Interview News

Interview

Diana Krall, Sellout?

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
May 3, 2010

A few years ago, Gene Lees and I fell into serious agreement. It happened in one of our long talks over a glass of wine, or two, at the big table just off the kitchen in his and Janet's house in Ojai. We were kicking around the peculiar effect that popular acceptance of an artist often has on the perception of critics and fellow musicians. We discussed the Modern Jazz Quartet, Cannonball Adderley, the Dave Brubeck Quartet and Diana Krall, ...

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Interview

Sonnenberg Sings Lees

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
May 3, 2010

A man named Paul Sonnenberg has posted a medley of songs with Gene Lees' lyrics. If you go here, you'll learn as much about Mr. Sonnenberg as I know. If you watch the video below, you'll see and hear him sing the songs, largely in tune, with a feel for the Brazilian samba idiom and with, for the most part, the correct English lyrics. In “Quiet Night of Quiet Stars," it should be, “...how lovely," not “...so lovely," but that's ...

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Interview

Teachout on Lees

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
May 3, 2010

Tributes to Gene Lees continue, for good reason. A line from Longfellow applies: “Dead he is not, but departed - for the artist never dies."

Terry Teachout remembers Gene in today's Wall Street Journal:

Had Gene been born sooner, he would surely have been as famous and successful as the top songwriters of the '30s and '40s. But he came along after the cultural tide of jazz had started to ebb, and by the time his songs were making their ...

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Interview

Jeff Sultanof on Gene Lees

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
May 3, 2010

Since the Rifftides entry about Gene Lees' death on April 22, we have received a flood of comments. They are posted in the comments section at the end of that piece. A couple of days later, Gene's friend Jeff Sultanof sent me a message that he intended as a private communique. I was moved by it and persuaded Jeff to revise it as a guest column. My intention was to post it four days ago, but the malware Darth Vader ...

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Interview

Kenny Davern, Remembered

Source: Jazz Lives by Michael Steinman
May 3, 2010

First, some comedy. The last time I saw Kenny Davern in action was at Sunnie Sutton's 2006 Rocky Mountain Jazz Party--only a few months before his death. At the dinner for musicians and friends the night before the party started, Kenny took a napkin off one of the tables, draped it over his arm, and transformed himself into an elderly, mournful New York Jewish waiter, asking each table, “Is anything all right?"

Then, in the middle of a set, he ...

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Interview

The Legacy of Freddie Hubbard

Source: The Independent Ear by Willard Jenkins
May 3, 2010

The attitude pendulum towards creative artists most often swings most heavily-- as it should--to the enormity of their gifts with the passage of time for those whose careers were marked by questionable behavior. Our collective memory tends to soften towards those guilty of even the most egregious behavioral lapses after they've passed on to ancestry, and as time allows us the opportunity to ponder what they left here for us to learn; their respective human frailties are dealt with a ...

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Interview

Happy Birthday, Richard "Groove" Holmes!

Source: Riffs on Jazz by John Anderson
May 2, 2010

Organist Richard “Groove" Holmes (born May 2, 1931) must have been extremely fond of his nickname. Or the marketing people at the record labels he recorded for were just cashing in on his brand. For whatever reason, variations on the word groove appear in numerous album titles:Groovin' with Jug (1961)Blue Groove (1967)The Groover! (1968)Workin' on a Groovy Thing (1969)New Groove (1974)Groove's Groove (1991) Songs recorded with the same theme included “Groove's Groove," “Groovin for Mr. G," and “Let's ...

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Interview

Multi-Instrumentalist/Composer Fred Frith Interviewed at AAJ...And More!

Source: All About Jazz
May 3, 2010

Since emerging in the 1970s with the fearless British group Henry Cow, multi-instrumentalist Fred Frith has built a career that's as comfortable in the realm of contemporary classical music as it is the equally innovative arena of free improvisation. From collaborations with John Zorn to his latest “rock" group, Cosa Brava, Frith refuses to sit still; instead, constantly mining the farthest reaches of musical style for a personal amalgam that's as far-reaching globally as it is intimate in its reflection ...

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