Thomas Conrad

Harold Mabern: Mabern Plays Coltrane, Paul Jost Quartet: While We Were Gone and Various Artists: Buena Vista Social Club 25th Anniversary Edition.

Jim Snidero: For All We Know; Noah Haidu: Standards II; Adam Schroeder & Mark Masters: CT!; Dino Betti van der Noot: Let Us Recount Our Dreams.

John Scofield: John Scofield, Fabian Willmann Trio: Balance and Charles Mingus: Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus.

I remember the only time i ever saw Chet Baker. It was at Parnell's, a jazz club in Pioneer Square in Seattle, long since defunct. It was a few years before Baker died under mysterious circumstances, in Amsterdam in 1988, after a life of creativity, notorious dissipation, and addiction.

Emaciated, with a caved-in face, he already looked near death. He played like an angel. I remember something that happened to me toward the end of the night. Sometimes last sets in jazz clubs, when the crowd has thinned, seem to exist outside of time.