Archives for 2014

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”SnJrKKxOsbSvYC0tSJ3f7W8X1rMntWMS”]

The Rifftides staff is up to his clavicle in non-Rifftides deadlines but wanted the readership to know that you are on his mind. He thought you would want to know that in the south forty, the lilacs and tulips are out.

Junior Mance, piano; Ray Brown, bass; and Lex Humphries, drums, supply the music by which to gaze at the lilacs, which are doing fine without rain, thanks.

That’s from Junior Mance and his Swinging Piano, a 1959 album that I thought was long unavailable. Turns out that it is not. Hooray.

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”4oa6ntdS4ZD3Ntr1ppIq63bLSs19R0Pn”]

The Jazz Journalists Association has named 24 Jazz Heroes, recognizing them as “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz.” Among them is Jim Wilke (pictured on James Moody’s left), whose Sunday Jazz Northwest program we at Rifftides sometimes tell you about. It airs today at 2:00 pm PDT on KPLU-FM, 88.5 in Seattle and streams here on the internet. Jim features artists who will be playing at this week’s Ballard Jazz Festival, among them Sonny Fortune, Mimi Fox and Jay Thomas. For details about the festival, go here.

Below is the complete list of the JJA’s Jazz Heroes. Maybe you’ll find someone from your neighborhood.

Harold Battiste, New Orleans-based saxophonist, composer-arranger and producer 

John Bilotti, co-producer of the Wall Street Jazz Festival, Kingston NY 

Cephas Bowles, president and CEO of WBGO, Newark NJ 

Raymond Brown, trumpeter and head of jazz studies at Cabrillo College near Santa Cruz, CA
Faye Carol, vocalist and educator in the SF Bay Area
Bill Foster, founder of Detroit’s Jazz Network Foundation 

Bobby Hill, writer and broadcaster at WPFW, Washington DC

Joseph Jennings, saxophonist and retired educator in Atlanta
Jennifer Johnson Washington, director of programming for Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events

Dr. John Lamkin II, cross-genres trumpeter and educator in Maryland 

Emilio Lyons, the Sax Doctor of Boston 

Thara Memory, composer, trumpeter and educator in Portland OR 

Vita West Muir, founder and producer of the Litchfield Jazz Festival and Jazz Camp 

Thomas Pierce, activist for the Schenectady-based Swingtime Jazz Society and A Place for Jazz 

Jon Poses, founder and executive director of the “We Always Swing”® Jazz Series in Columbia MO 

Geraldine “Gerry” Seay, owner/operator of B Sharps Jazz Café, Tallahassee 

Meghan Stabile, founder of Revive Music Group 

Peggy Stern, pianist and co-founder/producer of the Wall Street Jazz Festival, Kingston NY 

Janis Stockhouse, trumpeter and director of bands at Bloomington High School North, Bloomington IN

Bill Strickland, founder of Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild 

Patrick Taylor, founder and producer of the Toronto Jazz Festival 

Larry Reni Thomas, journalist and radio broadcaster working with Art of the Cool, Durham NC 

Wayne Thompson, writer and Portland Jazz Festival board member, Portland OR
Jim Wilke, Jazz After Hours radio show producer, Seattle

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”ztyrZNT58M739DrDlageHaobJ4Jr34W3″]
A film about Ukraine’s position visa vis Russia showed up on YouTube earlier this week. In three days it has attracted more than 115,000 viewers. The film was created and posted by a video artist whose accompanying explanation said that she or he preferred to remain anonymous in order not to distract from the message of the piece. Nor is the little girl singing or lip-synching the song identified. Without taking an overt political stand, this well-made video’s simplicity and power help put the Ukranian peoples’ dilemma in perspective.

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”43w5ClJhl93m1BKnekor6LoLwgIOb0kN”]

This is an item from Bill Crow’s The Band Room column in the April issue of Allegro, the newspaper of New York Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. We use it with Mr. Crow’s permission.

