Touring big bands are now a distant memory but the popularity of the genre is undiminished. Alex Stewart in his well-researched Making The Scene points out that in 1998...
A highly talented pianist and composer, Mary Lou Williams was also one of the very best arrangers of her generation. Yet when arrangers are written about or thought of,...
Blow By Blow, Part 2
There are few sounds in jazz so majestic as the quavering rattle of a typical and carefully calculated out of tune trumpet lead. To get...
In 2004, Reva Marin was a finalist for the Fleck Award for the best book in the category Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction. Her entry was Oscar: The Life And Music...
Surman's fourth solo album breaks no new ground but confirms his stature as one of today's finest improvisers and arrangers, Surman overdubbing his own instrumental lines into position as...
In 2005 Jazz Door released a DVD (seemingly now unobtainable) containing music by Duke Ellington and (separately) Sarah Vaughan, supposedly from Berlin concerts in 1969. In fact three of...