Antidote to Loneliness

 Published in Earshot Jazz February 2023

In the winter dark, Norah Jones’ voice warmed me as I drove wet Seattle streets. A piano solo drifted, lifting the temperature. The notes pondered, wondering rather than shouting for attention. The song was “Court and Spark” by Joni Mitchell. Had I not stayed with the sound, my mind would have wandered to worry. I loved jazz because it brought me back to the joy of possibilities.

The pandemic had kept me away from live music, both from the stage as a performer and in the seats as part of an audience, but I longed to be back with the sound and scene. A Chicago musician friend had declared October as “Hangtober” to counter his long isolation and each day posted on social media photos of bands he had ventured out to hear in person. I needed to reconsider, reconnect, and rekindle my place in my community. My jazz tribe was small but steadfast.

Jim Knapp (1939-2021)

Published in Earshot Jazz December 2021

James “Jim” Donald Knapp Jr. died at Cambridge Senior Care in Kirkland, Washington on November 13, 2021. He was born in Chicago on July 28, 1939 and given the same name as his father. His mother Mildred was from a musical family.

“For a kid, you’re not often used to see­ing adults being very happy. You know, there’s usually something wrong,” Knapp recalled in an oral history recorded in the Seattle Jazz Archive of the Seattle Public Library. “But [my father] was so happy when he was playing the piano and that had an effect on me, too.”

A Love Extreme: Fantastic Feelings from a Hidden Jazz Gem

Published in Earshot Jazz December 2021

Joe Brazil generously shared the genius of jazz giants. He opened his home to musicians. He studied and taught through taping innovators performing and talking. He stepped away from his job in computer programming at the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory and took a pay cut to pioneer teaching the history of jazz to college students. At the 1978 Black Musicians Conference (later renamed the Black Musicians Festival in 1998), Brazil presented on a panel with orga­nizer and bassist Vishnu Wood, bassist Reggie Workman, and critic Stanley Crouch. Brazil said,

I have, fortunately, through my life, come in contact with many of the great giants and so I feel that my life has been fulfilled, even though you have never heard of me. You know? But then, I have other information that I can transfer, I think, to young people. So, I have been taping and talking to people. I’ve got information. I’ve talked to Sonny Rollins for four or five hours. I’ve talked to Dexter [Gordon] many times. I’ve talked with John Coltrane. I’ve talked with everybody. I like saxophone players, too, because I play saxophone. But anyway, I feel that it’s to synthesize this history and bring it to the people so they become aware.

I first became aware of Brazil’s story in 2010, soon after I set out to write a scene from John Coltrane’s 1965 visit to Seattle, a particularly fertile but unsung episode when Coltrane self-produced two recordings–Live in Seattle at the old Penthouse jazz club on the corner of 1st and Cherry, and Om produced in a Lynnwood recording studio. Brazil’s story laid closest to the mystery I wanted to unravel. But Brazil had died in 2008 in the Tacoma home where he lived with his wife, Virginia, so I had to learn his story second-hand.

Seattle on the Spot: The Photographs of Al Smith

Published in Earshot Jazz January 2018

Music creates community—the fans, the frenzy, the fountain of youth. Today, concert audiences hold phones aloft to capture and post their favorite events. But bands were just as wild and crowds were just as enthusiastic 70 years ago, even though cameras at concerts were rare.

Fans of Seattle music history can thank photographer Al Smith (1916–2008) for focusing his solo lens on the thriving scene on Jackson Street during the surge of African-American migration here during the 1940s. Rebuilding the Pacific Fleet after Pearl Harbor and riveting together the Air Force bombers for Boeing made Seattle a boom town. Smith’s camera came out at night, when soldiers and solderers mingled at clubs and concerts.

While these images remain silent, they are so exuberant that your ears might tingle: vibraphonist Lionel Hampton at the apex of a downstage leap to end a song, bassist Oscar Pettiford onstage chugging from a whiskey bottle behind his boss Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie leaning back on one foot and aiming his trumpet skyward.

Neil Welch: Multiphonic Monk

Originally published in Earshot Jazz April 2014, Vol. 30, No. 04

By trying every day for a year, how many sounds can be made from a saxophone? What if you stayed away from conventional fingerings and melodies? What combinations of open and closed saxophone keys produce more than one note at a time? Neil Welch was determined to find out by searching through these multi-phonic textures alone, like a private meditation.

