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Highly Opinionated

HIGHLY OPINIONATED

Who Needs Monk?

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2017 is Thelonious Monk's hundredth anniversary year and as good a time as any to ask whether he has anything to teach young, ambitious, up-and-coming jazz musicians today. Monk's recordings still nurture and entertain countless jazz fans, and the clarity and directness of his conception makes him a wonderful “introductory" artist for newbies. Gigging jazz musicians draw from the well of his compositions to fill their sets, and it's hard to imagine a future where “'Round Midnight" or ...

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Jazz Karaoke anyone?

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Venues seem to want jazz karaoke more than jazz with attitude. With decibel meters, political correctness and noise laws, is the rebel music of Bird, Monk and Dizzy being snipped and manipulated into being safe for the masses? Do folks really want their jazz neutered, or genetically modified? (It may look and taste like jazz, but it sho' nuff tastes like Kenny G.) From an outward perspective, it seems that some artists are so worried about offending people, they end ...

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Dusseldorf Rally: Jazz's Best Kept Secret?

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Year after year, the Dusseldorf Jazz Rally continues to provide visitors with one of the finest festival experiences to be found in Western Europe. While other events in the region may spend more on self-promotion, feature more prominent line-ups or gather more media coverage, the Jazz Rally cheerfully and consistently serves up what is quite likely the best bargain of the bunch. The festival originated in 1993 and has enjoyed general stability and growth since it's inception. The ...

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The New Orleans All-Star Brass Band: Do You Know What It Means?

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This article was originally published in October 2006. It has been said that the truest expression of a people is in its music and dance. That being the case, then pianist {m: Herbie Hancock was right on the money when he described jny: New Orleans as “the soul of our country. The nation's soul however, was laid painfully bare for the world to see when hurricane Katrina struck. Katrina killed over fifteen hundred people and forced the displacement ...

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Sing a Mean Tune, Kid: Chicago for people who hate Chicago

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When people rebuff my attempts to share my love of jazz-pop-rock group Chicago with them, I understand their qualms. Really, I do. Few bands went from being quite so inventive to quite so predictable in the long, tough slog between 1968 and 1984. (The political parallels alone are terrifyingly relevant: many of the exact same people who were in SDS went on to become Yuppies by the midpoint of the Reagan years, but I digress.) So, I understand ...

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Sacred Cows, Led Zeppelin and Does the Song Remain the Same?

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"Sacred cows make the tastiest cheeseburgers" --after Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989) I have always said of popular culture, that like a McDonald's cheeseburger, it is to be consumed but never considered. Much of music is nothing more than a reflection of popular culture and certainly falls beneath that grand proclamation. A good deal of hip hop and all of dubstep, electro house, post-hardcore and what passes for R&B today will not be remembered, much less heard regularly, in fifty ...

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Roswell Rudd: The Musical Magus Turns 75

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"Years ago it would have seemed an impossible dream to get to record with this musical magus, but here we are... and what a thrill!" class="f-right">--Charlie Kohlhase, From liner notes to Eventuality: The Charlie Kohlhase Quintet Plays the Music of Roswell Rudd (Nada, 2001)

I see him suddenly as if in a dream. His eyes are somewhat cynical, questioning and beautiful. Wrinkles of laughter pucker up at the edges, and he reminds me of my father. ...

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Free Jazz: The Jazz Revolution of the '60s

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[Editor's note: Revised and expanded here, this piece originated as an oral essay for an installment of the Cosmoetica Omniversica internet radio series on the arts and sciences. The series was hosted by Dan Schneider and Art Durkee.] More or less officially unveiled with the first New York appearance of the Ornette Coleman Quartet at the Five Spot Café in the fall of 1959, free jazz (or new black music, space music, new thing, anti-jazz or abstract jazz ...

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Tcha Limberger: Gypsy In The Footsteps Of Bela Bartok

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The hair of the bow gently caresses the string, catching an “A" high on the upper register. Then, in a series of sweeping glissandos, it descends the diatonic scale in a minor mode. I am caught in its downdraft like a bird on a rapidly cooling thermal, falling... falling through air thick with saddening notes. The violin is never alone. It is pursued and coaxed ever onward by the dense clusters of notes played by the bracs of Olah Norbert, ...

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Don Cherry: From Out of the Shadows

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It was cool in Bombay that July in 1985, or was it 1986? Somehow the year does not seem to matter quite as much as it did when the phenomenon first occurred. The other details, of course, I remember clear as day. Association PC were tearing it up on stage at the fabled arena of the historic (for India at that time) Jazz Yatra an international jazz festival hosted by Jazz India since 1978. The Max Mueller Bhavan was responsible ...