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Doing a bit of holiday morning web surfing, I discovered a live version of one of the pieces from Carla Bley’s delightful 2008 album Carla’s Christmas Carols. Ms. Bley and Steve Swallow performed it in Montenegro in 2010 with Ed Partyka’s Brass Quintet. Partyka has the plunger trombone solo. The other members of the quintet are Adrian Mears, trombone; Tobias Weidinger, trumpet; Axel Schlosser, trumpet; Christine Chapman, French horn.

The Rifftides staff’s present to you is a masterpiece from John Lewis’s rare 1958 album European Windows.

Thank you for being with us in 2014 and for the reader comments that are essential to what makes blogging for you so rewarding.

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Thanks to Rifftides reader Greg Curtis for flagging a performance by Les Paul of Harold Arlen’s best known song. This was at Fat Tuesday’s in New York, most likely in the 1990s. Paul’s accompanists were rhythm guitarist Lou Pollo and bassist Gary Mazzaroppi.

Later, Paul moved to the Iridium on Times Square for the Monday night gigs that in his late eighties brought renewed fame to the man whose innovations included perfecting the solid body electric guitar in the early 1940s. One result of that piece of inventiveness is that he often gets credit or blame for the success of rock and roll (he is pictured here with Paul McCartney). Les Paul further revolutionized the music industry by introducing multi-track recording. He is in the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, most likely the only member of either to have played with Jazz At The Philharmonic. In 2009 a few weeks after his final Iridium appearance, he died at the age of 94.

Mr. Curtis’s message recommending the clip of “Over The Rainbow” consisted solely of a link to YouTube. The subject line was,

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Once during a listening session, I apologized to Paul Desmond for the pops and scratches on a worn LP. “I don’t care if it’s on a cellophane strip,” he said, “ as long as I can hear what everybody is doing.” When it comes to sound quality, high-end audio perfectionists tend to be more demanding than Desmond was that evening, and there are getting to be more of them. In an artist’s note on the inside jacket of his new album, Just One Of Those Things, pianist Alan Broadbent writes,

“With so many people dissatisfied with compressed digital sound, here is the sound of the future. Vinyl!”

However tongue-in-cheek his prediction, he is far from the first to make it. Since compact discs and CD players first appeared, audiophiles have insisted that digital sound is inferior to the warmth and depth of music delivered on quality equipment via properly made long playing vinyl discs. CDs wouldn’t be around long, some of them said. That was in 1982.

According to The Wall Street Journal’s December 11 issue, “Nearly eight million old-fashioned vinyl records have been sold this year, up 49% from the same period last year…” The increase may be impressive, but the big percentage jump is in a tiny segment of the industry; LPs represent about two percent of total record sales. It is unlikely that significant numbers of people who do their listening on iPods, cell phones and Spotify will abandon their ear buds and start carting around amplifiers, speakers and 33 &1/3 rpm turntables. Still, enthusiasts are listening to all kinds of music on vinyl, from heavy metal to ukulele bands, symphonies, string quartets—and solo pianists. Along with the usual flood of CDs, a few new LPs are showing up in reviewers’ mailboxes these days.

Alan Broadbent, Just One Of Those Things (Edition Longplay)

Broadbent recorded this LP in the summer of 2013 before an audience in Portland, Oregon. The piano is not identified in the album’s credits, but Rick Zackery of Classic Pianos, where the concert took place, reports that it was a Steinway Model D concert grand. That is the instrument preferred by classical pianists from Sergei Rachmaninoff to Lang Lang, and by countless jazz artists. Its brilliance and fullness from top to bottom are impressively captured in the LP, as is Broadbent’s command of the keyboard.

Among the impressive moments: his lightning right hand forays in the title tune; the beautifully recorded walking bass notes and upper octave trills in “Django;” in “Serenata,” Tatum downward runs and a sly allusion to “Love Is Here To Stay;” references to Lennie Tristano in “All The Things You Are;” Broadbent’s rhapsodic treatment of the Elvis Costello art song “The Birds Will Still Be Singing;” and the delicate glissandos with which he ends Brubeck’s “Strange Meadowlark.” Those are parts of the whole. The big picture is of a complete pianist correctly described by liner notes essayist Tobias Richsteig as a storyteller. The limited edition LP follows a solo CD that Broadbent recorded at Classic Pianos a year earlier. The CD was a Rifftides Monday recommendation. Consider this LP another.

