Articles by Peter Rubie
Harvie S: Building A Better Jam Session
by Peter Rubie
Jam sessions are strange creatures. A friend recently told me a story about a session he went to in a private home where a visiting pianist had basically come loaded for bear and would not relinquish the piano chair until she was finally thrown off by the host so others could have a turn. “I don't know about you," she apparently said somewhat haughtily as she left, “but I'm here to PLAY." Which is interesting, because I've found ...
Continue ReadingSongbirds: An Interview with Singer Judy Niemack
by Peter Rubie
Apart from their mutual respect for each other, and the fact that they are jazz singers, there isn't a lot, superficially, that you would think Judy Niemack and Jay Clayton have in common. But you'd be wrong. Both have a classical music background, Clayton at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, before moving to New York City in 1963, and Niemack, who studied Bel Canto singing for three years when a teenager living in Pasadena, Ca., and ...
Continue ReadingTonal Warriors
by Peter Rubie
New York City, July, 1983 “Man, it's like walking with lead shoes on," I complained. Roger, our drummer, smiled, shook his head and muttered, “I may just take off in a minute." Eddie said to me, “You're a miserable motherfucker sometimes, Phil. You know that?" The three of us sat on the stone steps of the waterless fountain outside the Plaza Hotel. We were dog-legged across from a horde of street vendors by Central ...
Continue ReadingMy 'Other' Brother -- Remembering Jack Wilkins: 1944-2023
by Peter Rubie
Prologue This piece, in a shorter form, appeared as a post on my Facebook page a few days after my friend Jack Wilkins died on May 5, 2023. On behalf of a group of close friends I also helped write a remembrance piece for WBGO, one or two quotes of which are also included here. I thought that was it. I had written out my grief, certainly in terms of public displays anyway. Then we discovered that the ...
Continue ReadingJean-Luc Ponty: No Absolute Time
by Peter Rubie
When we talk about world music, we often use the phrase in quiet desperation to describe music that defies familiarity and our expectations but still appeals to us. Its very newness is often both slightly disturbing and refreshing at the same time. Two years before No Absolute Time was released in 1993, Jean-Luc Ponty (JLP) produced one called Tchokola. In an interview for this re-release, JLP said, “Tchokola was a very special project for me. I recorded it ...
Continue ReadingJean-Luc Ponty: Individual Choice
by Peter Rubie
By 1982, jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty had established an enviable reputation as a pioneer in jazz-rock and jazz fusion. He began as a young bebop player in the late 1950s with little interest in becoming another swing or gypsy style violinist. It was the “sheets of sound" music of John Coltrane that spoke loudest to him. By the early 1970s Ponty was recording and touring with rock composer Frank Zappa, and playing with John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, as well as ...
Continue ReadingJean-Luc Ponty: Open Mind
by Peter Rubie
If Individual Choice was the sketchbook of Jean-Luc Ponty's (JLP) decision to take his music in a new direction, Open Mind (1984), released the following year, was a deeper exploration of the emerging world of synthesizers and sequencers and their impact on live (studio) performance. Here, complex rhythmic patterns shift in the background while new sounds appear and disappear on the surface in colorful bursts, and outstanding jazz improvisors create familiar music in new settings. It's almost an audio version ...
Continue ReadingJean-Luc Ponty: Imaginary Voyages, Part 2
by Peter Rubie
Part 1 | Part 2American violinist Stuff Smith once said about the young, classically trained and self taught jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, “He plays violin like Coltrane plays saxophone." Born in 1942, Ponty has almost single-handedly taken jazz violin from the swing era into modern jazz, and beyond. At rock musician Frank Zappa's urging, Ponty moved to the States in 1973 to record and tour with Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. In the following years he made ...
Continue ReadingJean-Luc Ponty: Imaginary Voyages, Part 1
by Peter Rubie
Part 1 | Part 2 Jazz is an art form that has been a singular hothouse of musical talent over the decades. There are, and have been, lots of not just great but brilliant players. But perhaps not unsurprisingly, there have been far fewer jazz originals. I mean by that, musicians whose playing has not only outshone most of their contemporaries, but continues to impact generations of players. We might well argue about who has been left out ...
Continue ReadingLennie Tristano Personal Recordings, 1946-1970
by Peter Rubie
They called it the Cool School, but what's in a name?In this case, quite a lot as it happens. The Cool School included musicians like Chet Baker, John Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet, and Dave Brubeck. Under the guidance of arranger and composer Gil Evans, it established itself in an unquestionable way with the release of Miles Davis' album Birth of the Cool (Capitol Records) in 1957, though the music had actually been recorded some eight or ...
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