Jazz

Gunther Schuller died on Sunday, June 21, in Boston. He was 89. Schuller was a Renaissance man of the Space Age. He began playing French horn with the New York Philharmonic when he was 16, became principal...

I spoke with Gunther Schuller for the first time last November around the occasion of his 85th birthday.  I’d played some of his music to mark that milestone, and was delighted to answer the...

From Watts to the White House, A Successful Bid for Clemency Sometimes even a glimmer of open-mindedness can spell good fortune. For a preternatural cool cat like Hampton Hawes, it took the form of...

Sometimes even a glimmer of open-mindedness can spell good fortune. For a preternatural cool cat like Hampton Hawes, it took the form of allowing himself to think that the man he watched deliver the Inaugural...

Yesterday was Hank Crawford’s 80th birthday anniversary. The Memphis native came to prominence with Ray Charles, joining Ray in 1958 and spending several years on the band as a saxophonist and trusted...

I consider myself a devoted Hank Jones fan. The pianist’s conception, which drew on Art Tatum, Nat King Cole, and Bud Powell, is one of the most elegant and engaging in modern jazz. Saxophonist Joe...

Leonard Feather, one of the most powerful critics in jazz history, declared Hank Mobley “the middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone” in his liner note essay for Hank’s 1961 release, Workout....

Let’s begin today’s wearing of the green with Bob Wilber (here under the photo of Louis Armstrong that graces the rear wall of Smalls Jazz Club) and Ehud Asherie performing “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue.” ...

Whether or not you’re wearin’ the green today, here’s a group of “Danny Boy’s” that’ll make you feel as Irish-born as my ancestors. With arpeggios rippling “from glen to glen,” here’s Art Tatum in 1944...

Johnny Griffin “The Kerry Dance”  (composed in 1879, attributed to James L. Molloy, b. County Offaly, Ireland, 1837-1909 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3xpXvVCZj8 Jackie Wilson “Danny...