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Dear readers,
You can find our December 2008 issue on newsstands now.
You can find our December 2008 issue on newsstands now.
I am proud of this issue for many reasons, just as I am proud of every issue for many reasons, but I want to focus on the December issue's cover. Next to President-elect Obama on the October 30th issue of Rolling Stone and Megan Fox on the October 2008 issue of GQ, it is my favorite cover of the year. We saved the best for last, I feel. I love the color combination; it never would have occurred to me to match orange with this particular shade of purple, but I think it works very well—it is…
Last Friday at the Jazz Standard, I saw clarinetist Don Byron play compositions from his 1996 Bug Music, maybe his greatest album, certainly one of the most exciting jazz albums of that decade. It features music from the ‘30s by John Kirby, Raymond Scott, and Duke Ellington—an era largely neglected by jazz musicians and historians.
Byron says the title “Bug Music” comes from an old episode of The Flintstones, in which Fred, Wilma, and all the other cavemen and women of Bedford are nauseated by the new “Bug Music with them four insects”—a parody at the time of the Beatles. Just as most…
Maria Schneider and her 18-piece orchestra play their annual Thanksgiving week gig at the Jazz Standard starting Nov. 25 and continuing till the 30th (except for Thursday, when the club is closed), and if you’re in the tri-State area, you should reserve seats now, as her shows usually sell out. Regular readers of this blog may recall my previous ravings about Schneider. A former student of Gil Evans and Bob Bookmeyer, she is the most sumptuous jazz arranger on the jazz scene today, having absorbed her teachers’ penchant for lush stacked harmonies and added a flair for Latin rhythms, a…
Saturday
The very lazy day started off with me not taking a shower. Following that, I played another interesting record: Gegenwind by Pirchner-Pepl-Jazzwio from the Mood Records label. What initially attracted me to the album was Harry Pepl's Ovation guitar on the cover, and I always have to support my fiberglass-guitar-bodied homies.
Gegenwind really showcased the ability of my system, most notably in terms of soundstage and realism. Werner Pichner's vibraphone moved from right to left across the right-center of the soundstage, and I sensed the true softness of the mallets,…