Mark Stryker

FWIW -- the JSQ's Mozart recordings that I find special are the six quartets dedicated to Haydn, Nos. 13-19, which were recorded for Epic in the early '60s. The record you are lukewarm about includes Nos. 20/21 and was recorded in the early '50s and is an altogether different kettle of fish--different 2nd fiddle, different cellist, different aesthetic: the earlier LP is more tensile and relentlessly modernist; the latter more relaxed without sacrificing intensity and sometimes even charm, the latter of which, as you know, is not something associated very often with the JSQ. When you get to the later Mozart, let me know if your reaction is different. It might not be, of course, but it might be ...

I LOVE this summer project!! I've spent a lot of time with the JSQ over the years on record and in person. I don't have all the records but I have a LOT of it on LP -- and I heard them live fairly consistently from the mid 1980s until almost the present day; I also spoke on more than one occasion to Robert Mann, Joel Krosnick, and Sam Rhodes for various stories, and a decade ago I moderated a post-concert panel with the group after it played Elliott Carter's First Quartet. Don't have time to get into it all here, but I will say that for me the real sweet spot as an ensemble is between 1956-1966 -- that's where you have the most rewarding balance between a unified ensemble but with each player allowed maximum freedom as individuals, and where the interpretations mellow a bit from the sometimes relentless modernism of its early years into a more pliable expressionism that captures the full measure of any and all repertoire. Of course, there's great stuff from before this period and after, though from the mid '70s going forward the playing gets more inconsistent. But when everybody was on, they could still bring it. Coda 1: The second Bartok cycle was recorded in 1963 and released as individual LPs but may not have appeared in a box until the late '60s. I can't recall all the release details. Fantastic cycle. Coda 2: The Mozart "Haydn" quartets on Epic are truly amazing -- maybe the surprising of the Juilliard's great recordings given the ensemble's pedigree. All the standard rep recorded by the group in this period is pretty great. Coda 3: The RCA Debussy/Ravel remains my favorite recording of these works. Coda 4: The late Beethoven quartets recorded for RCA are also peak JSQ, as is the Berg LP. Onward. ...

I love Pharoah in this period, and there is a LOT of fantastic music here. Full disclosure: I wrote the notes for this set -- all 10,500 words of them -- and, modesty aside, I think they bring a depth of insight and analysis into Pharoah's music and clarity to his elusive biography that I hope brings new perspective to the discourse about him in general and sparks a reassessment of the Theresa recordings in particular. Carry on.

Jazz Times is reporting that Al Foster has died at 82. A unique sound and groove in any idiom. A HUGE loss.

We've noticed.

Terry Gross devoted her first show back after Francis' death with an extended and loving tribute to her late husband. https://www.npr.org/2025/05/01/nx-s1-5382583/terry-gross-francis-davis

Core trio here is Herbie, Ron, and Mel Lewis. Herbie solos at 3:38.

A great Sinatra small group version from 1954.

Tucker's "The Early Years" is excellent, but it is written by a musicologist and full of analysis and notated musical examples, so it might not be the best fit for Felser's original query seeking books for non-musicians. However, I'd recommend it if one can at least read music. However, Tucker's "The Duke Ellington Reader" can be recommended enthusiastically without caveats. It's a tragedy that Tucker died so young -- at 46, from lung cancer, in 2000. He would have been the scholar to give us the Ellington biography we want, the culture needs, and that Ellington deserves. On a related front, "The Cambridge Companion to Duke Ellington," edited by Edward Green is mostly excellent. Mostly scholarly but easily readable for non-musicians, though there are a number of essays with notation/analysis.

Obituary by Nate Chinen for WRTI in Philly. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/16/g-s1-60556/francis-davis-jazz-critics-poll-obituary?fbclid=IwY2xjawJspwJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHowZSmqcyS5X-RVEBMZt9tMiiJkTzyCEvYzzMdzZ4rWpyeLAvnfhYdHuPT_-_aem_1IW8_mmM32fUYPcxGfBRsA

I reviewed this record (loved it) for Cadence in the August 1989 issue, not long after it was released. Some of my earliest published jazz writing. It was just Joe's second album as a leader and he was under the radar enough that I could write: “He plays changes with an authority that should make a few more well-known tenorists nervous.” After the review was assigned to me but before publication, Joe apparently had some things he wanted to say to the writer, so the magazine gave him the number at my parents’ house in Bloomington, Ind., where I was living (post-grad school but pre-first newspaper job at the South Bend Tribune). I was 25. So one day the phone rang, and my mom answered and called over to me: "Somebody named Joe Lovano wants to talk to you." I’ve forgotten the details of the conversation, but my recollection is that he just wanted me to know how personal and important a project the recording was to him. A musician of his stature today would never make that kind of a call to a critic — though I hasten to add that in 1989 I was young and still green, and Joe was seasoned but not famous. I combined the review of Joe's record with a review of a Houston Person record and on the same page is my review of the third Quest record (Liebman, Beirach, McClure, Hart). Also, for the record, Joe's call to me in fact came after I had finished the review and had just sent it to the editor, on a floppy disc by snail mail in those pre-Internet days. So the call did not influence the writing in any way. The moral of the story is that I’m getting old.