Tucked inside a pocket of the gatefold jacket is a voucher good for an MP3 download of the album from the Edition Longplay website. Apparently in the digital age, even dedicated audiophiles must be willing to make digital compromises. As with the company’s other LPs, the jacket artwork is by a distinguished German graphic artist, in this case Martina Geist. Other vinyl discs in their catalog feature as leaders pianists Hank Jones and Don Friedman and bassist Martin Wind.

Frank Lowe Quartet, Out Loud (Triple Point Records)

This previously unissued double LP comes roaring out of the righteousness and raucousness of the 1970s New York loft scene. Talented, largely self-taught and full of fierce energy, saxophonist Lowe developed in the free jazz movement that followed Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane. His major transition from the R&B orientation of his Stax Records days in his hometown, Memphis, came after he was encouraged by Coleman to move from San Francisco to New York. There, Lowe spent time in the Sun Ra Orchestra and absorbed energy and inspiration from the intrepid saxophonists Marshall Allen and John Gilmore. He also recorded with Alice Coltrane. Sometime in 1974 he formed a quartet with trombonist Joseph Bowie, drummer Steve Reid and bassist William Parker.

Out Loud preserves an hour and a half of the group’s uncompromising intensity and headlong risk-taking sparked by Lowe’s audacity as a tenor saxophonist. Bowie and Reid match their leader’s eagerness to go on expeditions into uncharted territory. To no small extent, bassist Parker’s maintenance of reliable time and a semblance of harmonic order stabilize an enterprise that often has the potential of flying apart. On one track, trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah joins the band for a few choruses—if that term can be applied to unstructured blowing—that have intimations of bebop.

Lowe’s integration of throat sounds into his saxophone tone enforces the thought that his playing is an extension of speech. He enhances the effect with phrasing that has the force of shouted oratory. Lowe’s quartet leaves the impression of profoundly human expression by a man forging his artistry when American jazz musicians, like their nation, were negotiating the political and social turmoil of the 1970s. Out Loud is handsomely produced on heavy vinyl discs in a double gatefold cover. Its 36-page booklet has extensive notes and analysis by Ed Hazell, J.D. Parran and Ben Young, and previously unpublished photos by Valerie Wilmer and Omar Kharem. Like the Broadbent LP, the Lowe comes with an extra—a link and password to internet video and sound of the quartet from tape shot at one of the sessions at Sam Rivers’ celebrated Studio Rivbea.

After his quartet dissolved, Lowe worked with Don Cherry, John Zorn and other figures in the avant-garde. He died of lung cancer in 2003 at the age of 60.

55: Wayne Horvitz, Music In Dance And Concrete (Songlines)

Horvitz’s conception of composing is rooted in jazz, classical, folk, country, rock, gospel and—one supposes—all other music he has ever heard. The critic Paul de Barros once wrote of him as a “defiant cross-breeder of genres.” Horvitz melds, blends and contrasts styles by imposing sonic order that invites the open-minded listener inside. In the case of this LP’s 39 minutes (additional music is available only as a digital download), “inside” means the passages, bunkers and an enormous empty cistern in a state park on Fort Worden, a decommissioned military base in Port Townsend, Washington. That’s where he recorded 55 with his ten-piece Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble, named for the Seattle music club he co-owns.

Since he left New York 25 years ago, Horvitz has continued the work that made him an admired figure for his ability to bring coherency and lyricism to a 1980s avant-garde that often resorted to shock for its own sake, not necessarily for the music’s. He writes scores that are on his musicians’ stands, but his conducting and composition are often simultaneous. In the manner of his friend the late Butch Morris, he often uses hand signals, nods and body language to tell the players to depart from what is on the written page. In other words, he improvises as he conducts, and the band interprets. Many of the changes in direction, dynamics and mood in this recording must result from that collective spontaneity and flexibility. The music’s drama is enhanced by the resonance of the concrete space and at times, it seems, by subtle electronic manipulation. The cave effect is evident in most of the tracks, notably so in the contrasts between strings and horns in the final cut, titled “55(20).” All of the pieces are named “55.” Another number in parentheses follows each title. The subsidiary numbers are not sequential. “55(21),” for instance, follows “55(5).” Horvitz’s otherwise illuminating liner note essay does not explain whether the discontinuity has meaning related to the music.

