Blog - Jazz Spectrum

So Many Lovely Things

In 1992, I was drawn to a show at the Regatta Bar in Cambridge featuring Joe Henderson and Freddie Hubbard on the front line. With his 1985 recording, The State of the Tenor, Joe had reestablished himself as a not-to-be-missed musician and one of the inarguable occupants of jazz’s vaunted tenor-saxophone. And Freddie, a wunderkind trumpeter who rose to heady prominence in the early 1960s, had reliably returned from his fusion digressions to produce a series of notable records in the mid-to late 80s. Read More

The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery

Wes Montgomery recorded The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery (featured on a recent Jazz Spectrum Friday) for the Riverside label over two days in January 1960, his second date as a leader and the first to fully chart the new territory he was defining for the instrument. The boastful title, so at odds with Wes’s mild and modest nature, came from the producer, Orrin Keepnews, who during those years was both an incisive judge of talent and an astute marketer. Read More

For Abdullah Ibrahim (1934–2026)

In 2005 I traveled with my oldest daughter to South Africa for a bit of work and a lot of what Duke Ellington called the “Tourist Point of View.” One afternoon during our interlude in Cape Town we were hosted for tea and dessert at a Cape Malay home. I’ve lost most of the small facts about the visit, but I recall the mood, the laughter, and the warmth of our hosts. This I really do recall: the sensation, as the hours unwound, of having been in that room, or at least having felt its ambience, before. Read More

On Seeing Abdullah Ibrahim in 2018

My most recent contribution to this blog was a recollection of seeing Sonny Rollins perform in 2009. Now I return with a memory, now bittersweet due to his own death this week, of seeing Abdullah Ibrahim in 2018. Rollins was 79, old only until the moment when the band and his own playing lit a spark. Ibrahim was 83 and although ever alert and observant, he was less energetic. Read More

Don Byas: A Celebration

The recent death of Sonny Rollins prompted the kind of grand homage that a career of that magnitude warrants. For nearly seven decades, Sonny was the — or at least a —  dominant voice on the tenor saxophone, not immune from the whims of musical fashion or the occasional eclipse of a brighter new star, but always present, active, recording, performing, forever searching. His fame was proportionate to his genius.  It grew as he aged, and it will survive his passing. Not every genius is so fortunate. Read More

For Sonny Rollins (1930–2026)

Imagine it: you’re scuffling in New York, Autumn 1959, writing your first stage play and believing that you might be Chekhov or Brecht. Your late shift ends somewhere in Brooklyn, and you make your way home through the New York night – across the Williamsburg Bridge and on toward your tiny studio with the grimy window overlooking Washington Square. Somewhere above you on the bridge, carried on the night air, you hear something – a sound at once keening and robust, probing and assured. Read More

Solo Sonny, Road Shows Vol. 3: 19 September 2009, St. Louis

Sonny Rollins was active from 1947 to 2014. He played a lot—gigs, practice, jam sessions, practice, at least 45 studio recordings as a leader, and practice. I want to focus on just nine minutes out of all those hours and hours of playing jazz at the highest level. Those are not necessarily special, though that Sonny, so often dissatisfied with his own playing, released it to us eager listeners says he thought it was at least okay. However I was present at that performance, so it is pretty damn special to me. Read More

Miles Davis at 100 – Part 4: Why His Music Matters

Here at Jazz Spectrum Central, it’s Miles Davis week in honor of the centenary of his birth. Read More

Miles Davis at 100 – Part 3: The Second Great Quintet

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