(Charles Mingus was born 100 years ago today. He’s a musical hero of mine, and although I never got the chance to hear him live, I still hav...

When the internet was just a baby, before music streaming was even a notion, I reported this story on how NEA funding brought a jazz band to...

I’d seen some clips of previous gigs from this tour on social media before last night’s concert, and based on those I was worried the musica...

if I could toss into the air one crystalline line ending the silence of a moment ago and if that line folded into itself self perpetuated th...

Back in the late ’80s and into the ’90s I wrote for the quarterly Midwest Jazz (originally called The Arts Midwest Jazzletter ). These were...

Yesterday was Monk’s birthday. Every minute of the day, in fact before it even was the actual day, I knew it was Monk’s birthday: late Frida...

It took me longer than it should have to catch up with the legendary Chicago tenorman Von Freeman, whose 97th birthday would have today: bac...

I was getting off a plane and spotted him sitting alone with his wife in a darkened and otherwise empty airport gate. I felt I had to say so...

Charlie Parker, who was born 100 years ago today, was a gift to humanity. Like jazz itself, he was a gift to the world from America, in spit...

I developed my first notions of a graphic design aesthetic as a kid, more or less by osmosis, thanks to my record collection: once I realize...

Most record labels make their products available on the various streaming platforms that have (for better or worse, generally the latter in ...

I’m not going to get this right, but I’m trying to remember the time Bill Walsh shared a cab with John Scofield and Jack DeJohnette, I th...

You’d purchase tangible, physical media when you’d buy your music. LPs had a specific “new record smell” (vinyl, printer’s ink, fresh cardbo...

I know EXACTLY where I was 10 years ago today, the day Michael Brecker died: I was in New York, at the International Association of Jazz Edu...

I’m firing up the mighty blog again, after a bit of a pause. Amongst other things, I’d like to put up some more of my published reviews an...

In my analysis of Dexter Gordon’s solo on There Will Never Be Another You (from Body & Soul , recorded in 1967), I make a semi-biggish...

From the Fresh Sound recording Sun Sol (Seamus Blake/Marc Miralta Trio), recorded August 1999, in New York City. PDF Seamus Blake Go tra...

I’m performing later this week in one of Buffalo’s more unusual spaces: an old, once-abandoned grain elevator on the Buffalo River. Last w...

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Performed by What Would Mingus Do? at PAUSA Art House in Buffalo, New York, on June 6, 2013. Kelly Bucheger, tenor saxophone; Mark Filsing...

This article appeared in the Arts Midwest Jazzletter Fall 1991 (Vol. 9, #4), an Arts Midwest publication. Reprinted with permission. Nev...

I love this track. In August I attended Dave Liebman’s saxophone master class at NYU in New York. At the end of the week Liebman had arran...

Here’s a YouTube featuring Brazilian bassoonist Alexandre Silverio playing my Michael Brecker Invitation transcription . This is NUTS!

I first encountered the term “harmolodic” in the liner notes to Ornette Coleman’s Dancing In Your Head LP. The record was one of those ...

This article appeared in Midwest Jazz Summer 1994 (Vol. 1, #2), an Arts Midwest publication. Reprinted with permission. The year 1959 wa...