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A new website dedicated to trumpeter, flugelhornist, flumpeter Art Farmer has just been launched: http://artfarmer.org. It contains biographical information, a complete discography covering a 50-year recording career, album covers, photos, memorabilia, memories of musician colleagues and others and an extensive bibliography. Please check it out. 2018 will bring the 90th anniversary of Farmer's birth.

Markus Stockhausen and his Quartett Quadrivium played at NDR-Jazz-Concert, „really a premium gig“, as je says. His music is really outstanding, every tune is a journey to an other world, so After one tune je said, looking a bit surprised and wondering, „hello“, as if je was just arrived....“far into the stars „ they has played.....but: his technique is completely unbelievable (!!!), you see and hear him playing, but you cannot believe, what he is playing and what you hear, je is doing everything on his trumpft, and it seems to be so very easy, completely without any(!) endeavour or effort or struggle, you sometimes have the impression as if you was listening to an angel, sorry, but i do not know any other or even better comparison, highly recommended!!

The first Booker Little I heard was his composition "Man of Words" a beautiful and haunting piece on this compilation (the other tracks are also well worth a listen by the way). I'm very grateful that I stumbled across this (inexplicably) not very well known trumpeter. I then bought his self-titled quartet LP which I adore and if you haven't heard it you really ought to! To me the album has a melancholy yet hopeful mood (five out of six of the pieces on the album are originals and all of them are in minor keys). Wynton Kelly's is enlisted for the minor blues "Bee Tee's Minor Plea" and also "Life's A Little Blue" but Tommy Flanagan's unassuming, elegant playing on the rest of the album has really grown on me also. Scott LaFaro and Roy Haynes complete the rhythm section but unfortunately the recording doesn't do Roy Hayne's crisp touch justice and Scott LaFaro's bass sounds somewhat distant and boomy (his playing, typically free and melodic, is great though). The last track is a gorgeous rendition of a lesser known ballad "Who Can I Turn To?" by Alec Wilder and William Engvick. I've heard a few tracks from his other albums as a sideman or leader and, although I think the quartet album will remain my favorite, he seems to have been experimenting with dissonance and close harmonies in his own compositions. To me he had it all: brilliant range but with no sacrafice to his pure and sensitive tone, astonishing facility on the instrument but the emotional element was always there also, he (like Eric Dolphy) was stretching the vocabulary of bebop and played a lot of tensions and spiky lines which I think made him sound more modern than Freddie Hubbard or Lee Morgan, great compositions and arrangements which were also pushing the boundaries and he died at 23 years old! He was not a drug addict or alchoholic and by all accounts he was a beautiful and kind person but he suffered from uremia and died of kidney failure in 1961. Luckily for us he left a substantial recorded legacy but as with all great talents who died before their time we can only wonder at what musical directions he would have taken had he lived longer. A really nice page on Booker Little with a discography and lots of other interesting information can be found here (by Alan Saul). I'd love to hear any thought's anyone has on Booker Little and any recommendations on which albums of his to get (I already have Dolphy's "Far Cry" which I like very much but the quartet album still takes the top spot for me).

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/latin/6835403/chocolate-armenteros-dies-trumpet I had the privilege to see him in person with Celia Cruz & Sonora Matancera...they were all "old" even then, at least they looked old. But not while the music played. Then they were eternal.

Hey y'all, Because the first video in the Victor Haskins/Lonnie Liston-Smith series has reached the quota of 1,000 views (in a little over a week--woo!), I am releasing the second video of the 3-video series: You Don't Know What Love Is--enjoy! After this video reaches 1,500 views then the 3rd and final video of this series will be released--so get to viewing/sharing! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI5toI05a6k