This Week on Jazz Spectrum: The Music of Gregg Hill
March 1, 2024
By Fritz ByersLast night, a friend and I saw the trumpeter Dave Douglas perform with the Bowling Green State University Lab Band. Read More
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Blog - Jazz Spectrum
A Supreme Act of Love
February 23, 2024
By Fritz ByersA few weeks ago, Kim Kleinman wrote, elucidatingly, about his struggle, not easy but ultimately successful, to pierce the often-overwhelming image of The Great John Coltrane and to hear Trane’s music – “as music,” in Kim’s characteristic phrasing. Kim’s right – that’s the best way to hear music. But now we’re back at the shrine – the centerpiece of this week’s show is the Master’s A Love Supreme, the suite he recorded with his Classic Quartet in one inspired session on December 9, 1964. Read More
BILLY CHILDS with Sean Jones, Alicia Olatuja, Matt Penman, and Ari Hoenig (!!!!), JAZZ ST LOUIS, 2 FEBRUARY 2024
February 7, 2024
By Kim Kleinman Read More
A Day for Wine and Roses
February 2, 2024
By Fritz ByersThe first version I heard of “The Days of Wine and Roses” was Perry Como’s. For some reason, one of my parents – I’m being discreet here – decided the household had heard enough of Frank Sinatra, and it was time to diversify. A quick check reveals that Perry’s album, The Songs I Love, was released in 1963. So that’s probably when this downgrade occurred. Read More
Remembering Andrew Hill
January 26, 2024
By Fritz ByersI saw the pianist Andrew Hill in performance only once. In the late 80s, pure luck put me in New York at the same time Andrew was scheduled to perform with a quartet. I knew his music only slightly at the time – only the 1964 recording Point of Departure had caught my attention more than in passing, and that was primarily because the multi-reed wizard Eric Dolphy and the tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson were on it. Read More
The Alternate Universe
January 19, 2024
By Fritz Byers The evolution of streaming-music sites, and their current dominance, have changed many things about the business of making music, and about how we consume it. I don’t believe it’s merely a nostalgia-drenched generational cavil to observe that the notion of buying an album, and then listening to it as a unit conceived by the artist, is another sad casualty of the digital revolution and its ancillary technologies. Of course compact discs changed how we listen. Read More
The Best of 2023, Revisited - Latticework
January 11, 2024
By Fritz ByersThis week is the second of two editions of Jazz Spectrum that focus on my selections for the best new releases of 2023. The entire list of forty is in last week’s post, and it is repeated below. Last week we attended to half; this week, to the other half. The time spent in December re-reading my contemporaneous listening notes and re-listening is immensely satisfying. In last week’s post I shared a few thoughts on the year in jazz, and I briefly commented on the difficulty of picking from among the hundreds of new releases. Read More
The Best of 2023 – Owning It
January 5, 2024
By Fritz ByersIf someone tells you they understand the current music landscape, they’re bragging. And if they tell you they know what it will look like by the end of the decade, they’re lying.