Thanks very much for finding your way here. Please feel free to look around and check out past posts, of which there are many. I also hope you will visit my Substack, where I've begun to do my posting. Substack is a great platform that really helps writers find their audience.   I regularly also publish articles in Artsfuse.org and SyncopatedTimes.org. Great publications, well worth your time ..read more

Physicists are forced to concede that they can know either the location or the speed of a particle. They can't know both because the very act of looking changes the particle's behavior.  The way scientists freeze frame electrons is the way categories have been imposed on every art form. In jazz, categorizing is a lazy shorthand that ignores the mutability of the music-and the musicians. Apparently, critics don't have the time to explain that Player X usually plays Standards and tends to improvise melodically, while player Z plays mostly originals, is less concerne ..read more

The Institute While this is not our first foray into interdisciplinary art exploration, we at the Institute are aware that our preoccupation with novel perspectives on jazz tonsure has left us open to charges of artistic parochialism. Our core mission of advancing jazz historiography remains intact. However, we made the decision to expand our vision and have undertaken an investigation into a phenomenon that has recently come to our attention: Smash Arts Akron.  We are aware that graduate students in Harvard's Department of Museum Studies have been sifting through and ..read more

Escalator Over the Hill (EOTH) distills a corner of the counter-cultural energy of the early ’70s. Politics is fodder for satire here, but the main theme is psychic disruption. This three-record set is a response to the question begged by the title: how effectual can any mundane machine be in o’ertopping the hill and reaching what lays beyond? Jazz composer Carla Bley is the heart and soul of this recording. She describes the process of putting EOTH together as “run-and-gun” –a grassroots effort that took three years (1968 to 1971) to put together. No major label was inter ..read more

Someone on FB commented they were amazed that trumpet players could smoke. Three meanings of "smoking" of course, but they were talking about tobacco. You'd think playing itself would slake any oral need, but as a trumpet player myself, I know it's not so. Perversely, there's a very satisfying feeling, after you've been blowing hard, to suck smoke into your lungs.  It became more common for album covers to features players smoking in the 1950's, so there starts to be more documentation. It's harder to tell with the early cats, but smoking was pretty ubiquitous. Then, apres Coltrane, sta ..read more

The whole world-why restrict it-the entire universe-knows that the Beatles have released a song called Now And Then. This Frankenstinian effort was, as the YouTube P.R. says: “brought to life and worked on anew with contributions from all four Beatles.” The reconstruction entailed using AI to extract an old John Lennon vocal track and adding new musical backup. Now And Then is probably the highest profile use of AI in popular music. It shows us that this technology can do something that couldn’t be done before: separate sounds that had already been mixed together. A machine-learning algorithm ..read more

  The cohort of 1950s trumpet players is a pretty astonishing lot. Booker Little, one of that (often ill-fated) group, died of uremic poisoning at 23 and only recorded between 1959 and 1961. The album Out Front (released in 1961, now being reissued by Candid), is arguably the best recorded representation of his unique voice as trumpeter and composer-arranger. The lineup: Booker Little, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto sax; Julian Priester, trombone; Art Davis and Ron Carter, bass; Don Friedman, piano; and Max Roach, drums. All compositions are by Little. From Memphis and schooled at the Chica ..read more

  Edmund Wilson; a man who doesn't look like he enjoys his work. Otherwise known for more high-fallutin’ work, writer Edmund Wilson did some of his best work when he compiled The Lexicon of Prohibition, in 1927. He said the list was arranged “in order of the degrees of intensity of the conditions which they represent, beginning with the mildest stages and progressing to the more serious…” I’m not certain I agree with Wilson, although what 'half screwed' meant in 1927 may differ from how we see it now.  Lit, squiffy, oiled, lubricated, owled, edged, jingled, piffed, piped, slop ..read more

 In honor of Frank Zappa's birthday, here are my lyrics to "Peaches En Regalia" (every note). ENSEMBLE 1 Too lifelike to destroy, That fruit can bring you joy. Let’s put those peaches en regalia; March proudly with them, Watch them walk down the street. Please won’t you let them pass by safely; Don’t spit on them and don’t eat their little feet. On a melba float, you can gloat, As you proudly cheer: “Let the peaches vote,” they can quote, Shakespeare, they’re sincere, You won’t feel remote, if you note, How they wave to you Just as if you were the proudest parents who had raised t ..read more

  If I'm to be dragged into the fires of Hades while I'm still alive, I'll take this one along. Originally composed as a recurring aria for "Porgy and Bess," It's been taken in a wide variety of tempos and re-harmonized in some pretty radical ways. Yet, probably because of the strength of the melody, it retains its, well, Summertime-i-tude. All credit to George Gershwin and lyricist DuBose Heyward. There's a widespread notion about Gershwin having been influenced by a Ukranian song. Wikipedia says:  "The Ukrainian-Canadian composer and singer Alexis Kochan has suggested t ..read more