This is what we awoke to this morning. It's not snow. It's frozen fog. Had to share the sight. … [Read more...]

The news of Clark Terry’s latest setback has raced through the jazz community and much of the wider world. The trumpet and flugelhorn hero, whose 91st birthday will be next Wednesday, has been suffering from diabetes. The disease has seriously affected his eyesight. Last week it led to the … [Read more...]

Years ago, I saw film of a riotous Japanese jazz opera based on the traditional tale of Momotaro. The video disappeared for a while, but frequent Rifftides correspondent and prodigious blogger Bruno Leicht rediscovered it and sent an alert. To make sense of it, before you watch the video below it … [Read more...]

If you haven’t discovered the website called The Jazz Knob, tomorrow at 12:30 pm (PST) would be a good time to give it a try. In an unusual bit of web radio programming, the veteran Los Angeles jazz broadcaster Ken Borgers has announced that he will play the new Jan Lundgren trio album in its … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader and Detroit Free Press music critic Mark Stryker alerts us to an improbable happening in Chicago—a debate on an ESPN sports radio program over the authorship of “Take Five.” The story on drummer Ted Sirota’s website includes audio of the argument. From Sirota’s … [Read more...]

The Dave Brubeck Quartet: The Columbia Studio Albums Collection 1955-1967 Dave Brubeck turns 91 tomorrow, December 6, and Columbia Records is releasing a CD box containing all 19 of the Columbia albums that his quartet recorded in the studio. The earliest, Brubeck Time, was released in 1955 but … [Read more...]

Every once in a while, Retta Christie asks pianist, singer, songwriter and raconteur Dave Frishberg to be the guest on her radio program. He usually arrives with items from his private stash of rare and unusual records, tapes and cylinders. Tomorrow, Monday, December 5, is one of those days. To hear … [Read more...]

In Portland, Oregon, there’s a radio storyteller named Lynn Darroch. He tells about ordinary people and events near home or extraordinary ones abroad or, often, about jazz. When he performs in public, he may hire a musician or two and make a video. Here’s Darroch with guitarist John Stowell and … [Read more...]

For a couple of weeks, I’ve been waiting for permission to post photographs from the collection that Lennie Sogoloff donated to Salem State University in Massachusetts. Sogoloff was the proprietor of Lennie’s On the Turnpike, a club north of Boston that presented jazz, comics and cabaret from … [Read more...]

National Public Radio’s Fresh Air last night rebroadcast Terry Gross’s 2006 interview with drummer Paul Motian, who died on November 22. Motian’s conversation was like much of his drumming—low-key, definite and often surprising. Here is some of what he said. I'm not a showpiece … [Read more...]

During the years in which Art Farmer (1928-1999) played trumpet as his main horn, his muted work was a pleasure to hear. After he switched to flugelhorn in the early 1960s, his playing took on greater lyricism and depth, but because there were no flugelhorn mutes, a satisfying aspect of his sound … [Read more...]

Jason Moran From Washington, DC, comes news that pianist Jason Moran will be the late Billy Taylor’s successor as the Kennedy Center’s artistic adviser for jazz. From the center’s release announcing the appointment: Moran hopes to expand the accessibility that was so important to … [Read more...]

“When Will the Blues Leave?” Ornette Coleman asked the question in 1958 by way of the title of a piece in his first album. In Chicago, of all places—the blues stronghold of the Midwest for nearly a century—the question is implied in concerns of musicians and club owners who are trying … [Read more...]

Just when I thought the cycling season had succumbed to the weather, came a perfect day; temperature in the low forties, hardly any wind chill factor—nothing that couldn't be overcome with five layers on top, two layers below, ear muffs, gloves and a foam grommet for the sunglasses. Here is … [Read more...]

Referring to the “Going Like 80 (+)” post of November 23, Rifftides reader Ned Corman writes: And, of course, Paul would have been 87, if I have it right. Yes, he was born on Thanksgiving, November 25, 1924. It has become a Rifftides tradition to observe the occasion. Lamenting … [Read more...]

The past few days, Rifftides has been unavoidably concerned with deaths and with musicians aged 80 or older. Am I the only one ready for an infusion of youth? Grace Kelly, born in 1992, may not be an elected representative of the talented teenagers in jazz, but she gets the nod here because for … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Harris Meyer called my attention to a National Public Radio story about major musical achievements of two men on this date in 1936. In their genres, they could hardly have been more different. What they had in common was greatness. Here is the lead paragraph of the NPR … [Read more...]