Let Your Soul Stand Cool and Composed

From the National Portrait Gallery in Washington comes an exhibition on one of my favorite subjects: the cool. “American Cool” offers up its representative icons of cool in portraits by renowned photographers, such as Avedon, Arbus, and Henri-Cartier Bresson, who are sure to add to the alure of the exhibit, but that I don’t  think necessarily give […]

Jazz Is: 26 – Happy Birthday, Stan Getz

Today is the birthday of Stan Getz, great saxophonist of the lineage of Lester Young and known as “the sound” for that sweet and mellow tone, gone now nearly twenty years. Here he plays “Out of Nowhere”  in Dusseldorf, Germany in 1960, with Jan Johansson on piano, Ray Brown on bass, and Ed Thigpen on […]

Jazz Is: 13 – Charles Mingus

“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” (Theme for Lester Young) From the album Mingus Ah Um, an elegy for Lester Young, who died two months before the recording session. This performance is from the 1975 Montreux Jazz Festival, with Charles Mingus, band leader and bass; Don Pullen, piano; George Adams, tenor saxophone; Gerry Mulligan, baritone saxophone; Benny […]

Jazz Is: 3 – Jammin’ the Blues

I’m repeating this “Jazz Is” entry from “How We Lived on It” (2), but it is so exceptional, no collection of jazz riches should be without it. The better quality of the two full-length versions available at Daily Motion is ad defaced, while the other has very poor video quality, and Mili’s filmmaking is too […]