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Links
Musicians
In no particular order, these are some of my favorite musicians. Some of them are internationally famous, some not, but all worth your while.
Jay Clayton - trailblazing vocalist from the New York loft scene, Jay is an internationally acclaimed performer, teacher, and author.
Meredith d'Ambrosio - an intimate yet swinging vocalist, clever lyricist, and accomplished painter.
Greta Matassa - having modeled her craft after Ella, Sarah, Billie, Dinah, and others, this dynamic Northwest vocalist with an encyclopedic repertoire has arrived at her own impressive style.
Gail Pettis - look for a new CD from Gail in 2006. She's one of the most authentic and beautiful voices in jazz today.
Janis Mann - This LA songstress will break your heart with a ballad one minute and swing you into bad health the next.
Mimi Fox - a dynamic guitarist/composer from the Bay Area, Mimi has blended her rhythm and blues roots with a fresh jazz spontaneity. She's a riveting performer.
Kristin Korb - a consummate quadruple-threat musician, Kristin's tasteful, swinging bass playing is matched only by her light and clever singing, her knockout arrangements, and her great compositions.
Katy Bourne - a hard-swinging Seattle vocalist who really embodies the joy of singing. If you can listen to her scat without a smile on your face, better check your pulse.
Kendra Shank - from Seattle, Kendra now divides her time between New York and Paris. Check out her recent Jazz Focus album Reflections.
Rebecca Parris - I recently played a couple of gigs with this Boston-based singer. Wow! She's the real deal. She swings like mad, scats up a storm, sells every lyric, and is a great entertainer.
Jeff Johnson - a bassist with some of the biggest "ears" in the business. Check out his own recordings, as well as his wonderful playing on my recording Parallel Tracks.
Randy Porter - this pianist from Portland is a name to watch for. Look for his wonderful trio albums Eight Little Feet and Brio.
Gary Hobbs - also from Portland, Gary is a total musician. He'd make great music no matter what instrument he happened to play. His new album Of My Times is wonderful, as is his work on Parallel Tracks.
Bill Evans - this is the one pianist whose music I'd take with me to a desert island.
Chick Corea - one of my all-time favorites.
Jessica Williams - an incredible pianist (with the most impressive website I've ever seen!)
George Cables - a world-class pianist who annually shares his music and wisdom at the Bud Shank Jazz Workshop.
Gonzalo Rubalcaba - a heart-stopping Cuban jazz pianist.
Kenny Werner - a uniquely personal musician, this jazz pianist is the author of a great book about performance psychology called Effortless Mastery.
Lynne Arriale - this pianist has one of the most striking senses of touch I've ever heard. Her ballads are riveting.
Brad Mehldau - one of the most profound and sophisticated modern-day jazz pianists.
Alan Broadbent - an unsung giant of jazz piano.
Bill Charlap - another gem of a pianist who may be unfamiliar to you.
Educational links
While I would love it if everyone in the world bought my book, there are many other valuable resources available to the aspiring jazz musician. Here are some of them.
Jeff Gardner - a fabulous jazz pianist, Jeff is the author of one of the finest books I've found for the advanced player. It's called Jazz Piano: Creative Concepts and Techniques. Pricey at $70, but worth every penny.
Miles Black - the great Canadian pianist offers free online instruction.
Marc Sabatella - the author of an online jazz book called A Jazz Improvisation Primer.
Darius Brotman - the author of a site called The Jazz Piano Studyletter. You'll find some interesting articles there on voicings, time, and the improvised line.
Scot Ranney - the creator of a site called learnjazzpiano.com that offers free online instruction.
Allaboutjazz.com - the name says it all!
Sher Music - the publisher of my book, Metaphors for the Musician, Mark Levine's The Jazz Piano Book and The Jazz Theory Book, and the various Real Books.
Keyboard Magazine - lots of tech-talk about electronic gear, but also some instructional articles.
Drum Lessons Database - a huge collection of online drum lessons for all styles, including Latin and swing. Fabulous site of interest to all musicians, not just drummers.
Jamey Aebersold - the premier source for "minus-one" play-along recordings.
Dick Hyman - a versatile pianist and creator of an educational CD, Dick Hyman's Century of Jazz Piano. I haven't picked it up, but it sounds fascinating!
Billy Taylor - the great pianist hosts an informative and thought-provoking site called Billy Taylor's Jazz at the Kennedy Center.
Len Lyons - author of a fascinating book consisting entirely of interviews with great jazz pianists from Teddy Wilson through Cecil Taylor, called (for some odd reason) The Great Jazz Pianists.
Ted Rosenthal - jazz pianist and author of a concise and articulate essay called How Jazz Pianists Practice.
The Experience Music Project - interviews, mini-lessons, and a calendar of events for Seattle's exciting new music shrine.
Cornish College of the Arts - a very special school in Seattle where your artistic spirit can blossom.
The Port Townsend Jazz Festival - for those of you in the Northwest (or those willing to hop a plane), this is a great opportunity to learn jazz from the masters during the last week in July.
Jazzreview.com - a good source for info about new CD's and books.
Steven Nachmanovitch - the author of a wonderful little book called Free Play about restoring the concept of play to the making of music and art in general.
Jim Wilke - Seattle's premier jazz radio deejay, host of NPR's Jazz After Hours and KPLU's Jazz Northwest, is a priceless educational resource. Check out his great links page, from which I appropriated the rest of these educational links.
All Music Guide - A truly amazing and most useful site. This is an electronic version of the excellent reference books of the same name and a wonderful cross referenced collection that'll help you find that tune and the artist who played or sang it.
