The magazine named for the town I live in has published a story about my involvement with the Yakima Jazz Sextet in a holiday musical event. The sextet is pictured left to right: Josh Yohe (saxophones), Bart Roderick (piano), Don Kinney (drums), D. Ramsey (trumpet, flugelhorn), Derek Gore (saxophones), Bob Waldbauer (bass).
In addition to the music angle, the Yakima Magazine article by Melissa Labberton touches on aspects of my checkered journalism past. Depending on how slow your Sunday is, you may want to read it. This is a link.
After jazz emerged—or coalesced—as a distinct form of music in New Orleans in the early twentieth century, it quickly took hold throughout the world. Jazz musicians developed on every continent, even in countries where the spirit of jazz goes against the grain of politics and culture; a jazz community is emerging in China, not an eventuality that Mao Tse Tung is likely to have envisioned.
Music, and met Maury Stein, the owner of the music store Stein On Vine. Stein’s was, and is, a magnet for musicians in Los Angeles. Based on an interview that consisted of nine words between them, Stein hired Chen to work in the store. That was evidently in the early 1970s; the book is hazy on chronology. The first day on the job Chen met Freddie Hubbard, Ray Brown and Lou Levy and was hooked. When Stein died in 1987, Chen took over the store. The book is his life story, casually written in the first person and laced with anecdotes about the eccentric Stein and about the dozens of musicians for whom Stein’s was a virtual headquarters. A few of his stories are good-natured exercises in convolution, but some of the quotes from musicians are priceless.
Franklin, an English professor at the University of South Carolina, compiles an encyclopedia with biographies of famous and obscure South Carolina musicians. Leading the parade of the famous is Dizzy Gillespie, followed by Bubber Miley, Eartha Kitt, Lucky Thompson, James Blood Ulmer, Jabbo Smith; bandleader Buddy Johnson and his sister Ella. Franklin’s thorough research also led him to the bassist, singer and composer Jim Ferguson; avant-garde saxophonist Robin Kenyatta; singers Etta Jones and Bertha “Chippie†Hill; Taft Jordan, who played trumpet with Chick Webb and Duke Ellington; and trombonist Fred Wesley, longtime music director for James Brown.
Mike Metheny is a trumpet player. Pianist John McKee  (1945-1989) ran a lumber business. They grew up together in Lees Summit, Missouri. Their book consists of letters, McKee writing from Lees Summit, Metheny from Boston when he was forging his career in music and from lots of places after it was underway. The foreword is by Mike Metheny’s guitarist brother Pat. The book is not primarily about jazz, although music inevitably is an important aspect of it. Metheny writes to McKee about witnessing the singer Eddie Fisher trying to bolster the ego that is sagging along with his career. The friends have a sometimes lighthearted, sometimes earnest, exchange of letters. They write to one another about the conditions of Christianity, the Republic, about literature, about the television evangelists Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker and sometimes, about music.
I’m not sure how this 2014 CD ended up in the holding pen for so long, but I am delighted that it finally called to me from the stacks. With his celebrated keyboard touch and control, the pianist floats even through the trio’s zestful 12/8 approach to “You & The Night & The Music.†In the title tune the twinkle of Hersch’s single high notes contrasts with the relaxed feel as drummer Eric McPherson’s brushes agreeably offset the time. Hersch, McPherson and bassist John Hébert had just finished a run at the Village Vanguard when they went into the studio for this recording. They have, if anything, an even tighter collective aspect than in their 2012 
When the eleven-year-old Indonesian pianist Joey Alexander materialized last year in a flurry of accolades from Wynton Marsalis, Herbie Hancock and others, I kept him at arm’s length. Now, I have paid close attention to his debut album, 
names ballads that he believes don’t get enough attention, he also presents them in performance. The extent to which some of his song choices are generally ignored may be in the ear of the behearer—as Dewey Redman might have said (in fact, did say 
Cecil Payne & Duke Jordan, 
Still, Effenberg’s ensemble does not float through one boreal mood after another in the manner of many ECM ventures. Indeed, there are passages of mutual improvisation and complexity that suggest Twentieth Century pioneers of modern music such as Charles Ives and Bela Bartók. The quirky opening track, “Dings Bums,†contains allusions to John Coltrane and Horace Silver— just two of the album’s quick side trips into witty allusions that often verge on the subliminal. 
In her first album for a major label, Bria Skonberg achieves consistency that in the past she sometimes obscured in forced vocal mannerisms. Her trumpet work, based in traditional jazz and swing, includes surprising bebop touches. She has unfailing agility and good tone. With and without a mute, her growl and wa-wa work shows familiarity with Bubber Miley, Rex Stewart and the Ellington brass tradition, nowhere more than in Sidney Bechet’s “Egyptian Fantasy.†Pianist Aaron Diehl, bassist Reginald Veal and drummer Ali Jackson are the first-class rhythm section, joined occasionally by vibraharpist Stefon Harris. Like Skonberg, Evan Amtzen is a native of British Columbia transplanted to New York. He enriches the proceedings with his tenor saxophone and clarinet solos and ensemble work. Of Skonberg’s five original songs, crossover potential of the 16-bar “Wear and Tear,†could take it a long way. 