In addition to the essay, the LP booklet has photographs of some of the musicians and dancers in action in Fort Worden’s underground concrete spaces and on what appears to be the top of the cistern. The dance aspect of the production, choreographed by Yukio Suzuki, took place as the music was played for audiences. Because the confined spaces held few people, Horvitz and Suzuki gave four performances.

The ensemble playing Horvitz’s challenging music is Steve O’Brien: trumpet; Naomi Siegel: trombone; Kate Olson: soprano saxophone; Beth Fleenor: clarinet and bass clarinet; Briggan Krauss: alto saxophone; Maria Mannisto: voice; Eyvind Kang: viola; Heather Bentley: viola; Roweena Hammil: cello; Victoria Parker: violin.

Chemical Clock, Bad Habitat (Tables & Chairs)

Horvitz’s quarter of a century of eclectic brilliance in Seattle may have influenced some of the city’s younger fusion adventurers. Carefully scored, demanding the players’ close attention to intricate notation, Chemical Clock banks, loops, swirls, shouts, growls and turns on a dime. Its music coalesces in a thicket of styles derived from jazz, among them hip-hop, progressive rock, disco and swing era riffs. It is an operation more tightly wound than Horvitz’s. I don’t detect his kind of group reorchestration done on the fly. What I detect is meticulous musicianship and ferocious energy that often breaks out into rhythmic hilarity, as in “Spider.” The piece’s nursery rhyme simplicity merges into a march whose pomposity fades away on the soft wings of a trumpet melody.

The band is only four people; keyboardist Cameron Sharif, trumpeter Ray Larsen, bassist Mark Hunter and drummer Evan Woodle. Nowhere in the publicity information sheet (the LP sleeve has no notes) does the word synthesizer appear, but I don’t know what else can account for passages that have the volume and harmonic complexity of an orchestra. “Apothecary” is a good example. “Aorta” proceeds from organized chaos to resolution and a quiet ending perhaps symbolizing recovery from a heart attack. Larsen’s range, flexibility, tone and control of his trumpet have showcases in the kaleidoscopic “Squid” and the album closer, “Roy.” His performance throughout made me wonder if he’d consider an album of ballads. Something so conventional may be far from his thoughts.

Bad Habitat showed up here as a 12-inch LP, but it was released simultaneously as a CD. Either way, Tables & Chairs (another Seattle label) makes an MP3 or FLAC download part of the deal, in case you feel that you need to have the album with you wherever you go.

Hiromi Kanda, Days Of Yesterday (Music Gate)

For four or five years, Hiromi Kanda has been looking out from the cover portrait of an LP leaning against a music room wall. “One of these days,” I kept telling myself. “I must listen to that.” “Well,” I kept replying, “I will, the next time I do an LP roundup.” You know how easy it is to get behind.

A singer well known in her native Japan, Ms. Kanda has lived for several years in Hawaii with her husband, the composer and producer Yusuke Hoguchi. In 2010, they went to Los Angeles, hired an orchestra with a full complement of strings and some of the best studio and jazz players in town, and made this record. Ms. Kanda’s singing is idiosyncratic, with a slight accent. She occasionally succumbs to a tendency to kittenishness in delivery of lyrics but compensates with good timing, phrasing and intonation, and a genuine understanding of the classic American songs that make up most of the album. Three originals that she wrote with Hoguchi may not be quite in the league with those by Victor Young, Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Eubie Blake and Charlie Chaplin, but their “Dreamer” comes close, swings hard and incorporates effective backup trio vocals.

The album works, in great part, because of the arrangements by Matt Catingub, who also has a few fine alto saxophone choruses. Other impressive soloists are pianists Joe Sample and Quinn Johnson, trumpeter Bob Summers, tenor saxophonist Pete Christlieb and trombonist Andy Martin. It’s an enjoyable collection. I shouldn’t have waited so long.

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If your listening mood has shifted to Christmas, veteran jazz broadcaster Jim Wilke is ready to accommodate you. He has prepared a wide-ranging program by artists from his neck of the woods, the Pacific Northwest. Here’s Jim’s announcement about tomorrow’s program.

