As I approach the release (this Friday!) of my Live at the Side Door trio album, I find myself thinking about some of my favorite live albums. It’s an interesting framework, as to me a standout live album has two components: great music (of course) and at least something about it that is unique to…
Continue ReadingToday would have been Ahmad Jamal’s 94th birthday, and by coincidence I was talking with students about him – his conceptual and pianistic brilliance, yes, and also the way he defied multiple sorts of career trajectory that would typically get someone identified as “historically significant” in the annals of jazz. He didn’t follow the “sideman…
Continue ReadingI love eclectic musicians, and Swamp Dogg (the persona adopted by singer/songwriter/producer Jerry Williams, Jr. in the early ) is extreme even by my standards. This is a man who can pull off some of the most incisive social commentary I’ve heard (e.g. “I’ve Never Been to Africa”) and also songs that are just silly…
Continue ReadingIf my conscious awareness of David Sanborn had never gone beyond knowing that he hosted and often played on the extraordinary TV show Night Music (his playing with guests ranging from Miles Davis to Al Green was extraordinary), then I’d still revere him and be saddened to hear of his passing. Of course, that’s just…
Continue ReadingI’m thrilled that a this Saturday (5/4/24) I’ll get to perform with Mike McGinnis at Resonant Motion’s Jazz Up Close series, our second time playing together (the first coming in 2006, I think) and the first chance I’ll get to play his own evocative music. I’ve been a fan of his work as a composer…
Continue ReadingMost years I take some time in the spring semester at Wesleyan and work with my ensemble students on how to learn/inhabit a ballad deeply enough that it can be interpreted rubato. Rubato, for the non-musicians, is “free time,” which in practice could mean anything from the complete absence of a steady pulse to the…
Continue ReadingTo say Abbey Lincoln was one of the great singers in modern jazz would be literally true and at once not quite capturing her unique place. I know that when I teach jazz history, for example, it is at once important to include her and difficult to know how to frame her contributions. It is…
Continue ReadingI missed out on commemorating Ornette Coleman’s recent birth anniversary but am posting this now in commemoration of the more mundane occasion of “Ornette time” as the Wesleyan Jazz Ensemble prepares to sink their teeth into his “Humpty Dumpty.” (students: thanks for doing your homework by reading this and listening to these!) It’s difficult to…
Continue ReadingThe great bassist/composer Rufus Reid turns 80 today and is still going strong, glory hallelujah. He has multiple legacies that would each be the envy of most. As a bassist he is one of the pillars of his generation, anchoring important sessions by giants such as Joe Henderson, J.J. Johnson, Stan Getz, Marian McPartland, George…
Continue ReadingIn sports there are some particularly superlative athletes who also stick around long enough for observers to remark that if you divided their careers in half, each half would represent a career worthy of the corresponding hall of fame. While that’s not the way jazz works, exactly, the same principle applies to J.J. Johnson, who…
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