In the little town in Washington State where I grew up, our local school system had a full arts program. It was the 1930s, as this country struggled with the joblessness and poverty of the Great Depression. From grade school to high school, we had art and music classes in the regular curriculum. We had band, orchestra, and chorus. We sang in the classrooms. Parents provided the smaller instruments for band and orchestra, and the school provided the larger ones. The marching band had uniforms. There were tympani and basses for the orchestra and sousaphones for the band. I played a school-owned baritone horn until I reached high school, when an after-school job made it possible for me to buy one of my own. The school provided a drum set and arrangements for the swing band.

When I hear of all the cuts made in the arts in urban school systems nowadays, I wonder how our small town was able to carry such a full program during the Depression. Did we value the creative arts then more than we do now? Shouldn’t every child have a chance to learn to make his own music?

If you know who makes school budget decisions where you live, see that they read Bill’s plea. If you don’t know, give serious consideration to finding out. They, and we—all of us—should be ashamed.

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”DbGx0rfZ5DCbwNMeoXVSs5HnbfUOAUou”]
Geneva, a town of 13,000 in New York State’s Finger Lakes district, is the home town of Scott LaFaro. The brilliant bassist of the Bill Evans Trio influenced the development of jazz bass playing, and the town is keeping his memory alive. He died near Geneva in an auto accident in 1961. Thanks to Rifftides readers Frank Roellinger and Svetlana Ilyicheva for alerting us that last Thursday, Geneva honored LaFaro on his 78th birthday by proclaiming April 3rd its first annual Scott LaFaro Day. On Friday, the town’s monthly Geneva Night Out celebration included a concert by a quartet performing LaFaro compositions, and the bassist’s recordings playing at a book store called Stomping Grounds. Jim Meaney, the coordinator of Geneva Night Out, said,

LaFaro was a revolutionary and singular musician, but his contributions to the music world aren’t widely known to many Geneva residents. This effort aims to give recognition to LaFaro’s short but stellar career, while creating a platform for future jazz tribute concerts, festivals, and events in Geneva that will honor LaFaro’s legacy.

In addition, the town renamed a street Scott LaFaro Drive.

Here is one reason Geneva finds LaFaro worth honoring—the bassist with Bill Evans and Paul Motian playing his most famous composition, “Jade Visions” from Sunday at the Village Vanguard.

For details about Geneva’s LaFaro day, go here. For an extensive Rifftides appreciation of LaFaro, analysis of his importance and rare videos, go here.

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”SDrPu230TqXOI7eLIKxUpvARl1Zf4qN9″]

Best Press release of the week. Of course, it’s only Sunday.

Billy Mintz Quartet tours in New York May 2014

No more sneaking oversize instruments past the airlines! No more cramped economy seats! No more European trains where you jump up in a panic every time the conductor makes an announcement in a language you don’t understand! No more gas guzzling tour buses that smell like a bathroom! The Mintz Quartet announces a glorious five-day tour where the band can literally walk from one gig to the next (or at least to the nearest subway stop)!

Drummer/composer and band leader Billy Mintz commented thoughtfully, “Traveling is such a drag…you know? So, man, I just thought, “Hey, why not book a tour where we don’t have to actually, like, tour?” 
The tour features the original quartet from Billy’s 2013 leader debut, Mintz Quartet: John Gross: tenor saxophone; Roberta Piket, piano, organ; Putter Smith, bass; Billy Mintz, drums, percussion, compositions.

 Below is a list of all the performances.

05/24/2014 7:30 pm Smalls Jazz Club 183 W. 10th St., New York
05/23/2014 8:00 pm Ibeam 168 7th Street, Brooklyn
05/21/2014 8:00 pm Barbes 376 9th St., Brooklyn
05/19/2014 8:30 pm Greenwich House 46 Barrow St., New York
05/18/2014 9:30 pm Firehouse Space 246 Frost St., Brooklyn

For a Rifftides review of Mintz’s most recent album, go here.

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”zmC70lTlUxBpDUAt9XxvjInd7KmR59Wm”]
On his Jazz Northwest broadcast this afternoon, April 6, Jim Wilke is airing an appearance by vibraharpist Susan Pascal. Recorded by Wilke recently at Tula’s in Seattle, Pascal will lead her quintet in the music of Cal Tjader. The band (seen above) includes some ofthe Pacific Northwest’s leading lights—pianist Fred Hoadley, bassist Chuck Deardorf, drummer Mark Ivester and Latin percussionist Tom Bergerson. The program airs at 2pm PDT on KPLU-FM, 88.5 and will stream live on the internet at kplu.org. It’s available as a podcast following the broadcast.