Jazz musicians are often an unconventional lot, and when it comes to holiday music you can expect re-harmonizations, different tempos, unexpected rhythms and other surprises as they find new ways to play old music and old ways to play new music. This week’s Jazz Northwest provides ten explorations of familiar holiday music and some new music. Among the Northwest resident artists featured are Don Lanphere, Greta Matassa, Larry Fuller, Dave Frishberg, the B3 Kings and Karin Plato.

Jazz Northwest airs Sundays at 2 PM Pacific Time and is recorded and produced exclusively for 88.5 KPLU by Jim Wilke. It is also streamed at kplu.org and is available as a podcast following the broadcast.

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How do you get to Carnegie Hall? “Practice,” the violinist Fritz Kreisler famously told a tourist who asked him that question on a New York street. But can a performer practice too much—practice the life out of a piece of music? No and yes, said one of Kreisler’s great contemporaries, pianist Artur Rubinstein (1887-1982). Here is Rubinstein in a clip from a PBS documentary hosted by Robert MacNeil, discussing a proposition that serious musicians of all genres will always confront.

Here is Rubinstein in 1973 demonstrating by way of a Brahms capriccio

To see a generous sample of the Rubinstein documentary, go here.

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Pianist Spike Wilner, the proprietor of Smalls and Mezzrow’s in New York’s Greenwich Village, sends occasional email newsletters about who is playing at his clubs. Now and then he includes sidebar items about things that interest him. It’s a list that jazz listeners may enjoy being on for the asides as much as for the schedules. Here’s an entry from a recent issue:

Been reading further from Eddie Condon’s (and Hank O’Neal’s) Scrapbook of Jazz—wonderful anecdotes. But the best thing is the forward, which was written by none other than John Steinbeck, who it turns out was a good friend of Condon’s. They had a mutual admiration for each other’s work. Condon even tried his hand at some prose “in the style of Steinbeck”. I wanted to quote something from Steinbeck’s intro which made me smile:



I have known musicians Рnot as you have Рbut a little. They are the most confused, childish, vicious, vain people I know. On the other hand they are the most generous. Their wills are like those of children. Their cruelties have no more sadistic background than has a small boy when he pulls the wings off flies. Their domestic relations are a mixmaster type. Business confuses them, and so does politics. They almost seem in themselves to live outside ordinary law and common ethics. Now, the reason I am saying all of this is that it is also true that I know of no group which has such direction in work. They aim at excellence and apparently nothing else. They are hard to buy and if bought they either backslide into honesty or lose the respect of their peers. And this is a loss that terrifies them. In any other field of American life, great rewards can be used to cover a loss of honesty, but not with jazz players Рa slip is known and recognized instantly.Ӊ۬

What astute observation from one of America’s greatest writers! I am thankful! – Spike

If that puts you in the mood for Steinbeck, maybe it’s time to reread Of Mice and Men or Tortilla Flat. If it puts you in the mood for Condon, click on the little white arrow in the frame below.


Condon, guitar; Will Bill Davison, cornet; Edmond Hall, clarinet; Cutty Cutshall, trombone; Gene Schroeder, piano; Cliff Leeman, drums; and Bob Casey, bass. 1952.

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Billy Strayhorn was born 99 years ago today. He wrote the music and the wan, world-weary lyric of “Lush Life” when he was a sixteen-year-old in his native Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Having arranged to meet Duke Ellington backstage at a concert when he was in his early twenties, he demonstrated the song and others he had written. Impressed, Ellington said that he would send for Strayhorn. Before long, he called the young man to New York and launched a collaborative partnership that further enriched Ellington’s music. Among other contributions, Strayhorn wrote the band’s theme, “Take The ‘A’ Train.”

He stayed mostly behind the scenes, but Strayhorn was an indispensable part of the Ellington band until his death in 1967. His compositions and arrangements were woven into the band’s personality to such a degree that it is not always possible to distinguish between his contributions and Ellington’s. That seems to have been how they both wanted it.

Strayhorn never arranged “Lush Life” for Ellington, and it never entered the band’s repertoire. Now and then, however, Ellington asked his friend and protégé to play it, as he did at a 1948 Carnegie Hall concert. There is a recording of that occasion. Strayhorn accompanied the band’s vocalist, Kay Davis. Introducing “Lush Life,” Ellington calls it a new tune, even though he surely knew that Strayhorn wrote it when he was in high school.

