dev
Les Paul: a postscript
Howard Mandel sparked a back-and-forth about Les Paul on Facebook that had Claire Daly recalling one of Paul’s favorite gags: He’d sing “Happy Birthday” to some lucky audience member, and on the final “You!”, he’d give that person the finger. Which reminded me: Two years prior to my JVC Jazz Festival piece, I covered Les’s 88th birthday celebration at the
On Les Paul
In 2005 I wrote an appreciation of Les Paul for the JVC Jazz Festival booklet. I had an opportunity to interview Paul backstage at the Iridium, and also to play phone tag with an old guitar hero of mine, Journey’s Neal Schon (we never did hook up). On the occasion of Paul’s passing, I offer the article text below. —
On Mike Lorenz
In the current Philadelphia Weekly: Mike Lorenz QuartetSun., Aug. 16, 8:30pm. $5. Gojjo, 4540 Baltimore Ave. 215.238.1236 www.scifiphilly.com Guitarist Mike Lorenz operates out of the Lehigh Valley and mixes it up regularly in Philly, bringing a focused and fluent vocabulary to music of original construction. Working within the melodically edgy orbit of such role models as Ben Monder and Kurt
Jazz and the young
Better late than never, I’m linking to Patrick J’s two responses to Terry Teachout’s dire forecast in The Wall Street Journal on the health of the jazz audience. I’ll just recap and elaborate what I wrote in Patrick’s comments section: Big duh, Mr. Teachout. We all know the jazz audience will never rival the arena rock audience. As John Seabrook’s
Art and political ethics: an aside
Randy Cohen, “The Ethicist” columnist for the New York Times, asks in a blog post, “Can you Hate the Artist but Love the Art?” As his main case study he cites the recently deceased Budd Schulberg, legendary screenwriter and namer of names to the House Un-American Activities Committee. The HUAC testimony of Schulberg, Elia Kazan and others is too complex
The week on disc (48)
In case you missed the last one… Dave Holland/Chris Potter/Gonzalo Rubalcaba/Eric Harland, The Monterey Quartet: Live at the 2007 Monterey Jazz Festival (MJF Records) Baptiste Trotignon, Share (Sunnyside) Christian McBride and Inside Straight, Kind of Brown (Mack Avenue) Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, The Moment’s Energy (ECM) Laurent Coq, Eight Fragments of Summer (88 Trees) Opsvik & Jennings, A Dream I
On Tony Malaby (and Paul Dunmall)
This tandem review appears in the August 2009 issue of All About Jazz-New York. — Tony Malaby, Paloma Recio (New World)Paul Dunmall Sun Quartet, Ancient and Future Airs (Clean Feed) David R. Adler Paloma Recio (“loud dove”), the debut of saxophonist Tony Malaby’s quartet of the same name, is marked through and through by the ghostly sonorities and harmonic wiles
New York @ Night: August 2009
This month in All About Jazz-New York: reviews of Frank Kimbrough’s trio at Birdland and Peter Bernstein’s first-ever solo guitar gig, at Smalls.