Interview News

Catching up with Greta Matassa

Source: Seattle Jazz Scene
May 23, 2010

So far this year, Greta Matassa has sung with the Spokane Jazz Orchestra in the Bing Crosby Theater, performed in the Muckleshoot Casino and the Edmonds Center for the Arts, packed the house at the Ballard Jazz Festival, and hosted a weekly gig at Tulas.

In July, she will sing the national anthem before Seattles Fourth of July fireworks show one fun thing after another, she said and in September, she will be in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato ...

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Interview: Buddy Collette (Part 4)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
May 24, 2010

In 1953, a full year before the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, Buddy Collette and other California musicians helped end the “separate but equal" practices of the American Federation of Musicians in Los Angeles. For decades, there were two union locals in the city--one for whites and another for blacks. Buddy, like many musicians at the time, viewed the split structure as unfair. Respected for his musicianship and his engaging, relaxed personality, Buddy was instrumental in helping ...

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Guitarist Sheryl Bailey Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
May 24, 2010

Sheryl Bailey has been rising to the top of the jazz guitar world ever since she burst onto the national scene by taking third place in the 1996 Thelonious Monk Guitar Competition. Following her top three finish in the competition, and graduating from the prestigious Berklee College of Music, Bailey has released five albums as a bandleader, a DVD and two instructional books, all while maintaining a seemingly constant touring schedule and holding down an associate professorship at her alma ...

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Interview: Buddy Collette (Part 5)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
May 24, 2010

Few events epitomize the disarray jazz was beginning to experience at the start of the 1960s than Charles Mingus' Town Hall concert of October 12, 1962. During this period, musicians increasingly were wresting control of their recordings away from producers who for years had imposed rigid structure on sessions. Mingus, for all of his creative vision and genius, could be volatile, mercurial and a royal pain in the neck. But he was widely regarded by most musicians of the period, ...

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Interview: Buddy Collette (Part 3)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
May 23, 2010

Between 1945 and 1972, only about a dozen groups changed the sound of jazz. In almost all cases, these highly influential ensembles introduced a completely new jazz style through innovative composition and instrument configuration. One of those groups was the Chico Hamilton Quintet, which in 1955 brought a new level of sophistication to jazz. Chico's vision was a group of enormously skilled players who also were highly sensitive and intuitive. Front and center was Buddy Collette, often on flute.

In ...

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Interview: Buddy Collette (Part 2)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
May 23, 2010

Like many aspiring musicians in Los Angeles in the 1930s, Buddy Collette picked up the clarinet and never looked back. During the Depression and into the 1940s, music was the only way out of the city's dense-packed black neighborhoods. But in the very late 1940s, with the rapid rise of television and expansion of the movie and record studios, music offered opportunities and possibilities that exceeded just a job. If you were disciplined, highly proficient and easygoing, a remarkably good ...

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Bass Icon Eddie Gomez Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
May 20, 2010

Eddie Gomez is known throughout the world as a consummate bassist, sterling educator and a musician active in a wide variety of musical settings. He has been on the music scene for more than 40 years and has worked with everyone from Bobby Darin to Giuseppi Logan. Gomez moved from Puerto Rico as a child and was playing music from an early age. He came to prominence when Bill Evans asked him to be the bassist for the pianist's trio, ...

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Hank Alone

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
May 19, 2010

In The New York Times “City Room" blog, Corey Kilgannon and Andy Newman have a strange, poignant followup to the news of Hank Jones's death. No one who knew Hank will be surprised at the selflessness it portrays or be unmoved by its tale of loneliness. He stayed active till the very end, collecting a Grammy last year and touring the world. But when he wasn't on the road, he lived in near isolation in a 12-by-12-foot room at 108th ...

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