Nate Dorward

Happy birthday, Mike.

When I look at a credit like that, the question that occurs to me is, "OK, so who REALLY wrote it, & who just stuck his name on?"

Why not? I've rarely heard anything less than excellent from him. Was listening to Contours earlier today, & the recent stack here also has the RCA Victor big-bands, Crystals & Fuschia Swing Song.

Yeah, Menza Lines is excellent. Haven't heard the one Jim's talking about, yet. John Bacon's the drummer on those weird Roswell Rudd CIMP discs; haven't come across him elsewhere.

Anyone heard her work with Mark Helias? That's an association I wouldn't have expected, & I was curious if that album was worth checking out. All I've heard are the duos with Kenny Barron--booorring. But what's she been doing in the years since then anyway? Speaking o' Burnham, just got the new Odyssey disc on Pi in the mail & am looking forward to a spin later this morning. Yeah, he's a terrific player.

Actually I think Balliett's comment on Roach was that Roach has a lousy sound on the drums. I can look it up later. -- His comments on Miles Davis tended to resolve around accusing him of making music out of self-pity (the collabs with Gil Evans in particular). I must confess I have mixed feelings about Byard too, though this is in part just from seeing a couple of unfortunate concerts late in his life which were genuinely depressing.

Not too hard to, I'd think--they seem to pop up everywhere.

David--the blips are on the master tape, it's not just your CD. Impulse could have been a little more honest & acknowledged the dropouts in the liners. -- They're fortunately not irritating enough to detract from the music itself. I doubt anyone likes Ascension at first listen. You have to live with it a while.

Yeah, they were great on Don Byron's Romance..., even though I didn't like Byron's work on there much. A duo? Sounds very promising. Ted Poor, eh? Loved his work with the Respect Sextet (Respect in You's one of the best discs of 2005, or late 2004 anyway), & didn't know he was working with C. Vu & Frisell.

That session with Carl Perkins is some of Pepper's greatest music, though I doubt that Mosaic could do much with the sound -- it always had some distortion on the louder bits ("Webb City" e.g.).

There's a (fairly lukewarm, if I'm reading it rightly) review of it on Bagatellen by Derek Taylor: http://www.bagatellen.com/archives/reviews/001149.html

Yeah, a great pianist: thanks for doing this show. The new solo album on Clean Feed is typically excellent (& comes with some nifty liner notes from John Medeski).

I'd imagine the list of "the top jazz minds" would be more entertaining & revealing than the supposed list of the 50 greatest pianists.

As far as I'm concerned a musician is "innovative" when he/she makes music that's interesting to listen to & heartfelt. Which Douglas certainly has, even if I've found recent work a little less interesting (haven't heard the Keystone disc, just Bow River Falls which is all right but not that exciting).

I should direct people to Ron's list of Breau's best discs in a comment on my site -- http://www.ndorward.com/blog/?p=70#comment-400 A pity that some of those discs seem to be really hard to find right now...

I must confess I've mostly stiopped doing these puzzles after moving on to the more challenging variant known (in English) as Killer Sudoku (no starting numbers given, just the sums of certain groups of numbers) but if you're looking for solving techniques there are many good spots on the web: this is the one I favour: http://www.simes.clara.co.uk/programs/sudokutechniques.htm

Only discs I've heard are the one with Thornton, & a really fascinating set of Futurist poetry settings called Arc Voltaic. Keep meaning to check him out more, though I'm not sure how one gets hold of In Situ discs in Canada.... (don't think Verge carries them?)

Liner notes to Big Band/Quartet if memory serves actually says "Oska T" was Monk's son's distortion of "Ask for tea" but I think maybe your explanation makes more sense? & of course there's "An Oscar for Treadwell".... No idea about the piece of music you have in mind though.

Saw him about 3-4 years ago in Halifax--pretty good concert, with a pianist I liked named Noreen Gray (if memory serves) whom I'm not heard of anywhere else.

Yeah, Open House/Plain Talk is great stuff, both the blues jams & the ballads. Ah, those were the days, when they would actually double up LPs onto a single CD...

Because of their reputations I purchased "Dharma Days". Sorry. Hey Chuck--yeah, that's a completely tedious, airless album, but don't give up on Turner -- I liked the first (self-titled) Warner disc, & told the Criss Crosses are excellent (Yam Yam in particular). I haven't heard anything of his recently that I liked at all though I don't know the Fly disc on Savoy. There's also a rather weird encounter with Konitz on Chesky which is worth a listen, though I like the half of the album that Turner sits out much better.

Hm, I continue to be amazed: we have 2005, a year which was rich in excellent new releases, in reissues, & in several momentous archival finds. You'd think jazz fans would be happy. & yet, start a thread on this & the usual complaints about belatedness, audience indifference, &c surface yet again.

Even cooler: on the Leo Coventry set, Braxton sings Marsh's solo on "The Song Is You".

Another bump to this thread because my Xmas packet from Cadence just arrived -- I ordered a pile of Zinnias--Mosca's Trickle, Live in Valhalla, Halperin/Mosca's Psalm--& also Billy Lester's quartet disc on Coppens, Four on Four. Haven't listened to Trickle yet, but the other three... man, those are good discs. I'm quite impressed by Mosca's variety from album to album (in part, I suppose, an artifact of great differences in recording-quality, occasion, & in the case of Thing-Ah-Majig health). The rhapsodic, romantic quality of the Valhalla set for instance took me by surprise. & Mosca has his own (very capacious) bag, not just literal Tristanoisms. The Lester's a lot of fun--anyone heard that?

I can't access AMG from here (work computer) but my recollection is that the longhaired guy only turns up on the bio page; the main page for Clay has the right image. Speedy error-correction? AMG? You must be kidding.