RIP Angela Morley

I was sad to hear of the passing this week of the gifted arranger, orchestrator and composer Angela Morley. Morley’s evocative and subtle work on many of the TV Dramas of my youth (Dallas, Dynasty, Hotel etc) still play in my head as the background music of my childhood and was often many magnitudes higher […]
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In praise of the Juno 106 Librarian

The Roland Juno 106 is a true anolog-digital hybrid swiss army knife that invites deep experimentation like few other synths I have messed with. The single DC0 per voice makes a thin reedy sound on its own but boy can you fatten it up with lowpass filter and the ridiculously fat internal stereo chorus. I […]
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Buckwheat Zydeco Jackpot!

This sounds perhaps a little sad but I discovered Buckwheat about 25 years ago as a teenager when my mom bought the soundtrack album for ‘The Big Easy’. Even in the dead of winter in Rochester NY his tracks on that album were able to evoke swampy hot good times. It made me want to […]
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A Song of its Time

Two of Portishead guest DJd on All Songs Considered a few weeks back. They brought in a varied combination of music that was important to them as a band and were mocked playfully for including Noel Harrison’s cover of Michel LeGrand’s ‘Windmills of Your Mind’ in the list. They defended this track by describing it […]
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Catching the Wave

Well it is that time of year again. Winter blahs. Even with the pathetic warm winters that NYC has been serving up lately, February finds me lusting for sun and hammock. There are things about this album that works to cure these ills for an hour. First of all I love the cover. It was […]
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RIP Freddie Hubbard

Wow Freddie died. What a drag. He leaves an incredible body of work. Here is what I am listening today in his honor: Red Clay – Freddie Hubbard Mosaic – Art Blakey Hub Tones – Freddie Hubbard V.S.O.P – Herbie Hancock Maiden Voyage – Herbie Hancock
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Block Chord Piano Lesson

This is a video clip from Dick Hyman’s excellent series of jazz piano instructions. He outlines several useful patterns for playing block chord across the diatonic scale including mixing in a ‘drop 2’ voicing used widely by Barry Harris, Bill Evans and OP. Drop 2 on piano is a port of an orchestration technique for […]
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Clavinova Love

I am a pretty serious piano snob so a lot of people have been surprised that I bought a Yamaha Clavinova about 6 months back. I came to this conclusion because I live in an apartment and I sometimes like to wake up at 3AM and play my little heart out. When I used to […]
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Battling Butler with the BQE Project

Back when I was but a wee lad growing up in Rochester New York I used to play piano in a society orchestra called The Len Hawley Band. It was made up of a mix of local jazz musicians, down-on-their luck lounge buskers and top talent from Eastman School of Music. The band’s mission was […]
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RIP OP

Jazz piano has lost one its Jedis with the passing of Oscar Peterson on Sunday. Peterson was one of the pianists who really excited and inspired me about the potential of jazz piano when I was most at risk of giving up practicing the piano for sensualist teenage pursuits. Critics who have dismissed OP as […]
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