Jazz Music Blog

Houston Person: Timeless, Yet Endangered, Style

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 th

Happy Birthday to B.B. King!

Today is B.B. King’s 87^th birthday. Long live the King! I first saw B.B.

Saturday’s Northampton Jazz Festival, in addition to presenting headliners Matt Wilson, Sheryl Bailey, and Gary Smulyan, will honor the memory

Sonny Criss: "Uniformly Excellent"

I’ve got a few friends in Northampton who are going to love this film featuring Sonny Criss with the Hampton Hawes All-S

As noted here last week, I interviewed the playwright Terry Teachout and the actor John Douglas Thompson on August 30 about Teachout’s play, “Satchmo at t

Horace Silver's Fateful Plea

As Horace Silver says in his introduction to this outstanding 1968 performance of “Song for My Father,” the rhythm is Brazilian, the melody Cape Verdean, and the tune is dedicated to his father, Jo

Satchmo at the Waldorf

I was in Lenox yesterday to interview the actor John Douglas Thompson and playwright Terry Teachout about "Satchmo at the Waldorf," and to see the one-man, one-act play at

Life Lessons from Louis Armstrong

“If you don’t love him, I don’t think you really know how to love.” Mahalia Jackson on Louis Armstrong

Lester Young: Prez-o'reenie

“Very little about the tenor saxophonist Lester Young was unoriginal,” wrote Whitney Balliett in one of the most memorable of his jazz musician profiles forThe New Yorker. “When he p

Marsalis and McBride: Jazz at Tanglewood

I slipped away from the control board in time to hear the Christian McBride Trio and Wynton Marsalis Quintet at Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood on Monday. Both sounded great, and it was a real treat

How Basie Won My Heart

Count Basie’s 108^th birthday anniversary is today. He made his first recordings as a sideman with Walter Page’s Blue Devils in 1929, and his last in 1983, the year before his death

Von Freeman, Chicago's Tenor Legand, R.I.P.

Von Freeman’s been on my mind lately. I knew the 88-year-old saxophonist was no longer in action, but he’d become so emblematic

Welcome Home, Jimmy Greene!

For nearly three decades, it's been my pleasure to tout the Greater Hartford area as one of the most fertile in the nation in developing home-grown jazz players who’ve gone on to wider renown.&nbsp

Evan Christopher on the Clarinet Road

Evan Christopher was back in New Orleans this week in time to don his "blacks and whites" for the

Duke Ellington was the envy of bandleaders far and wide for the privilege he enjoyed in presenting Johnny Hodges as a member of his orchestra for nearly 40 years. Notwithstanding a four-year

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