Other Ellington Carnegie Hall concerts are widely available on CD. The one from 1948 is rare but still available.

Now, here’s Strayhorn, a skilled pianist, called on stage by Ellington to play one of the most famous of all big band themes.

Shortly after Strayhorn died, Ellington took his band into the studio to pay tribute in an album of Strayhorn compositions and arrangements. The pieces include “Lotus Blossom,” “Rain Check,” “Day-dream” and “My Little Brown Book.” “Blood Count,” written as Strayhorn was dying, features an impassioned Johnny Hodges solo that speaks of the sorrow Ellington and the band felt at the loss of their friend. The indispensable …And His Mother Called Him Bill is a highlight in Ellington’s massive body of recordings

Three cheers, five stars and a slap on the back for Sony. I was trapped interminably in the electronics company’s voice mail system. Sony made up for it when I finally got a robot voice that said,

Due to an unusually high volume of calls, all of our associates are busy with other customers. Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.

The robot did not say, as nearly all voice mail robots do, “… in the order it was received.” A victory for clear English—a tiny one—but it helped keep my spirits up during the next interminable wait.

I know: picky, picky, picky. But good usage matters. Tell your children. And give them this book for Christmas.

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Into his waking hours Denny Zeitlin manages to work fly fishing, mountain biking, master-level wine connoisseurship, the practice of psychiatry and—let’s see, there was something else. Oh yes, he plays the piano. In his mid-seventies, Zeitlin shows no inclination to slow down in any of his pursuits, least of all at the keyboard.

Following a remarkable recording debut with the flutist Jeremy Steig in 1963, the pianist went on to record frequently with trios that have included some of the music’s most celebrated bassists and drummers. In the past few years, he has frequently also appeared unaccompanied on recordings and in person. His next solo date is scheduled for a week from this evening at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland, not far from his home in Marin County, California. In a note, Zeitlin commented on the hall’s unusual sound qualities.

The venue is unique: The Piedmont Piano Company has a large showroom, packed with all makes and styles of piano, breaking up the standing wave phenomenon that haunts many performance spaces. The resultant acoustics are great, and the choices of instrument for the performer are phenomenal.

In the meantime, or if your plans don’t include a stop in Oakland, here is Zeitlin unaccompanied at the 1983 Berlin Jazz Festival, playing his composition “Quiet Now.”

“Quiet Now” was adopted in the 1970s by piano icon Bill Evans, giving the musical aspect of Zeitlin’s career and, no doubt, his ego, a substantial boost. It remains one of the Zeitlin compositions most often recorded by others.

This is a national holiday in the United States, important ever since the newly arrived Pilgrims and the native Wampanoag gave thanks in 1621.

To Americans observing it, the Rifftides staff sends wishes for a happy Thanksgiving. To readers in the US and around the world: thank you for your interest, readership and comments, which are always welcome.

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Today is Paul Desmond’s 90th birthday. Years after Paul’s death, his guitar companion and good friend Jim Hall (1930-2013) said, “He would have been a great old man.” The last birthday Desmond celebrated, his fifty-second, fell on Thanksgiving, 1976. He spent it with Jim and his wife Jane at their daughter’s tiny apartment in New York City. He had taken a hiatus from his lung cancer therapy to play the Monterey Jazz Festival and an engagement at Barnaby Conrad’s El Matador in San Francisco. From Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, this is an account of that Thanksgiving day. The photographs are courtesy of his hostess, Devra Hall, who had known Paul since she was a little girl.

Back in New York, Desmond resumed his chemotherapy treatments and spent time with friends. Jim and Jane Hall’s daughter, Devra, had been graduated from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusets and was living on 89th Street between West End and Riverside Drive. Her mother announced to her that now that she had her own place, Devra would be hosting Thanksgiving dinner. Thanksgiving and Desmond’s 52nd birthday came on the same day, November 25, 1976.

