{"id":7635,"date":"2016-07-09T23:38:16","date_gmt":"2016-07-10T06:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=7635"},"modified":"2016-07-09T23:44:51","modified_gmt":"2016-07-10T06:44:51","slug":"passings-friedman-jones-thompson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2016\/07\/passings-friedman-jones-thompson\/","title":{"rendered":"Passings: Friedman,  Jones, Thompson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The generations move on. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a sad part of an observer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s task to acknowledge the deaths of musicians who made important contributions.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7636\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Don-Friedman.jpg\" alt=\"Don Friedman\" width=\"200\" height=\"229\" \/>Pianist Don Friedman died of pancreatic cancer at home in New York City on June 30. He was 81. Friedman was treasured by fellow musicians for the subtlety and strength of his support as an accompanist and for the daring ingenuity of his harmonies. He was equally at home with traditionalist Bobby Hackett; modern mainstreamers Clark Terry, Chet Baker and Lee Konitz; and free jazz iconoclasts Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy. This Friedman quotation from my notes for his last album, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/search\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_sr_il_tl?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=rifftidougram-20&#038;keywords=B018KTDV5S&#038;index=aps&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325&#038;linkCode=xm2&#038;linkId=77276196ec8f64b1f186fee7d3784625\"target=\"_blank\">Nite Lites<\/a>, indicates a major source of his inspiration.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I love contemporary modern music,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Don said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Great classical composers inspire me. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve listened a lot to Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Stravinvsky, Prokofiev, Stockhausen, Bartok. They inspire me to try to make sounds like theirs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Here is Friedman at the Jazz Baltica Festival in 2006 with bassist Martin Wind and a drummer whom <em>YouTube<\/em> does not identify.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6nvcklfJHiU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Randy Jones, who played drums with Dave Brubeck for more than thirty years, <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-7637\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Randy-Jones.jpg\" alt=\"Randy Jones\" width=\"160\" height=\"200\" \/>died on June 17 in New York. A London studio musician who moved to the United States in 1973 to work with Maynard Ferguson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s big band, he played with Chet Baker, Buddy DeFranco and the big bands of Bill Watrous and Harry James, among others, before he joined Brubeck. In the Brubeck quartet, he occupied the slot long filled by Joe Morello and, like Morello, specialized in soloing on Paul Desmond\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s composition \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Take Five.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jbJ7VtXyeTM\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Chris Brubeck, Dave\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trombonist and bassist son, played often with Jones in his father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s groups. He told me recently, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sometimes Randy swung harder than I thought was humanly possible.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7638\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Sir-Charles-Thompson.jpg\" alt=\"Sir Charles Thompson\" width=\"200\" height=\"166\" \/>Three days following Jones\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death, pianist Sir Charles Thompson died at the age of 98. As talented as an arranger and leader as he was at the keyboard, Thompson was one of the great mainstream eclectics, bridging the swing and bebop eras. A combo he led and recorded in 1945 included bop saxophonists Charlie Parker and Dexter Gordon and swing trumpeter Buck Clayton. Lester Young, dubbed Thompson \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sir\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Charles to give him parity with Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Here, he solos with a band led by tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins that also includes Harry \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sweets\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Edison on trumpet, Jimmy Woode on bass and Jo Jones on drums.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SfTJEwFUYdU\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Thompson died in Tokyo, where he had lived since 2002.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">RIP, all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The generations move on. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a sad part of an observer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s task to acknowledge the deaths of musicians who made important contributions. Pianist Don Friedman died of pancreatic cancer at home in New York City on June 30. He was 81. Friedman was treasured by fellow musicians for the subtlety and strength of his support [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7635","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}