Is Jazz Your Friend?
Michael Steinman
June 30, 2025
Any friendship needs care. Like a plant, friendship dies when neglected. My readers love this music. We have felt its warm embrace. But many are
Any friendship needs care. Like a plant, friendship dies when neglected. My readers love this music. We have felt its warm embrace. But many are
My festival reports start with apologies for what I didn’t see. This time, I trust readers will let me to atone in private. The Jazz
Here are two points of view expressed by poets of unequal stature: Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter . . .
“If I had the wings of an angel,” goes the old song. I would have needed wings to enjoy all the music at the 2024
The traditional jazz world pays homage to the blues, but often in a narrow way. There are glimpses of famous streets in fabled cities, tin
I’ve been attending jazz parties and festivals for twenty years, and each one has its own character. So to call one “the best” would be
I could be the wrong person to report on a ragtime festival. My first piano hero was Teddy Wilson, so the crowd at the Scott
NASA hasn’t perfected the robot that would be the ideal reviewer for a jazz festival like the Jazz Bash by the Bay in Monterey, California,
The Redwood Coast Music Festival was an ecstatic experience, an overwhelming banquet of music and friendship. (If that seems hyperbolic, I can adopt Eddie Condon’s
For this month’s column, I cede the floor to Michael Steinman, who published the following kind commentary about me on his excellent site, jazzlives.wordpress.com. I
I first wanted to call this post “The Death of Historical Consciousness,” but that title, although accurate, seemed too ponderous to be chewed and swallowed.
Phil Schaap, who moved on to another bandstand yesterday, was an unusually complex figure: he was his own novel, someone who deserves a Moliere or
Bobby Hackett remains one of my musical heroes, and I cherish his recordings, the few times I saw him in person, and the sound of
Born in 1996, in Louisville, Kentucky, Matthew Rivera is making jazz vibrate to new audiences in many ways. I met him first as a sound-phenomenon
Richard M. Sudhalter told Jeff Sultanof that he should write books. Five pages into Sultanof’s multi-faceted examination of big band jazz, I felt the same
One of the lines attributed to Mae West is “Too much of a good thing . . . can be wonderful.” I agree with this,
Late last year, Gordon Au—trumpeter, arranger, composer, bandleader, writer, thinker, scientist, satirist, linguist—sent me the digital files for the second CD by the Grand Street
In the history of jazz, people who do not play instruments do as much, in different ways, to sustain the art without getting equal credit.
