ESSAYS

This section includes essays on various jazz subjects, written by a number of writers. Contributions are welcome. Writers interested in contributing are welcome to contact the editor by filling out the form in the CONTACT tab. Photographs to illustrate those essays are welcome. Readers can click on the INDEX button for a list of articles in this folder.

BARRY HARRIS: KEEPER OF THE BEBOP FLAME

by Michael Bourne

Down Beat, September, 1985

Bud Powell played piano on the screen, from a documentary of his life in Paris shown as the highlight of a tribute to Bud at this year's Kool Jazz Festival in New York. One particular sequence showed Bud and Thelonious Monk hanging out, underscored by Bud's haunting solo of Round Midnight. It was already a wonderful concert, climaxed by the movie, and there was more to come. It fell to Barry Harris to follow the film—and he played with a spirit that thrilled everyone all the more. First he played Bud's piece for his daughter Celia (with a quote of Monk for good measure), then a solo medley of Bud's music, and finally a flabbergasting Tea For Two. Even his most virtuosic turns at the piano were played with the greatest of ease. So often through the years he's played bebop standards with a touch unique, a certain swinging grace. Barry Harris is the standard-bearer of bebop…

REVIEW OF “BLUESVILLE TIME”

by Bruce Johnson

Jazz Magazine, Winter, 1986

Cedar Walton can call his own tune, pick his own sidemen from among the best. He was leading Williams and Higgins as his Trio in Ronnie Scott's Club in London, when a young tenor player in his early twenties sat in. On the strength of that performance, Walton invited — commanded — the saxophonist to make the group up to a quartet on an imminent recording date. Walton's choice was one of the vindications — as if any were needed — of those who have been appraising Dale Barlow as the most accomplished and mature of the young jazz musicians to emerge from Australia in the wake of the general spread of institutional support for jazz from the mid-seventies…

VAZESH LIVE AT THE OPERA HOUSE

by Ian Muldoon

May 26, 2023

The opening of the programme of music on The Sacred Key album by Vazesh (CD Earshift Music, 2021) is a long introduction by the Iranian tar, an instrument related to the sitar. As soon as I heard the tar my mind was filled with the images of the Satyajit Ray’s film Pather Panchali and the train passing through the fields and villages of the rural poor in India and the train’s symbol of (Western industrialised) progress and its road to the city and wealth, with the glorious sound of Ravi Shankar’s music filling the auditorium - it was this moment when the world was awakened to the beauty of Indian music….