Jazz

I’ve just found a wonderful new YouTube clip of a concert performance by Four Others.   Harry Allen put this all-star ensemble together last year as a tribute to Woody Herman’s legendary second...

Herb Pomeroy’s April 15th birthday often coincides with the statewide Patriot’s Day holiday commemorating the “the shot herad ’round the world” that triggered the American Revolution. The trumpeter and...

Fats Waller’s 1941 recording of “Honeysuckle Rose” was billed on the RCA Bluebird label as “à la Bach, à la Beethoven, à la Brahms, à la Waller.” Only Fats could bring off...

I’ll begin my memorial tribute to Horace Silver with “Song for My Father.”  With the pianist’s death on Wednesday at age 85, the tune suddenly feels more elegiac, and not only in...

As Horace Silver says in his introduction to this recently posted performance of “Song for My Father,” the rhythm is Brazilian, the melody Cape Verdean, and the tune is dedicated to his father. John Tavares...

Happy 80th Birthday! Today is saxophonist Houston Person’s 80th birthday. We’ll hear him throughout tonight’s Jazz à la Mode. Here’s a piece I wrote on the Florence, South Carolina native in 2012. It...

Houston Person will be back in Northampton tomorrow night as guest soloist in the Jazz Workshop series.  His first appearance in May drew such an overflow crowd that the show was moved from the lounge...

Howard Brofsky, who died on Thursday at 86, was a professor emeritus of music at Queens College. He earned his Ph.D. in 18th century Italian classical music and was an authority on Padre Martini,...

Mr. and Mrs. Jacquet of Broussard, Louisiana enjoyed a Halloween treat 89 years ago today with the birth of their son Jean Baptiste Illinois. Jonah Jones, trumpet star of Cab Calloway’s orchestra in the...

Northampton’s Jazz Workshop remembered 6-year-old Ana Grace Marquez-Greene on Tuesday night.  Paul Arslanian and George Kaye, pianist and bassist respectively with the host Green Street Trio, introduced...