Yesterday we lost Hal Wilner to Covid-19. Among his significant accomplishments was a TV show that aired for two seasons on Sunday nights on NBC between 1988-90. Hosted by David Sanborn (initially alongside Jools Holland), the show never became “popular” per se, but it presented high quality and eclectic music on network TV for two…
Continue ReadingI threw together this list upon a) hearing of the announcement that Bandcamp (already the most musician-friendly online sales platform) would be waiving its fees for 24 hours on Friday 3/20 (so artists get 100% of the proceeds), and b) getting a request from a friend, independent of this announcement, looking to support some independent musicians in this time.
Continue ReadingWhile I knew it was coming, it is surreal to now inhabit a world without McCoy Tyner. If the ONLY thing he had ever done was play in the classic Coltrane quartet, people would be quite rightly eulogizing him left and right. But at the same time, he was playing on some other superlatively important albums, including some of his own, and (with apologies to fans of Paul McCartney, Diana Ross, etc.) I can’t think of a single artist whose work AFTER leaving an acknowledged “supergroup” can match McCoy’s output in terms of sheer amount, consistent quality, and scope of influence. That’s just one way in which he was a singular figure in music.
Continue ReadingAvoiding things can be wonderful. Unfortunately, following the impulse of avoidance often leads to simply deferring, adding to the cumulative stress rather than circumventing it. Knowing the difference is important, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was remarkably good at that.
Continue ReadingThis is my most stupidly broad Top 10 list undertaking to date. As I started to see folks’ Top-10-(whatever)-of-the-Decade lists, I thought “gee, what are MY 10 favorite albums of the decade?” That was harmless enough, except then I thought “gee, I never compiled my top 10 albums of the 2000s either.” And so on, until I realized that I needed to break it on down by decade going ALL the way back to the 1950s, the first decade when LPs were a thing.
Continue ReadingWhat a year this was for recordings. With the sheer amount of music being put out now it’s of course impossible to keep track of more than a tiny sliver, and it’s virtually impossible to narrow down a small list of favorites from even that sliver. But here we are.
Continue ReadingDecember is for many a time of joy, and one of the most joyous things about it is the glee of young people and, in many cases, the way the milestone of an annual holiday allows us to chart and reflect on their trajectories of growth. While I will invariably experience some of that in the coming weeks, for me the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 forever marred the holiday season. One more specific element of that is that (at the risk of sounding particularly morbid, but I’m just trying to be sincere) I can no longer look at young people without some part of me consciously acknowledging the possibility that they may not grow up. I recognize the privilege that allowed me to make it until the morning of my 39th birthday with that aspect of mortality and frailty remaining an abstraction, but so it went that until then I took growing up for granted. As a result, I have grappled ever since with how to keep my heart open and keep my spirit of nurturing undiminished within that awareness that everyone I know will die and some of them will do so way too soon. It is through this inner turmoil that I began contemplating the notion of love as a form of palliative care.
Continue ReadingThis weekend came the news of the passing of Gerry Teekens, the head of the Dutch jazz label Criss Cross Records. I never personally recorded on a Criss Cross session, but what I heard about Gerry was pretty consistent: he liked the music he liked, he ran the label how he ran it, and through it all spent nearly 40 years as an important shepherd to so many wonderful jazz musicians, many of them either being given their first opportunities to record or being documented at a time when bigger labels were not interested.
Continue ReadingHarold Mabern, who joined the ancestors yesterday, was a multifacetedly important figure in the development of jazz (and in my own musical consciousness). Read on for more about that and for some great, representative recordings.
Continue ReadingI’ve been thinking about how we all have multiple inner voices giving us perspectives that have varying degrees of present-moment relevance, healthiness, and so on. Listening to our intuition is useful only insofar as we are confident that said intuition is coming from a solid foundation.
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