It came as a shock to realize how quickly that sizeable amount of time has passed; and a comfort to know that a major creative musician, recognized in a casual comment, is a part of the fabric of the nation’s, and the world’s, culture. Ms. Montagne’s reference to Davis’s best-known album suggests that listening to it again is always a good idea. Whether you are about to have lunch in Shanghai or get out of bed in Copenhagen, here is the complete 1959 Kind Of Blue with Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Wynton Kellly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb.
After sideman work, then membership in cooperative groups with Cyrille Neville, Devon Allman and others, in 2012 the St. Louis blues guitarist and singer Mike Zito formed his band, The Wheel. Few dedicated jazz listeners also keep up with developments in the music that grows out of country blues pioneers like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson and Tampa Red—and such later urban performers as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Big Bill Broonzy. Over the past century, hundreds of blues artists in Memphis, New Orleans, Dallas, Chicago and dozens of other places have forged personal blues styles. Zito is helping to extend the tradition. Here, he and The Wheel play “Bad News Is Coming.†The sidemen are Jimmy Carpenter, tenor saxophone; Scott Sutherland, bass; and Rob Lee, drums.
Despite a playlist that seems to represent a grab bag of music, there is nothing scattershot about Ken Peplowski’s eclecticism. The clarinetist and tenor saxophonist with the capacious tone and imagination brings together Duke Ellington’s early-1940s “The Flaming Sword,†Lennon and Ono’s 1970s “Oh, My Love,†Fats Waller’s “Willow Tree,†a twelve tone piece by drummer Peter Erskine, and music from Bernard Hermann’s score for the Hitchcock film Vertigo. There are other songs by Harry Warren, Barry Manilow, Noël Coward, Leslie Bricusse, and the title tune by the daring 1950s pianist and composer Herbie Nichols. Peplowski brings this all together in a program united by his musicianship and humor and his superb rhythm section—pianist Ehud Asherie, bassist Martin Wind and drummer Matt Wilson. You may find yourself going back to Peplowski’s irrepressible clarinet solo in “The Flaming Sword.†It’s addictive. 
Monk. Dizzy brought him over and introduced us. Monk stood staring into my eyes, expressionless. I remember thinking how big he was. Time passed, maybe a minute that seemed like five. Still no expression. Gillespie stood by, grinning. Then Monk put his hand out and shook mine. It was like something out of a Tuesday Rotary Club meeting. He broke into a grin and said, “I’m very pleased to meet you.†That’s what we should have filmed. Later, Diz told me, “I’ve never seen him do that before.†For at least a few minutes, he wasn’t the Thelonious described by Lewis Lapham in a lovely piece for The Saturday Evening Post in 1964.
The rich history of jazz in Scandinavia began more than a century ago. During the swing and bebop eras Sweden, Denmark and Norway produced major soloists, composers and arrangers. The emergence of Kathrine Windfeld’s big band brings assurance that the region’s new talents have the potential to equal achievements of players like Lars Gullin, Bengt Hallberg, Åke Persson, Jan Johansson, and writers of the stature of Bengt-Arne Wallin, Gösta Theselius and Harry Arnold. The evidence indicates that Ms. Windfeld, a Dane, could establish an equally impressive career. Her band’s first album has the musicianship, joy and drive of their performance at Sweden’s Ystad Jazz Festival a month ago. Ms. Windfeld tightly integrates the sections, but a feeling of looseness prevails. Among memorable solos are those from trombonist Petter Hängsel, trumpeter Andres Bergkrantz, tenor saxophonist Ida Karlsson and the leader at the piano. 
After all their years together, take it for granted that pianist Hersch, bassist John Hébert and drummer Eric McPherson listen intently to one another and mesh with elegance on every level. However, taking for granted anything about the Hersch trio can only open you up to surprises. Many of the surprises here involve time. There are no Dave Brubeck excursions into 9/8, Charles Ives flings with 15/16, or other unconventional time signatures. Instead, Hersch, Hébert and McPherson flex the time, vary it, sometimes improvise with it as surely as they do with harmonic content, and never lose forward motion. Hersch’s “Serpentine†is a prime example. The trio’s Village Vanguard playlist contains Thelonious Monk’s “We See,†Jimmy Rowles’ “The Peacocks,†Paul McCartney’s “For No One,†and among several Hersch compositions a delicious solo piano encore, “Valentine.†Close listening to this album brings great rewards. 
few minutes ago. It is a B-flat blues called “Honesty,†composed by trombonist Dave Baker and played by a sextet led by George Russell (pictured). We hear seven musicians thoroughly experienced in the post-bop mainstream who were also immersed in the freedom that in 1961 was introducing new colors into jazz. Indeed, Russell had been an encourager and trailblazer of that freedom since he wrote for Dizzy Gillespie in the late 1940s. His 1950s and ‘60s work featuring pianist Bill Evans, trumpeter Art Farmer and tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, among others, is some of the best of the music of those decades, written with the soloists’ characteristics and personalities in mind.