In case you need reminding of the Tjader group that helped to inspire Pascal, here’s his “Lucero” with Tjader, vibes; Vince Guaraldi, piano; Mongo Santamaria, congas; Willie Bobo, timbales; and Al McKibbon, bass, live at the Blackhawk in San Francisco in 1958. Sorry about the lousy graphics. They are part of the YouTube package.

For the past couple of days, Rifftides and all of the arts journal.com blogs have been hors de combat. Unlike last week’s outage, this was not caused by hacker bots, but by good intentions gone awry. The webhost organization was moving databases to give them greater security and somehow misconfigured rather than reconfigured them. Don’t ask me to explain that. I’m just relieved that we’re back and no longer feeling like the guy on the left. Thanks for coming back.

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”k1mg19EMmafmh7S2A2p1F4l4e0vsHMKl”]
The family of Mrs. Dave Brubeck has announced that there will be a small memorial observance in Wilton, Connecticut on April 21. Iola Brubeck died on March 12 at the age of 90, 14 months following the death of her husband. In a letter, their oldest son Darius pointed out that next week’s Brubeck Festival at New York’s Lincoln Center will be a tribute to both of his parents.

There is a wonderful exhibition already in place, including almost-life-size photos of Iola and Dave working on projects together. We especially look forward to Jazz At Lincoln Center’s staging of The Real Ambassadors, which features some of Dave’s greatest songs with Iola’s lyrics and script and we are really pleased that her creative contribution to Dave’s career is shown as integral to his achievements.

Here is a link to Jazz at Lincoln Center: And this is a link to a short video about the festival.

The Lincoln Center schedule calls for the Brubeck Brothers Quartet—trombonist and bassist Chris, drummer Danny, pianist Chuck Lamb and guitarist Mike DeMicco—to play at Dizzy’s Club Monday and Tuesday evenings. Darius on piano, Chris, Dan and the British saxophonist Dave O’Higgins will play on April 9 and April 13 as part of the festival.

As for The Real Ambassadors, here are three pieces from the 1961 recording with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae singing Iola’s lyrics.

And here is the Brubeck Quartet with the main theme:

Have a good weekend.

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”tE2gU8J8wmI7lpnV614939WLGp6QhH2G”]

New York City’s Library for the Performing Arts announces that it has received the archives of George Avakian, who supervised some of the most influential jazz recordings of the past 70 years. At first as a student working part time for Columbia Records and then as an executive at Columbia and, later, RCA, Avakian was responsible for recordings by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck, among dozens of other artists. The library will catalog his personal papers as well as unissued recordings. It will also have the archives of Mrs. Avakian, the prominent classical violinist Anahid Ajemian. Avakian celebrated his 95th birthday on March 15. For details, see this story in The New York Times.

In another important bequest, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane has presented his father’s tenor saxophone to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American National History. It is the instrument that the senior Coltrane most likely used when his quartet recorded A Love Supreme in 1965. The album not only became one of Coltrane’s biggest sellers but also one of the most potent musical statements of the post bebop era, influencing countless musicians to take new directions. In another gift to the museum, photographer Chuck Stewart donated more than two dozen images he made of Coltrane, some at the A Love Supreme session, others never published. You will find a story about Coltrane’s saxophone here, and one about the Stewart pictures here, both on the Smithsonian website. Here are the “Acknowledgement” section of A Love Supreme and Stewart’s cover photograph for the album.

The poignant muted trumpet on “Flamingo” in Charles Mingus’s 1957 album Tijuana Moods was by Clarence Shaw, a Detroiter whose career derailed for a time, in part because of Mingus. More about Shaw in a moment, but first let’s listen to his most famous solo.

By the time RCA finally released that music in 1962, Shaw had rebuilt his career, altered his first name, moved to Chicago and began recording again. There remains a good deal of mystery surrounding his story, which is nicely told by Thomas Cuniffe on his Jazz History Online website. To read it, go here.

