Vintage Metheny
“Icefire (featured on the album Watercolors) was like the tune San Lorenzo, based on the idea of taking an electric 12 string guitar and totally restringing it with light gauge unwound strings – tuning them in fourths and fifths to each other in their pairs, and essentially making a ‘pentatonic/diatonic’ tuning of the open strings. Read more
Celebrating Joni Through Herbie
Earlier this week Joni Mitchell celebrated her 68th birthday. And although she is not officially considered a jazz artist in the traditional sense it is no secret that she loves the music and has always incorporated a variety of aspects of it in her work… Read more
A Reason to SMiLE
The greatest rock and roll album never completed was The Beach Boys SMiLE. Recorded shortly after the groundbreaking Pet Sounds album in 1966, it found lead Beach Boy and legendary composer Brian Wilson (at only 24) at the peak of his creative prowess merging his Southern California branded popular music into new and abstract sonic territories. Read more
Q&A: Robin Eubanks
Robin Eubanks is one of the preeminent trombone players in jazz. He has recorded and performed with legends Art Blakey, JJ Johnson, Joe Henderson, Dave Holland and many others. Read more
Stanley Jordan Solo
Stanley Jordan is an inventive and emotional musician. Whether performing on guitar or piano or both, he always finds a way to communicate a unique and rich musical narrative to the listener. Read more
The Traneumentary: Charles Tolliver
Multi-talented trumpeter and bandleader Charles Tolliver shares his very personal story about John Coltrane – the man and his music. Read more
A Brush with Dizzy
In 1991, I had the honor of meeting Dizzy Gillespie while covering the Monterey Jazz Festival for the bulletin board version of Jazz Online (pre web) and KJAZ. My press credentials gave me access to the artist lounge which was located directly behind the main stage area. Everyone, who was anyone, hung out there during the festival especially from the late afternoon until the wee hours of the morning. Read more
Rudy Van Gelder Reminisces
For anyone who loves and knows recorded jazz the name Rudy Van Gelder is a familiar one. Rudy has produced and recorded some of the greatest jazz albums of all-time and will forever be recognized as a leader in engineering, producing, recording and documenting much of the music’s greatest moments. Read more
Jazz Backstage: Al Jarreau
Al Jarreau won the Grammy® for Best Jazz Vocal Performance in 1977 for the album Look To The Rainbow. The album’s success and award placed Al on the map as the leading and innovative jazz singer of the day. One of the album’s highlights was Al’s brilliant vocal interpretation of the Paul Desmond classic “Take Five.” Read more
Q&A: Eliot Zigmund
I feel fortunate to be old enough to have grown up in a time where listening to the radio and buying albums was one of the activities you looked forward to. Each week my friends and I ventured into San Francisco and hit the Tower Records store on Columbia and Bay Street with hopes of buying a hot new record…or cassette or 8 track…whichever we could afford. Read more
Swingin’ with Sting
The great jazz bassist Christian McBride has played a supporting role to everyone from Herbie Hancock to Pat Metheny to Diana Krall and many more. Aside from his core work in jazz, he has also performed and recorded with a slew of legendary popular musicians including the late James Brown, The Roots, Queen Latifah, Bruce Hornsby and most notably fellow bassist Sting. Read more
Sonic Payton
Shooting Nicholas Payton’s Sonic Trance band @ Yoshi’s in Oakland back in the day was truly a blast and a highlight of the many video shoots that we produced from the mid 1990′s into the mid 2000′s. On this evening, we had three cameras and a 32 track audio truck parked right outside to capture Nick and the guys performing. Read more