“I told her, ‘Okay, but you have to bring Paul,'” Devra said. “I knew what Mom would do, so I went to the market on Broadway and got this turkey and, mind you, my kitchen was the size of a small bathroom. To open the oven, you had to stand outside the kitchen door. This is New York, my first apartment and my first turkey, I’m growing up and very pleased with myself. I followed all the instructions, turned on the oven and put it in. We all knew Paul was sick. I think he had just finished a chemo treatment, but he said he felt up to it, and he and my folks came to this tiny one-room apartment. There was no bed, just a pullout couch; it was all folded up. Paul was sitting in the little brown canvas sling chair. There was an upright piano that my dad had bought me for my birthday, a chest of drawers and a drop leaf table at which we had dinner. That was it for furniture. Well, they’re sitting there. My mother says, ‘So, how’s the bird? I say, ‘Well, go check it out.’ She opens the oven–I couldn’t go in there with her; there was no room–and she closes the door and she’s laughing. You know, I’m mortified. I can’t imagine what’s wrong.

“Paul’s saying, ‘What’s wrong, didn’t she turn on the oven?’ Jim can’t decide whether I’m going to cry or what. It turns out that I had put the turkey in the oven upside down. Don’t the legs go on the bottom? I mean, isn’t that how the bird stands? We later determined that I was ahead of my time. Today, that’s the chef’s secret to keeping the meat moist. It turned out fine. It was a very quiet dinner. Paul was not feeling well, but he was clearly happy not to be home alone. He didn’t have to say a word around my folks. They talked a blue streak, usually, but he was just very comfortable. My fondest recollection is that I made him dinner on his last birthday.”

The senior Halls and Desmond went back to Jim and Jane’s apartment when they left Devra’s, and on the way stopped at the Village Vanguard. Thelonious Monk was performing there. Between sets, they all gathered in the Vanguard’s kitchen, the closest thing the club has to a Green Room.

“It was the most coherent conversation I ever had with Thelonious,” Hall said, “in the kitchen with Paul and me and Thelonious. I had a sort of nodding acquaintance with Monk, but he and Paul really connected. I’m not even sure what they talked about, just standing around in that kitchen, going through old memories and things. It was nice.”

During the life of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, Desmond rarely recorded apart from Brubeck. Albums under his leadership on Fantasy, Warner Bros and RCA were exceptions. After Brubeck disbanded, Desmond recorded occasionally with other pianists. One of the most memorable such encounters accomplished something he had talked about, even joked about, for years; a recording with the Modern Jazz Quartet in concert.

Anticipating this 90th Desmond birthday, Rifftides reader Frank Roellinger sent a communiqué suggesting that in Paul’s solo on “You Go to My Head” with the MJQ he may have inserted a tribute to his friend and Town Hall band mate John Lewis, the quartet’s pianist.

From about 03:58 to the end of his solo, it sounds as though Paul is paying homage to Lewis by playing in a style very similar to John’s— especially near the end at 04:36 where he plays that minor second interval in a rhythm exactly the way John would have done it. That’s what first tipped me off. It might be interesting so see whether any of your readers agree with this.

The track is from Paul Desmond & The Modern Jazz Quartet, recorded at Town Hall in New York City on Christmas night, 1971.

As for what it was like to know Desmond, I cannot improve on what the playwright Jack Richardson said at Paul’s memorial service on June 20, 1977:

I found him the best company of anyone I’d ever known in my life. I found him the most loyal friend I’ve ever had in my life. I found him the most artistic person I’d ever known in my life. His leaving will make this planet a smaller and darker place for everyone.

For The Sound Of A Dry Martini, Paul Conley’s classic National Public Radio profile of Desmond, go here and click on “Hear the Documentary.”

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The Rifftides staff’s vacation visit to California coincided with an appearance by Kristin Korb on her US tour. The bassist and singer appeared at a Santa Barbara Jazz Society concert at the downtown restaurant called Soho. Korb, pianist Magnus Hjorth and drummer Snorre Kirk were winding up a string of concerts that began in the state of Washington and took them south through Oregon and California. The tour ended tonight in San Diego. The Santa Barbara concert followed the outlines of Korb’s appearance at the Ystad Sweden Jazz Festival covered here last summer. The trio was, if anything, more tightly unified than in its impressive work at Ystad. The swing and solidity of Korb’s bass playing in the Ray Brown tradition continues to deepen. She incorporated pieces from the trio’s newest album and added a few from earlier CDs, including her vocalese treatment of tenor saxophonist Stan Getz’s solo on his 1955 recording of “East of the Sun.”

Soon, the sidemen will be flying home to Copenhagen. Korb will be off to Canada to teach at workshops and seminars in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, before she, too, returns home to Denmark.