Jazz Fiction
A Love Supreme at Carnegie Hall: Coltrane’s Night of Fire and Grace
Concept by Dave Kaufman | Written by AI
Carnegie Hall, New York City--November 1965. Something sacred broke open the air last night. It began not with a note, but with a shimmer. Elvin Jones washed a mallet across a suspended gong, a metallic exhale that seemed to expand until it touched the gilded balconies of Carnegie Hall. The silence that followed was heavy, not empty--the kind of silence that waits for a prophecy. When John Coltrane stepped forward, flanked by McCoy Tyner and Jimmy ...
Continue ReadingResonant Access
Concept by Michael Ricci | Written by AI
In this jazz fiction piece, Resonant Access, music is more than expression--it's a form of inquiry. Elliot Mercer, a modern jazz alto saxophonist and theoretical physicist, discovers that sustained tones and careful listening can destabilize the very systems meant to observe and control the world around him. Blending improvisation, science, and quiet resistance, the story explores jazz as a discipline of resonance, choice, and freedom--one that exists only in the moment it is played. Elliot Mercer discovered it ...
Continue ReadingBreath Without End: The Trumpeter Who Found Faith and Never Died
Concept by Richard J Salvucci | Written by AI
For most of his life, Samuel Calder believed in only two things: breath and brass. Faith, eternity, and the unseen were abstractions best left to philosophers and preachers. What mattered was the pressure of air through the lungs, the resistance of metal against the lips, and the fleeting perfection of a note played exactly right. Samuel Calder was a trumpet player. He had been a good one, too--never famous, never forgotten. For four decades he played ...
Continue ReadingTo Boldly Swing
Concept by Michael Ricci | Written by AI
I boarded the U.S.S. Enterprise at Starbase 11 with my hands in my coat pockets, feeling for all the universe like a kid walking into his first club date--equal parts confidence and nerves. The ship loomed above me, impossibly clean, humming softly, as if already in a comfortable vamp. You could feel it breathing. “Welcome aboard," said the transporter chief, smiling as if jazz bands materialized on Federation starships every day. Maybe they did. It was 2265, after ...
Continue ReadingInterruptions On A Christmas Eve
by Arthur R George
The small restaurant and occasional music bistro was closed for Christmas Eve. Its owner Ernie DiVitale had darkened the room. There was light enough, from the Christmas tree in the corner and spilling in from a lamp over the prep area in the kitchen, to relax with his wife Veronica at a back table over cappuccini and frutti di bosco tortas, ricotta cheese cake with fresh fruit toppings, a special treat in winter. For Ernie and Veronica it ...
Continue ReadingHoliday Notes Across A Hallway
by Arthur R George
A knock on the door of Augie Cannataro's apartment. He peered through the security window to see the single mother from across the hall. They had always nodded politely at each other when passing in the lobby or hallway. He was respectful but didn't want to approach an involvement in whatever her life was with her son, who Cannataro had also seen in passing and had heard through the walls of their apartments making painful attempts at saxophone practice.
Continue ReadingThen the Saints Came Marching In
by Tony Ozuna
"Satchmo! Pops! Mr. Louis! Mr. Armstrong!" Flash, Flash, Flash, Flash. Cameras ahead. All he could do was smile in reply, with his big grin, and keep on moving through the crowd. Behind him, his entourage followed along trepidly. The Louis Armstrong band, or in their own terms, the OJ Express: the Original Jazz Express. But when Louis was feeling down, he would refer to the group as the Old Jazz Express, because the jazz that they made ...
Continue ReadingTwo Presidents—Vaclav & Bill
by Tony Ozuna
On January 11, 1994, US President Bill Clinton was recorded live at the Reduta Jazz Club in Prague, playing sax with Czech jazz players. Czech Radio Broadcasting later released the recording of this concert on the CD titled Two Presidents' Jam Session, (Praha, 1994), with sponsorship by the Radegast brewery. Statements by Vaclav Havel in italics (below) are taken either from the recording or archives from the Vaclav Havel Library. The friendships with other musicians that Havel speaks of are ...
Continue ReadingBetween The Devil And the Deep Blue Sea
by Dan McClenaghan
When the wife invites the ladies over for Mahjong, I get out of the house. They're a great bunch, but they play the game like it's a blood sport. Fractious trash-talk melodies. Clacking, tile-smacking-the-table percussion. Wild ear-piercing laughter... So I drove down to the beach, Ella Fitzgerald singing about the devil and the deep blue sea on my sound system. I parked and hobbled with my quad cane to the beach access and sat my old butt halfway ...
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 ...
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