Eric Verlinde: Honoring Music's Core Values

Originally published in Earshot Jazz June 2013

At 10:00pm, the Tuesday night jam session at the Owl and Thistle launches into “Solar.” Eric Verlinde sits Buddha-like on stage behind a battered electric piano tagged with the letters “des,” all that remains of the Fender Rhodes logo. His mouth hangs open and he nods along with the brisk tempo. Under the dim stained glass ceiling lights, a small audience listens intently. Several have instrument cases next to their chairs, awaiting an invitation. Across the room at the bar, conversations are buried by the saxophone solo bouncing off the brick walls.
Verlinde’s piano solos explore melodic and rhythmic motives through repetition and variation. His playing doesn’t dazzle with technical fireworks, instead it smolders with joyful energy and balanced clarity. “I don’t always have preconceptions when sitting down to play,” Verlinde says. “But something always happens.”

2013 Demiero Jazz Festival

Originally published in Earshot Jazz February 2013

More than 80 student and adult jazz vocal ensembles will congregate in Edmonds, Washington from Thursday, February 28 through Saturday, March 2 for the 2013 DeMiero Jazz Festival. Daily performances and clinics from 8:30 to 4:00 are free and open to the public. Evening ticketed concerts start at 7:00 and feature internationally acclaimed guest artists.

Most educational jazz festivals center on a competition adjudicated by notable guest teachers and artists. Frank DeMiero had attended some festivals and judged at a few. “A lot of people didn’t get to take home a trophy,” he says. So 37 years ago, DeMiero originated a non-competitive vocal jazz festival with one goal – to give every participant an opportunity to be inspired, learn and take home helpful advice to advance their artistry. “What [all learners] need at those impressionable years is exemplary opportunities.”

Buster Williams / Ernie Watts

Originally published in Earshot Jazz October 2012

The big guns roll out for this festival concert. Bassist Buster Williams locks and loads the jazz love cannon with pianist Patrice Rushin, saxophonist Mark Gross and drummer Ndugu Chancler.

As a boy Williams heard bassist Oscar Pettiford solo on a record and the rest is history. His bass playing father “Cholly” was a fan of Slam Stewart and, like Stewart, strung his two basses at a higher pitch so that he didn’t have to reach as far to play high notes. Buster recalls that his father said, “If I restring my bass for you [to the normal tuning], you better be serious!”

Tamarindo / Tom Varner

Originally published in Earshot Jazz October 2012

Tamarindo, a trio from New York, made their self titled debut on Clean Feed Records in 2007. Five years later, Tucson born tenor and soprano saxophonist Tony Malaby brings his project to the festival. Malaby is a frequent flyer to Earshot events, appearing on stages here since the late 1990’s.

Bronx native bassist William Parker anchors the harmony for Tamarindo. Parker studied with bassists Richard Davis, Art Davis, Milt Hinton, Wilbur Ware and Jimmy Garrison. He performed with pianist Cecil Taylor for more than a decade. Parker is a published composer, playwright and poet with more than 20 recordings as a leader.

Susan Pascal

Originally published in Earshot Jazz October 2012

In this performance for Earshot, one of Seattle’s busiest vibraphonists, Susan Pascal, celebrates the 1960’s work of mallet masher Cal Tjader (1925-1982). Pascal will be joined by pianist Fred Hoadley and percussionist Tom Bergersen from Seattle’s Afro-Cuban jazz band Sonando. Pascal’s Soul Sauce ensemble is rounded out with bassist Chuck Deardorf and drummer Mark Ivester from Jovino Santos Neto’s Brazilian jazz band Quinteto.

Swedish American drummer Callen “Cal” Radcliffe Tjader, Jr. learned how to play the vibraphone while performing with pianist Dave Brubeck. His good vibes got him a job with pianist George Shearing. Later, Tjader sought out Cuban musicians to ply the warm waters of the late 1950’s Mambo craze. The title track of his 1964 album Soul Sauce, a cover of a Dizzy Gillespie song, climbed the radio charts and sold more than 100,000 copies.

Pascal began collecting music for this project in 2009 and the program has grown ever since. The Mambo music in the band’s book and mondo talent on stage create an embarrassment of riches.  “It's tough to decide which tunes to use,” Pascal says. “There are so many great ones to choose from. It's a balancing of mixing familiar hits with unknown gems. We start with the ground-breaking work of Mongo Santamaria and Dizzy Gillespie, then add collaborations of Cal Tjader and Clare Fischer with modern twists from Chick Corea and Don Grolnick.”

Pascal studied with Tom Collier, Director of Percussion Studies at the University of Washington since 1980 and newly appointed Chair of Jazz Studies. In addition to performances in Seattle clubs and concert stages, Pascal has toured Singapore multiple times. She appears on motion picture soundtracks for The Blind Side, The Wedding Planner and Office Space.

The audience may have a problem staying in their seats at Tula’s, especially after a few mint laced Mojitos. Pascal says, “Expect everything from solo vibraphone cadenzas to languid cha-chas and up-tempo mambo jams.