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Celebrated New York City–based jazz drummer Billy Drummond recalls his first visit, with the group OTB ("Out of The Blue"), to the Mount Fuji Jazz Festival in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. It was 1988. The Festival's elite drummers ranged in age from 69 (Art Blakey) to 26 (Ralph Peterson). In between were Roy Haynes, Tony Williams, Clifford Barbaro, Victor Lewis, Lewis Nash, Kenny Washington, Cindy Blackman—"and me," Drummond told me, by phone.

Drummond,…

Roy Haynes was described by Thelonious Monk as "an eight ball right in the side pocket." Haynes's inventive drumming can be traced back to New York's fabled Swing Street; he played…

Many recordings are referenced in the main text of this article, in the mini-biographies of particular musicians. Here are some more, for your edification and listening pleasure, a few by drummers not mentioned elsewhere in this feature. Most of these recordings are available at the major streaming services. The drummer, of course, is listed first.

1930s and '40s
Paul Barbarin with Louis Armstrong, "Cuban Pete," A Chronological Study of the Louis Armstrong Orchestra 1935–41, Volume 3 (Swaggie)
Chick Webb and His…

Most of us mellow with age; there's no sin in that. Hell, nowadays I can even cope with people playing U2 in my presence. But whilst mellow doesn't have to mean bland, it can sometimes blunt a musician's art.

For me, for a while Elvis Costello has been too much of the elder lyricist rather than the cutting iconoclast he once was. Okay, no one expects an angry Peter Pan, but let's face it, with everything…

Harold Mabern made this record when he was 81, 20 months before he died, with a sextet full of badasses 30 years younger. You might think his five sidemen had to go easy on their aging leader. If you thought that, you would be wrong. The guy here with the most striking…

A thirst for good tunes led me to this new recording of Mendelssohn Violin Sonatas. For a composer as prolific as Mendelssohn, it may come as a surprise that of the three completed sonatas and one sonata fragment on this 67-minute recording, Mendelssohn chose to publish only one, which he composed the year he turned 14. Even more astounding, the finest and most original of…

The backstory—or parts of it—is important to fully understand the front story: this review. So stick with me. Founded by Wilhelm Franz in Berlin in 1940, EMT began as a…

The…

A track I have recently been using to judge a speaker's low-frequency behavior is "All Too Well (Taylor's Version)" from Taylor Swift's album Red (24/96 FLAC, Big Machine Records/Qobuz). At 2:25, when Swift sings "'Cause there we are again in the middle of the night," the bass line drops an octave. The effect sounds awesome even on the little KEF LS50s, but on the Monitor Audio with the ports open, it was all too much.

I blocked both ports on each speaker and listened again to the low-frequency warble tones. Now the tones were reproduced evenly down to 63Hz, but the 50Hz and 40Hz…

Description: Three-way, reflex-loaded, floorstanding loudspeaker. Drive units: two 8" (203mm) RDT III woofers, 4" (102mm) RDT III midrange unit, MPD III tweeter. Port tuning frequency: 32Hz. Crossover frequencies: 650Hz, 3kHz. Frequency response: 25Hz–60kHz, –6dB (free-field); 17Hz–60kHz, –6dB (in-room). Nominal impedance: 4 ohms. Minimum impedance: 4.0 ohms at 3.75kHz. Sensitivity: 88dB/2.83V/m (freefield). Recommended power: 200–800W, music program. Maximum continuous power handling: 400W, pink noise with 6dB crest factor. Supplied accessories: screw-in cone…