JAZZ MUSIC HAS BEEN ACCEPTED as the world’s and America’s greatest art form. This music and some of its great artists are known for innovation, complexity, improvisation and synchronicity. And why not? Jazz music includes a form of mathematics, rhythmic patterns, harmonics and improvisation where musicians must learn to play and create together, each in …
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JazzTimes’ Direction
I MUST SHARE, in all honesty, that being given the gig of writing a monthly column for the legendary JazzTimes is an honor and quite daunting at the same time. But it is also exciting that I have been included in the new direction of this venerable publication, one that acknowledges and embraces diverse voices, …
Kelly Sill
You never quite knew what Chicago bassist Kelly Sill was going to play (or what he was going to say). But you always knew that whatever you heard on or off the bandstand would contain wisdom and wit, likely surprise you, and startle those unprepared for the intensity of his bass playing and conversation. Once …
Explaining the Taubman Approach
Several years ago, one of Danilo Pérez’s students was suffering from tendinitis. Pianist Pérez was then a professor at the New England Conservatory; his student, also a pianist, experienced muscle fatigue and pain when he played. “I gave him the normal recipe: ‘Stop playing, let it come down, and then start again,’” Pérez recalls. “And …
Joe Williams: Beyond the Blues
Everyone knows that Joe Williams sang the hell out of the blues, but do you know what else he sang the hell out of? Everything. Williams’ expansive wheelhouse encompassed romantic ballads, songs of heartbreak, swinging standards, bossa novas, and boogaloo beats. He could improvise like a stylish horn player or phrase down the middle like …
Chops: What Bassists Listen for in Drummers
As a JazzTimes writer, I can talk about the powers of a dynamic drummer until I’m blue in the face: the weight of each tom-tom’s thwomp, the clanking of the rim, the stroking of the snare. What I can’t express is the feeling of physical interplay, the empathetic energy, and the knotty-pine roots of psychology …
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Sun Ra and the Cornucopia House Band
There are certain works of art with which I wish I could have a conversation, so that I might express my gratitude for them. I would say, “Thank you for existing, and doing what you do. You’ve enriched my life.” I wouldn’t downplay the venerated “usual suspects”—A Love Supreme, Sgt. Pepper, Citizen Kane—but I’d give …
Chronology: Sonny Greer and Sam Woodyard Drum for the Duke
Asked to choose Duke Ellington’s most valuable sidemen, most folks would likely start with Johnny Hodges, followed by any number of the additional cavalcade of stars. Popular picks would include Harry Carney, Billy Strayhorn, Bubber Miley, Ben Webster, Cootie Williams, and others. But you know whose names probably wouldn’t appear on most lists? The …
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Up On the Corner, Out on the Street
In the early autumn, I was heading back into the city of Boston on the subway from a leafy suburb where I had watched a football game. There was a large man on the train, whose size made him automatically incongruous. His bulk worked for him, though: Was part of his look, and a formidable, …
Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue Clusters
If the Fates of Jazz oversaw an accounting service that charted advanced metrics like the album that the most people had fallen in love with first, it’s a safe assumption that Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue would be at the top of the graphic. Not long after its release on August 17, 1959, it had …