Articles by Joseph Blake

Jazz Port Townsend: Reborn

by Joseph Blake
October 15, 2005

The Port Townsend Jazz Festival had a tumultuous year in 2004 with the messy departure of longtime artistic director Bud Shank. By hiring band-leading bassist John Clayton to replace Shank, organizers selected the perfect person to lead the festival out of the doldrums. This summer's event held in late July was truly spectacular.Most of the professional clinicians who teach at the weeklong workshop preceding the festival returned, maintaining the lineage and familial qualities that make Jazz Port Townsend so ...

Jazz Port Townsend 2004

by Joseph Blake
September 9, 2004

Throughout the week of this July's Bud Shank Jazz Workshop at Port Townsend, everyone tried to ignore the ticking time bomb in the corner. The workshop was followed by Centrum's Jazz Port Townsend on the weekend, and everything unfolded as it has for the last 20+ years. The old gang of veteran musicians passed on bandstand wisdom to their students, capped by a series of concerts at Fort Worden's McCurdy Pavilion and club appearances in Port Townsend's venerable, quaint downtown. ...

Don Lanphere: Home At Last

by Joseph Blake
April 12, 2002

Veteran tenor saxophonist Don Lanphere is a modern Lazarus, a bebop-blowing master brought back to life by Jesus. The 73-year-old Yakima-bred musician was a teenaged fixture on the New York scene during 52nd Street heyday. He made his recording session debut with Max Roach and Fats Navarro in New York in 1948 and hung out with Charlie Parker at bebop’s birth. By the time Lanphere was 22, he had a heroin habit, an arrest record, and had lost his girlfriend, ...

John Bishop/Jeff Johnson/Rick Mandyck/John Stowell: Scenes

by Joseph Blake
December 1, 2001

Guitarist John Stowell's liner notes to this recently released CD makes Scenes sound almost serendipitous. He writes that “I suggested that we make a little music and turn on the tapes if we liked the chemistry...We did a couple of gigs in Seattle and went into the studio for a couple of sessions."

Stowell and drummer John Bishop produced the two sessions recorded at Seattle's Ironwood Studios. They showcase the quartet's very democratic approach on a repertoire including Tom Harrell's ...