Jerry Jazz Musician - A strange name, granted, but this website offers a wealth of interviews, philosophical discourses, biographies, photographs, book reviews, and more.
Jazz Corner - a growing site which includes biographical material and news about more than 50 active musicians who have their home pages here with more being added all the time. Click on "Recording Studio".
Culture Kiosque - a weeky European cybermagazine available in several languages with erudite articles on jazz by Mike Zwerin, highly respected critic of the International Herald Tribune.
Bird Lives - one of the most unusual and controversial jazz sites on the web. Check out the weekly "diatribes."
The Contemporary List of Jazz Links - If you can't find what you're looking for anyplace else, go here. There are more than 1300 links to artists, labels, festivals, education, radio, 'zines and more!
Odd Music - here you can learn about and even listen to exotic music instruments
Northwest jazz clubs
Jazz venues come and go all the time, but here are six clubs in the Seattle/Tacoma area that have endured, plus links to clubs in Portland and Vancouver.
Tula's - home base for the Seattle jazz scene.
The New Orleans Creole Restaurant - authentic jazz in an unpretentious locale.
Bake's Place - the best listening room in the Northwest.
Jazz Alley - bringing international jazz talent to the Northwest for over two decades.
The Triple Door - an exciting new addition to the Seattle jazz scene, this lavish club has a 9-foot Steinway and a music room which is nowhere near the bar. (i.e., you can actually hear the music!)
Jazzbones - Tacoma's jazz Mecca.
Record Labels, other links
Just for fun... (more coming soon--suggestions, anyone?)
Jazz Quotes - warning: there's a lot of them!
Santa's Bad Day - a nice little Christmas story
Bill Anschell - Read "The Jazz Jam Session Primer," an absolutely hilarious and dead-on collection of stereotypes, then check out the rest of Bill's website. An old student of mine, Bill has become a fabulous jazz pianist and articulate writer.
Al Lowe. com - This is a large humor site with links, video, and more. You should get more than a chuckle or two.
Internet Anagram Server - In the tradition of Bill Evans (whose tune Re: Person I Knew is an anagram for his longtime producer Orrin Keepnews), this website will instantly generate thousands of anagrams for any word or phrase. I tried it with a few jazz musicians' names. See if you can guess them. (If you want the first name as a hint, double-click the left side of the answer box.)
|
Anagram |
Musician |
| Intent so linear | Lennie Tristano |
| Rousing mortals | Louis Armstrong |
| My song wrote me | Wes Montgomery |
| The least motions | Toots Thielemans |
| Mints own salary | Wynton Marsalis |
| And valorous art | Arturo Sandoval |
| He's a wry tenor | Wayne Shorter |
| Frank is an art | Frank Sinatra |
| Menial solos | Mose Allison |
| Epic treble shit | Pete Christlieb |
| Cooled jazzy ear | Joey Calderazzo |
| Clear hybrid | Charlie Byrd |
| Born thy ally, sir | Billy Strayhorn |
| Slew theatre | Ethel Waters |
| I'm Slav virtuoso | Miroslav Vitous |
| Liked long tune | Duke Ellington |
| Clashing muser | Charles Mingus |
| Cool fast art | Scott La Faro |
| Waterfalls | Fats Waller |
| Sub-realm chap | Paul Chambers |
| The jerk trait | Keith Jarrett |
| Visceral hero | Horace Silver |
| Ye safe flutes | Yusef Lateef |
| Scene of raced joy | Joey DeFrancesco |
| Buddha realm | Brad Mehldau |
| Epic Munich recital | Michel Petrucciani |
| Ah, George reigns | George Shearing |
| Was only limit | Tony Williams |
| Join cool samba intro | Antonio Carlos Jobim |
| He jams around | Joshua Redman |
| Is no saner | Annie Ross |
| Lends an art joy | Stanley Jordan |
| Ban worry | Ray Brown |
| Hardly attends bar | Randy Halberstadt |
I couldn't find an appropriate anagram for Miles Davis, but I was startled by the number of words in his name which have negative connotations: slam, slams, slime, slimed, mislead, misleads, misled, miss, missed, amiss, mess, aimless, misadvise, devil, devils, dis, dismal, dive, dives, less, dim, dims, misdeal, die, dies, sadism, AIDS, SIDS, idle, slide, slid, ass, lame, sad, lie, lies, lied, livid, mad, slave, slaves, evil, evils, and vile! Adding his middle name (Dewey) to the mix was no help--it yielded weed, weeds, weedy, slay, slew, messy, messed, messily, sly, misadvised, meddle, meddles, veiled, dawdle, dawdles, dead, deadly, died, dissed, dived, divide, divides, delay, delays, delayed, dismay, dismays, dismayed, evade, evades, evaded, measles, mildew, mildewed, mildewy, seedy, seedily, sadly, demise, misdeed, misdeeds, weevil, and lewd. That's 87 negative words--if I didn't like his music so much, an anagram would be easy!
(Oh, and if you're still looking for Elvis...)
I can't take credit for the rest of these. They came to me in an e-mail, but I think they're pretty clever!
| Dormitory | Dirty room |
| Presbyterian | Best in prayer |
| Desperation | A rope ends it |
| George Bush | He bugs Gore |
| The Morse Code | Here come dots |
| Slot machines | Cash lost in me |
| Animosity | Is no amity |
| Mother-in-law | Woman Hitler |
| Snooze alarms | Alas! No more Z's |
| A decimal point | A dot in place |
| The earthquakes | That queer shake |
| Eleven plus two | Twelve plus one |
| And for the grand finale: President Clinton of the USA | To copulate he finds interns |