Mark Stryker

Jack and Al I heard Jack DeJohnette live many times, but the first time I saw him in person he wasn’t performing. He was hanging out in the corner of a long-gone Greenwich Village club, Lush Life, checking out a casual trio gig by pianist Richie Beirach, bassist Charlie Haden, and drummer Al Foster. It was March 1982 and I was 18. On the break, my older brother crossed paths with Al at the sink in the men’s room. Without prompting, Al looked at my brother and said, excitedly, “Did you see Jack DeJohnette is in the club?! I’m so nervous! Jack is my idol!” Think for second about how brilliant Al Foster was, and how much he had accomplished by 1982. Only five months younger than Jack, Al was 39 and at the top of his game. Yet Jack’s presence at his gig had Al gushing like a 12-year-old who just saw his favorite baseball player in the flesh. That’s how great Jack DeJohnette was and how much respect he commanded from his peers. Now both Jack and Al are gone, having ided almost exactly five months apart. They died almost exactly five months apart, Al at 82 on May 28 and Jack at 83 three days ago on the 26th. It's almost impossible to fathom how much aesthetic ground Jack covered during his career, how many diverse bands and recordings he defined with his creativity and unique sound, how many drummers he influenced. Jack remains in a class by himself, partly because beyond his landmark work as a drummer, he was also an imposing bandleader, composer, conceptualist, and multi-instrumentalist. But Al also belongs in the top tier of post-bop drummers, and it’s interesting to think about the similarities and differences between them. Both were first-rate colorists, masters of texture and dynamics, each able to strike a groove across a dizzying array of idioms. There was more pure bebop in Al’s DNA than in Jack’s. Al might opt for minimalism where Jack might choose a maximalist approach. These are just generalities, of course. The decision making of both drummers was at once remarkably advanced and unpredictable. I never heard either make a bad choice on the bandstand. Some losses are tougher than others but losing Al and Jack within five months? Goddman ... All I can say is that whoever is running this fucking circus better be taking damn good care of Billy Hart and Louis Hayes.

#JazzFromDetroit

Some others

https://whatsupnewp.com/2025/09/christian-mcbride-steps-down-as-newport-jazz-festival-artistic-director/

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/arts/music/wayne-shorter-archives.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Thanks for the kind words. Obviously, I'm biased having worked on it, but I do think this set, whether the music is to one's specific taste or not, is in the tradition of the best of what Mosaic has done.

Many thanks for the kind words. Appreciate it.

Public Service Announcement "The Best of the Best: Jazz from Detroit," the documentary film that I wrote and co-produced, now has its own YouTube channel. Please consider clicking below and subscribing. We'll be posting performance videos, excerpts from the film, parts of interviews that didn't survive the final cut, and other special features. Our first entry is an except from our interview with maestro Charles McPherson in which he improvises two of the most relaxed, spare, and soulful choruses of the blues you'll ever hear. Next screening is Oct. 3 in East Lansing, Michigan. We've think we'll have some exciting news about screenings and distribution in coming soon but it's too early to talk about it all. #JazzFromDetroit

One of the four tunes from 2/18/66.

FWIW, this material is very good, but, honestly, it's nowhere close to the intensity and creativity of the same band captured six months later at the Half Note, 2/18/66, playing four songs from he Cape Verdean Blues. A tape of this (from an Alan Grant radio broadcast) has circulated for some 40 years, which is how I first heard it. They were issued on an unautyorized CD, Horace Silver Featuring Woody Show -- Live at the Half Note. on the Hi-Hat label, and I think one tune ended up on the Emerald release. I'm glad Blue Note is putting out what they are, but it's a missed opportunity to not have found a way to include the 1966 Half Note broadcast, which has some of the best Woody and Joe that I know.

Nate's remembrance is lovely, and don't miss Tessa Souter's fantastic comment. (Full disclosure: Nate quotes from "Jazz from Detroit" in his piece and I chime in the comments with a coda.)

Close friends of Sheila Jordan are reporting on social media that she has died at age 96. I'm not putting R.I.P. in the title of this post because I haven't seen confirmation from family or other official source, but I have no doubt that it is true. One of the all-time great Detroiters. There was only one of those ...

Eddie and Joe go head to head here in 1969 with Thad and Mel in Europe. "Tow Away Zone." (Clip says 1970 but it's from a year earlier.) Coda: I heard Daniels give Eddie give a fantastic performance of the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1997 -- not a good-for-a-jazz guy performance but great-for-anyone performance. If memory series, he also played an arrangement of Gershwin's "Three Preludes" preceded by an improvised cadenza and offered a brief "Chelsea Bridge" as an encore. I don't remember who arranged the Gershwing and Strayhorn for clarinet and orchestra.

John Garvey, the legendary jazz band conductor at the University of Illinois from the late '50s until the early '90s, played viola in the Walden String Quartet, which was in residence at U of I. When Carter wrote his first quartet in 1950, he sent the score to a gaggle of of string quartets -- I think it might have literally been dozens but I can't recall -- and the Walden was the only one that agreed to play it. The gave the premiere in 1953 and then made the landmark first recording for Columbia Masterworks in 1955. John once told me that it was the first string quartet you couldn't sight read and tell if it was any good. You actually had to learn itbefore deciding whether it was a good (successful) piece or not. Glad you like the JSQ's performances of those Haydn quartets ...