianists played the Bach “Siciliano” and, after a second standing ovation, a rip-roaring blues.