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Herman Leonard, 1923-2010
Herman Leonard died last Saturday in Los Angeles at 87. A master of backlighting in smoky atmospheres, and of meticulous darkroom wizardry, Leonard photographed images that caught the mood of music-making by some of the most significant jazz artists of the 20th century. For an obituary, see the New Orleans Times-Picayune's website. Leonard lived and worked ...
Correspondence, Illustrated, from Canada
With too many Rifftides posts lately about the deaths of prominent figures in jazz, it was good to hear from someone who documents the work of young musicians. The message came from Randy Cole in Montreal.I've been making a number of short films, and I wanted to share one with you. Most of my films thus ...
Abbey Lincoln, RIP
Abbey Lincoln died today in New York. The singer and actress was 80 years old. After meeting Max Roach when he played drums on one of her record sessions in 1957, Ms. Lincoln came under his sway in her approach to music and in uncompromising civil rights activism. She and Roach married in 1962 and divorced ...
Leon Breeden, Gone
The average jazz listener—whoever that might be—may never give a thought to how his favorite musicians learned their art. There was a time, long past, when most professional jazz artists reached proficiency through on-the-job training. Music departments in institutions of higher education took decades to recognize jazz as a serious branch of music. Older jazz players ...
Recent Listening: Dana Hall
Dana Hall, Into The Light (Origin). Drummers who flaunt their technique can be enemies of music when their busyness becomes the center-ring distraction in a band. Dana Hall is a busy drummer, but in his case that's a compliment. He accompanies with waves of rhythmic patterns surging and swelling behind, under and around soloists. This 40-year-old ...
Oliver Nelson Revisited
In his few years, Oliver Nelson achieved major success as a composer and arranger in jazz and in the Hollywood studios. His first big band collection, Afro-American Sketches (1961), made it clear that he was an important new talent. His Blues And The Abstract Truth with an all-star septet that included Bill Evans, Freddie Hubbard and ...
Correspondence: Weekend Listening Tip
Jim Wilke, known worldwide for his Jazz After Hours satellite radio program, also runs a popular weekly broadcast featuring musicians from the Pacific Northwest. He sent this alert about the first program in a new series. It will present music from a major festival that ended last weekend. Centrum Jazz Port Townsend Festival Big Band next ...
Elder Lee: Konitz at 82
The alto saxophonist Lee Konitz's inventiveness and boldness have seldom flagged. As his recent recordings demonstrate, he continues to embrace adventure and risk. If his repertoire is stocked with pieces that he revisits time and again—"All the Things You Are," “I'll Remember April," “Body and Soul," “Just Friends"—Konitz is the epitome of the jazz soloist who ...
Mitch Miller and Bird
Jazz listeners who derided the sing-along records and TV shows that made Mitch Miller rich and famous in the 1950s and '60s tended to forgive him the shallowness of his pop pap because he played with Charlie Parker. Miller died over the weekend at the age of 99. See Matt Schudel's excellent obituary in The Washington ...
Desmond a la Francais
The French jazz critic Alain Gerber is also a novelist, or vice versa. He published a book in 2007 that may be a biography, a novel, or both. Its title in French is Paul Desmond et le côté féminin du monde, or Paul Desmond and the Feminine Side of the World. That is the extent of ...
