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Relentless Groove: The Life of Jymie Merritt
by Christopher Slone
Over the past fifty years there have been many stalwarts who've directed the course of jazz, but none is more deserving of tribute than Jymie Merritt. Although he has been unjustly under-recognized, his muscular bass playing has anchored many of this music's most prestigious ensembles, and in the process, he has helped to shape the genre ...
Peter King
by Martin Longley
Even though the English alto saxophonist Peter King has only occasionally appeared in New York, over the decades he's visited often enough to be very gradually establishing a connection with the city's scene. This month, King is part of Made In The UK, a touring package organized and funded by The Arts Council Of England, with ...
Milford Graves: Time Piece
by Marc Medwin
"Don't tell me how many years you've been doing something." Milford Graves's delivery is surprisingly restrained given the directness of his statement. “I want to know how completely you're filling that time, how you're spending each nanosecond." The statement defines the energy and vitality that this extraordinary musician brings to every aspect of his ...
Downtown Music Gallery A Summer Blockbuster Hit
by Mark Corroto
Imagine the opening credits to a summer blockbuster movie that starts out in space looking down at the earth. As the camera moves in you recognize North America, then the east coast comes into frame and finally the island of Manhattan. The camera pans across the skyscrapers, down, down, down to Chinatown between the Manhattan and ...
The Making of Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense
by Eric Benson
On an August morning in 1958, a 33-year-old photographer named Art Kane gathered 57 jazz musicians together on the steps of a Harlem brownstone. The resulting picture, known as “A Great Day in Harlem," appeared in the January 1959 issue of Esquire and has become the most famous image in jazz history. The photograph lacks the ...
Jim Black: Alas, Not Exactly a "Houseplant"
by Sean Patrick Fitzell
A day off is something drummer Jim Black rarely takes. At Skirl Party V in April, he played two sets with different bands, recorded with one the next day and left the day after that to tour Europe with another group. Next, it was Australia for several shows during the Melbourne Jazz Festival with a new ...
The Allman Brothers Band: 40 Years Out
by Alan Bryson
So what do Randy Brecker, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White have in common with Kid Rock, Eric Clapton and Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top? All were part of the Allman Brothers Band's three-week musical extravaganza at New York City's Beacon Theater celebrating the band's 40th anniversary. This year's list of surprise guests also included ...
Theo Jorgensmann: Sheep with Two Heads
by Noel Taylor
Theo Jörgensmann, the German free jazz clarinet maestro likes to quote the Austrian cultural historian, Egon Fridell: “pure originality has no great value--it is like a sheep with two heads." Fridell, who committed suicide in 1938 as the SA arrived at his door, was fond of illustrating his thinking with vivid and elliptical images of this ...
Snooky Young
by Rex Butters
When they called Eugene Edward Young up to the podium to receive his 2009 NEA Jazz Master's award, he was called by his professional name, Snooky. “I don't know how I got it," he said. “It started when I was a real little kid. I don't know where it came from. It used to be Snookum ...
Krzysztof Komeda: Poet of the Piano
by Jakob Baekgaard
To this day, the influence of Polish composer and pianist Krzysztof Komeda (1931-1969) can be felt in the works of contemporary artists like Marcin Wasilewski and, of course, in the music of his former trumpeter, Tomasz Stanko. It isn't too much to say that Komeda transformed the landscape of European jazz by the way he re-conceptualised ...
