Christiern

Having been a close friend of Valerie for over forty years, I can attest to her commitment, but I assure you that there is nothing dreary about her. I like the book very much and, in fact, played a small role in urging Val to write it (at least she says so in the opening paragraph of her acknowledgements). You might also like her autobiography, "Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This."

I ate my first two iPods.

Doesn't Apple have an app that locates and refurbishes lost virginity?

I just opened my BE box for the first time in about seven years. No problem encountered.

Yes, it is said that bananas are good for that. especially tree-ripened ones from the Managua region. However, opinions are split, recent tests having shown organically-grown hot house bananas to be superior when the scratch is deep. I always thought is was a bit silly to apply bananas to CDs (or, for that matter, DVDs), because mangos will do just as good a job, and they don't get all mushy and brown.

Strictly speaking, our very own Armstrong wasn't drug free, but nobody has called for removing the Hot Fives from the shelves. Let's not even talk about Bird! Isn't it interesting that we (including myself, of course) have such acceptable double standards?

Isn't it time to abandon an exhausted topic for something else? How about: Blues Bulgarians Swing Swedes Ragtime Romanians Soft jazz Senegalese Mainstream Mexicans Hard Bop Hawaiians Dixieland Druids Gavotte Gypsies

This just makes him all the more ridiculous and, frankly, disgusting. A cheap gimmick by a player who ain't all that good.

I think Blue Train has been derailed as far as his "show me the obit" outrage is concerned.

I haven't heard any performances by Mr. Bergman in decades, nor have I given a second listen to his first album, but here is what I had to say about that in Stereo Review 36 years ago: BORAH BERGMAN: Discovery. BorahBergman (piano). Perpetual Springs; HorseOpera; The Third Hand. CHIAROSCURO CR 125 $6.98. Performance: Stumbling down the Jarretttrail Recording: Very good Chiaroscuro, a New York-basedindependent label, has up to now concentrated on Dixieland and mainstream jazzrevivals, but this album represents a radical departure. According to annotatorNat Hentoff, Discovery heralds a new policy of alsopresenting the avant-garde. New York pianist Borah Bergman,who here makes his recording debut, plays in a free-form style that otherpianists have explored before him, but "Perpetual Spring"--which takes up allof side one--is quite unorthodox, introducing a recording technique which Ibelieve to be original but which I hope will not catch on. Taping separatetracks for the right and left channels is normal procedure these days, butBergman has recorded the second channel without simultaneously listening to thefirst, and that is another matter. Does it work? Yes, to a certain extent, butthere is predictably a randomness about the end result, and the effect,although it has a somewhat prepossessing hypnotic quality, is still that ofhearing two recordings at one time. Bergman does suggest that one also listento each channel separately, but the music simply isn't worth theeffort. "Horse Opera," which opens side two, is largely more ofthe same, without the added track, and "The Third Hand"—an improvisation forthe left hand only, ends the album on further random notes. I have heard thiskind of improvisational piano from non-jazz quarters for over twenty-fiveyears, so I fail to understand the sense of discovery that Mr. Hentoff haswoven through his liner notes. This is not an awful album, but Borah Bergmanis, so far, a Peter Nero to Keith Jarrett's Tatum. —Chris Albertson

David S. Ware's longtime manager Steven Joerg, the family's official spokesman, has authorized the following statement about his client's passing. Last night, saxophonist and composer David S. Ware succumbed to complications from his 2009 kidney transplant at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He was 62. His remains will be cremated and a musical memorial service will be organized for a later date.

My former wife, Hanne, and some friends took me out for dinner at Chez Josephine. I had a great time.

Not to mention that he reinvented (remodeled) Jelly, Duke, Louis, and others—making them ready for prime time. As for his work as an educator, young people are not well served when their teacher suffers myopia.

This video ought to give y'all something to think about.

I have FaceBook turned off permanently—don't trust that little creep and his intrusive site.

" I do not believe he plays without emotion. He did not get to that level of artistry without passion." —flat5 What level of artistry would that be? There is, indisputably, a high level of recognition, but it is not commensurate with his level of artistry. That is a major problem many of us have with Wynton and—as I pointed out previously—we can't blame the man for taking the job, he was simply miscast. Jazz is short-changed when the person who in most people's minds (and the media) personifies it lacks both passion and vision. Frankly, Wynton has not reached any notable level of artistry in his many years as a spotlight figure. He is technically proficient, but his playing is often tasteless, and he would never have allowed such extended abominations as Blood in the Fields to reach the record racks if it were not for a delusional exaggeration of his own worth as a composer.

"I doubt the situation of jazz in the music market would have changed much if he had turned down Art Blakey and stayed in New Orleans as a local star. It might have declined more swiftly. There's no real way to tell." —Tom Storer<br style="color: rgb(28, 40, 55); font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; background-color: rgb(250, 251, 252); "> Had Wynton stayed in New Orleans, someone else would have been given that job and that person is very likely to have been someone who accepts the fact that jazz did not wither off the vine in the postwar years. It is—given the odds—also probable that this would have been a more qualified person. Oh, he or she is not likely to have had Haydn's Trumpet Concerto down pat, but neither is it likely that he or she would have played jazz as if local anesthesia had been administered. BTW, was Wynton a local star in N.O.? He played more classical than jazz, I believe.

Exactly, emotion is a major missing ingredient in Wynton's music—imagination is the other.

Great link—thanks for posting it! I used to listen regularly to Radio Dismuke, but I may like this even better.

He was the wrong person for the job, but Wynton did not hire himself, so if we need someone to throw darts at, it should be the people who created Wynton (and here I do not speak of his family) and those who so misguidedly anointed him king of jazz. Don't blame Wynton for not turning down such an opportunity, blame him for not recognizing his own limitations and, thus, not allowing it to broaden his horizon. Suggestions that discussions like this amount to beating a dead horse are not unfounded, but if protest becomes acceptance, the mistake is more likely to be repeated.

In my opinion, the man has disgraced the sport. He and his cohorts deserve everything bad that comes their way as a consequence of their criminality.

Nobody has mentioned another amazing fact, namely that the documentary was made on an iPhone! As we say in Denmark, a naked woman soon learns how to spin—the filmmaker, who is from Sweden, couldn't afford professional cameras.

It actually says that he died quietly in his sleep.

John was an old friend of mine, a great person to be with. We met many, many years ago, when he was new to this country and working as a chef at the Copenhagen Restaurant in midtown Manhattan. I took to John as a person before I took to his music, but that changed as I developed an interest in the NY Art Quartet. The Danish press confirms John's passing.

Shatner, morphing from Kirk to his present persona, reinvented himself masterfully and I will always admire him for that.