There is a three-CD set on Acrobat that gets through a lot of music, but the sound is highly variable. Mosaic had a Newton box in the cue a few years back but, alas, Sony apparently withdrew licensing rights at the last minute. Hoping this changes. The world truly needs that set.

I am thrilled to pass along this groundbreaking piece of scholarship about one of my heroes, trumpeter Frankie Newton, written by my gifted friend Matthew Rivera and published today by the New York Review of Books. I am proud to have played a small but consequential role in its development. Here's the backstory: A few years ago, Matthew, a young scholar and archivist whom I had never met, reached out to me after he read the long interview I did with Ethan Iverson in which I talk about my curious childhood interest in Newton, a sui generis trumpeter and political and social progressive. I corresponded with Newton's widow, Ethel, while in high school and later interviewed her in 1985 for a paper I wrote about Newton in a jazz history seminar taught by the sainted Larry Gushee at the University of Illinois. Matthew, a longtime Newton obsessive, asked if I still had the tape. It took me a minute, but I located it. After 40 years, I had forgotten most of the details, but it turned out be a goldmine of information about Newton (whose biography is notably elusive), including his thoughts about music and his life with Ethel as an interracial couple. Matthew has drawn on that interview in his brilliant work here, and there's additional valuable information he'll be able to report as his research expands. He has also dug up an extraordinary treasure trove of newly discovered newspaper writing by Newton himself -- a MAJOR find. Ultimately, that's what this story is about -- the way scholarship expands, how jazz history is being written and revised in real time, and how you never know where bits and pieces of the historical record might be found. https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/03/19/frankie-newton-lost-and-found/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2mcS9rEILTzcXYVFckDkJuvwdehv89ntUBlujrEtUKhFK3UOz5W3T8jFg_aem_1GsAmCCPZJfRZz-ERSjLTQ

R.I.P. In the wake of her death, I just discovered this remarkable 30 minutes of footage from 1970. Bassist is David Williams, but I don't immediately recognize the drummer. Anyone know who it is?

This is a FANTASTIC record. None stop groove, great chemistry among the four.

Is that the first issue of that record?

R.I.P. He made it to 90 -- a long and fulfilling life, but the world will be a far less funny place going forward without him. There was only one of those! If you haven't watched his Hall of Fame induction speech, please set aside time to do so. So many hilarious lines, but two I particularly love: "My kids used to aggravate me too. I'd take 'em to a game & they'd want to come home with a different player." Gene Mauch to Uecker: "Grab a bat and stop this rally."

My dream is the whole video of the show or, at the least, a complete tune on video. But absent that, I'd still love to hear audio of all or part of it. You have this? I'd be in your debt ... Thanks

HOLY SHIT!! I have been searching for years for this Just Jazz broadcast from Chicago because Barry Harris is on piano. While this is just a short clip, it is the only remnant I've ever found. I was in touch with Dan Morgenstern (who coproduced the series), but he was not able to turn up a copy before he died -- but I hold out hope that a copy of the full program exists somewhere. The late Harriet Rosenfeld-Choice, a Chicago journalism legend who covered jazz at the Chicago Tribune before our friend Larry Kart and who was close to all involved, also tried to help me track down a copy of a tape to no avail. Thanks for posting. I would have never known it was buried deep inside this survey program without seeing it here.

So would I. Or like this:

As I often say: If I could do anything in life, it would be play like Sonny Rollins on a good night in 1965. Like this -- 3 minutes of the greatest improvising over Rhythm changes I have ever heard.

Thankfully, his full interview with us for The Best of the Best: Jazz from Detroit is 80 minutes long and will be part of a Jazz from Detroit Oral History Archive that we are creating. Sigh.

Tom Lord Jazz Discography shows only one Bud Powell track appearing on an LP issued on Design. "I've Got You Under My Skin" from the Massey Hall concert in 1953 with Mingus/Roach. This and all other tracks on DLP29 were originally issued on Mingus' Debut label. It's possible that Bob misspoke and meant Debut rather than Design, but Bud on Debut in this time frame only means the Massey Hall quintet performances with Bird/Dizzy/Mingus/Max and the trio portion of the concert with just the rhythm section -- and I would certainly not describe Bud's playing here as erratic.

I think this is a fantastic set -- I absorbed these records in real time in the 1970s and played a good number of these charts along the way. Toshiko's best work is represented here, and I think that's true for Lew too. They hold up really well.

Great record. All-Detroit band too, save Jabali on drums.