Jazz

Jazz saxaphonist Phil Woods plays at the Deer Head Inn at Delaware Water Gap on Saturday, August 19, 2006. Word has arrived of the passing of Phil Woods. The great saxophonist wrote earlier this year...

Today is President’s Day, the holiday I like to conflate with Lester Young.  I doubt Prez would have made a good president, and we know from his court martial that the U.S. Army was horribly negligent...

Mardi Gras in New Orleans Professor Longhair at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival My passion for New Orleans music ramped up to infatuation on July 3, 1973, when I heard Professor Longhair...

The Tenor Sax Great Turns 65 Notwithstanding the essential role that records and CD’s play in the documenting of an artist’s or ensemble’s work; in the writing of jazz history; in the private pleasures...

Happy 90th Birthday! Randy Weston at Prospect Park, Brooklyn; photo by Alan Nahigian Yesterday was the pianist and composer Randy Weston’s 90th birthday. Willard Jenkins, who collaborated with the...

Saturday is Record Store Day.  I only learned of this in today’s Boston Globe, so I guess record stores, those few in operation anyway, could still stand a lesson in Marketing 101. As it happens, I’ve...

James “Red” Holloway died on Saturday in Morro Bay, CA at the age of 84.  The alto and tenor saxophonist was born in the deep blues territory of Helena, Arkansas in 1927, and moved...

As listeners to Jazz à la Mode know, Rene Marie is one of the most frequently heard singers in the show. I usually need to hear a vocalist in person before I decide yea or nay, but Rene won me over as...

 wrote about Django Reinhardt’s 1946 U.S. tour with Duke Ellington earlier, but that wasn’t the guitarist’s first encounter with Ellingtonia. The Ellington Orchestra arrived in Paris on...

Rex Stewart was born February 22, 1907, in Philadelphia. As a cornetist, he was a remarkably complete stylist whose features ranged from a 1931 assignment with Fletcher Henderson playing the lyrical solo...