Tag: jazz

On Jazz Piano Solo

Nate Chinen recently wrote an article on NYTimes.com that is one of the best surveys of solo jazz piano I have read. I have been checking out pretty much everyone mentioned in this piece lately in an attempt to improve my solo playing.  Three lesser known solo piano albums I also really like are: Phineas […]
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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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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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Remembering Michael Brecker

My Highschool had was a music ‘listening room’ with a bunch of tapedecks, record players, reel-to-reels and library of jazz records and tapes. It was a hidden and underutilized place. Only me and a few other megamusicnerds ever used it and I was usually in there completely alone. I used to hide out in there […]
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An Afternoon with Blossom

I’ve been listening to a lot of Blossom Dearie since learning of her death. What a loss. I had the good fortune to do a recording with her a few years back. I was doing the sound and incidental music for a Children’s TV pilot for my friends Bob and Anniken. They had managed 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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Spiders on the Keys

Listening to James Booker, half crazy and in the final years of his hard life make spine tingling music on this horrible saloon upright takes the term ‘it is a bad craftsman who blames his tools’ to a new level. These recordings were taken from hundreds of hours of tapes from Booker’s ‘77-82 solo piano […]
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