One thing I like about jazz, kid, is that I don't know what's going to happen next. Do you? — Bix Beiderbecke
Thelonious Monk — These Foolish Things - 1964
(Source: literallyme, via thejazzmessage)
ckck:
Miles Davis while recording “Porgy and Bess” with Bill Evans at the 30th Street Studios, New York City. July, 1958.
Photograph by Don Hunstein.
(via explosiveconscience)
Ben Webster Sextet - C jam Blues
I’m not sure if anyone that knows me is aware of this, but, I love jazz.
One of the saddest phrases in the English language is “You missed a great party.” Well here’s one we all missed.
In 1957 jazz historian and Harvard/Yale alum Marshall Stearns threw the ultimate jazz-Ivy shindig. Held in honor of sitar player Ravi Shankar, the party juxtaposed Indian music with jazz, and included a jam session with Dizzy Gillespie. LIFE Magazine captured the soirée, which drew the kind of crowd only possible in New York: a dazzling melange of socialites and hipsters, artists and businessmen, with everyone dressed to the nines. Though LIFE only devoted one page to the event in the magazine, the LIFE archives include an extensive photo set entitled “East-West Jam Session.”
Just what kind of party was it? The kind set against a backdrop of modernist sculpture and an enormous record collection…
Click here for the full read and more pictures at Ivy Style. Try to spot Quincy Jones nodding off. A lot of familiar faces in the crowd.
I’ve been on a jazz kick the past two days because I finally got my jazz CD’s uploaded. :)
Here’s the always talented Modern Jazz Quartet playing DJango. This is a live show from 1990.
(via thejazzmessage)
‘Thank You’ by Dave Brubeck [Indian Summer, 2007] (recovered)
It’s not uncommon for anyone to turn toward nostalgia as the years wear on, and at age 86, with nearly 60 years of recording behind him and nearly 50 since he shook up the jazz world with his landmark Time Out album, Dave Brubeck is certainly entitled to look back and take stock of his life. Indian Summer — the phrase itself suggests an acknowledgement of a waning in progress — is something of a companion piece to 2004’s Private Brubeck Remembers. Like that gem, Indian Summer is a solo piano work comprised of Brubeck’s ruminations on standards of the mid-20th century, the period when he was just coming up as an artist and blossoming as a young man. These are reflective, meditative ballads, softly but skillfully played and hinting at melancholy. On time-worn Americana such as “Georgia on My Mind,” “September Song,” “Sweet Lorraine,” and “Spring Is Here,” Brubeck is restrained but soulful, out to prove nothing. It’s not that age has dulled him; Brubeck’s performance is uniformly exquisite, imaginative, and elegant; it’s just not edgy. A small handful of original material nicely complements the standards, adding up to one of the more intimate entries in Brubeck’s enormous discography.
(Source: grooviejazz, via grooviejazz)