The survivors across the mountains from us in the little community of Oso are hurting, in every conceivable way. The physical and emotional devastation caused by that gigantic mudslide last week has them reeling. They are in need of just about everything. Washington state’s governor, Jay Inslee, is making a plea for help. He says that the best way to provide it is through the American Red Cross. Go here to see the governor’s message—and how you can pitch in. Thank you.

For more than two days, Rifftides and all of the other arts journal.com blogs have been taken down by software robots—hacker bots. The attackers have been vanquished, security measures are being put in place and we look forward to the resumption of regular posting. Say goodbye to this rascal.

By way of celebration, let’s see and hear the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra in Copenhagen in 1969, playing Thad’s “Central Park North.”

Thad Jones, flugelhorn & conductor
Al Porcino, trumpet
Richard Williams, trumpet
Snooky Young, trumpet
Danny Moore, trumpet
Eddie Bert, trombone
Jimmy Knepper, trombone
Garnett Brown, trombone
Jerome Richardson, soprano sax
Eddie Daniels, clarinet
Jerry Dodgion, alto sax
Joe Henderson, tenor sax
Pepper Adams, baritone sax
Cliff Heather, bass trombone
Roland Hanna, piano
Richard Davis, bass
Mel Lewis, drums

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”1tQI8nCzIiTd1BiBnMJiAxcbKsXDtR1X”]

I got bored with the old way – it came too easy. I worked until I could play any chord changes at any tempo in any key, and then said ‘What else is there?’ Now I’m finding out.

I expect the audience to come up to my level. I am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass.

If one takes all the styles in jazz harmonically from the earliest beginnings to the latest experiments, he still has a rather limited scope when compared to the rest of music in the world.

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”F4UbLPqvEYgZNOhOBf4XiXW5icbYUIbd”]

My visiting son went skiing in the Cascade Mountains, and I accompanied him. This is how it was on the lightly populated runs of White Pass at 4500 feet.

Après-ski, driving down the mountain by the time we reached about 3500 feet, warmer weather had removed the snow except for patches in the valleys and on the peaks.

My son is sad to see the snow go. Not to worry, Blossom Dearie makes everybody glad.

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”dG5AgtayhUWoWVzslWSHH4LzSHeCp6fs”]

Trumpeter Don Ellis (1934-1978) provided the instrumental focus in yesterday’s Third Stream Revisited post. He portrayed young Peter Parker, a boy learning to be a jazz musician. Let us look into Ellis’s all too brief future following that impressive 1962 appearance with Gunther Schuller, Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. He built on his experience with Ray McKinley, Charlie Barnet, Maynard Ferguson, George Russell and some of the most forward looking players in jazz to become a bandleader himself—a daring one. In additional to his skill as a player, he was a composer and arranger. Ellis built a substantial part of his band’s repertoire on his compositions using time signatures unusual to jazz. He adapted odd meters to a large ensemble and incorporated elements of Indian and Eastern European folk music. Here he is at the 1977 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland with his 22-piece orchestra. Ellis announces the piece, which develops into a 15-minute entertainment complete with audience participation.

”Niner Two” is included in Ellis’s Live At Montreux album. The year following that concert, he was dead of a heart attack at the age of 44. For an extensive article about Ellis’s career, see Wikipedia.

A few of the musicians in Ellis’s late 1970s band—Ted Nash, Chino Valdez, Ann Patterson among them—went on to become well known in jazz. You may be interested in the complete personnel list.

Reeds: Ann Patterson, Ted Nash, James Coile, Jim Snodgrass
Trumpets: Glenn Stuart, Gil Rather, Jack Coan
French Horn: Sidney Muldrow
Trombone: Alan Kaplan
Bass Trombone: Richard Bullock
Tuba: Jim Self
Keyboards: Randy Kerber
Bass: Leon Gaer, Darrell Clayborn
Drums: David Crigger
Congas: Chino Valdes
Percussion: Drums and Mallets – Michael Englander
Percussion; Mallets and Timpani – Ruth Ritchie
Violins: Pam Tompkins, Lori Badessa
Viola: Jimbo Ross
Cello: Paula Hochhalter