Jazz Stories

Live from Berkeley, it’s Trombone Micah! An evening drive up to Berkeley took me to the California Jazz Conservancy, where Micah has been taking an evening class and playing jazz. The group played a set with three tunes: Four (Miles Davis) Anthropology (Charlie Parker) Nutville (Horace Silver) The music was joyful, challenging, and uptempo. Interestingly, the group’s teacher, Dave LeFebre, was also my jazz teacher when I was a grad student at Berkeley, decades ago. Indeed, he and Susan Muscarella led the Jazz program at UC Berkeley when I was there, but then built the separate Conservatory nearby. I said “hi” and “thanks” to Dave. ...

Danilo Peréz’s Global Messengers I’ve always been a huge fan of Wayne Shorter’s quartet with Danilo Peréz, John Pattituci and Brian Blade. And I enjoy each of the artists individually. So I leaped at a chance go hear the pianist, Danilo Peréz lead his own group. The setting could not be more beautiful. The 6th and I Synagogue is a historic building in downtown Washington DC, and its a Sephardic-style building. Rather than a long vault ending in an alter, the building is basically square, with a dome above four huge arches. The dome is pained a lovely sky blue. And the colors throughout the space are warm and inviting. I had been looking for an opportunity to show Audrey the space and it was a special bonus that Sarah was visiting us. ...

DC was rocking from its porches Saturday, as we strolled through “porchfest” in the nearby neighborhood of Petworth. It was great to catch with college friends John and Sue Lang and their clan. Every kind of music was featured, most of it original. And the streets were overflowing with a relaxed audience, taking in the perfect weather and looking for the next great sound on a porch somewhere nearby. Samba School One highlight was DC’s only Samba School, which got the whole audience involved in their joyous dances. ...

Stanley Jordan brought the house down at Blues Alley in Georgetown with his recreation of Jimi Hendrix’s music. The audience rose and soared with the Star Spangled Banner. We grooved to Foxy Lady. We were awed by Jordan’s amazing guitar techniques, including lots of high speed tapping. For the guitar nerds out there, he had a series of awesome guitar tones all night long, which must have been driven by some electronics, as there was no guitar amp anywhere in site. We left in a Purple Haze. ...

Monday night in Nashville. What to do? We chose The Time Jumpers, a band that’s been together for 24 years. With three fiddles, a pedal steel guitar, at least a half dozen singers, and more, we couldn’t go wrong. The music was a mix of country-western songs with lots of spirited improvisations, as Monday night is the night for the musicians to have fun. The night’s featured singer, Wendy, had been on The Voice and was wonderful. I also was amazed by the pedal steel player who produced tasty licks and precision high speed runs all night long. ...