Email Author Francis Davis

2004 Stories by Francis Davis

• Spanish and Other Tinges

  published December 21, 2004

  The best album of 2004, by a wide margin, was Maria Schneider's Concert in the Garden (ArtistShare). Critics need to be careful not to... More >>

• Tombstone Territory

  published November 23, 2004

  OK, OK, I hear you telling me to get over it, but I can't. I've spent the month since November 2 sulking, seeking comfort in music I pretty much... More >>

• Horn-to-Horn Combat With No Real Casualties, From the Jam-Session Donald Trump

  published November 23, 2004

  Staged, as opposed to informal or impromptu, jam sessions were all the rage in the early '50s because they promised audiences juiced with post-war... More >>

• They Came for Bubba and I Said Nothing, for I Was Not a Love Sponge

  published November 23, 2004

  A week or so after the election, when I heard that Bill Maher was being sued for palimony, my first response was, Oh no, what do they have on Jon... More >>

• Great White Mope

  published October 26, 2004

  My father-in-law was in the hospital with pneumonia when I heard Brad Mehldau at the Village Vanguard in late September, so I left my cell phone... More >>

• Sirone-Cooper-Jenkins Stage a Comeback and Live to Tell About It

  published October 26, 2004

  Leroy Jenkins has gotten back together with Sirone and Jerome Cooper, and that might be the best news in jazz this year—especially since the... More >>

• Ravi Coltrane Returns a Whole Lifetime's Worth of Small and Large Favors

  published October 26, 2004

  Back in the early '90s, when Alice Coltrane was refraining from performing in rooms where liquor was consumed, I saw her sit in for two or three... More >>

• The Fire That Time

  published October 5, 2004

  The last two discs of Holy Ghost, Revenant's worshipful, nine-CD Albert Ayler "spirit box," are given over to interviews, one a virtual... More >>

• Matthew Shipp Charges Ahead With Two Rather Different Rhythm Sections

  published October 5, 2004

  Regardless of what I or Wynton Marsalis might want, we're going to be hearing more and more collaborations between jazz improvisers and beat... More >>

• The Deep Dark Secret and Mix-and-Match of the Dutch Avant-Garde

  published October 5, 2004

  Halfway through the ICP Orchestra's Aan & Uit, the 10-piece ensemble surges into "Barbaric," a swanky Hoagy Carmichael number he recorded... More >>

• Gtr

  published September 7, 2004

  Amplification has been a given for so long now that when Barney Kessel died this spring at 80, it was startling to realize his was the first... More >>

• Speed, Harmony, Warmth: All the Farlow You Need, but Not All the Eddie Costa

  published September 7, 2004

  Why fellow guitarists continue to revere Tal Farlow (1921–1998) is evident throughout The Complete Verve Sessions. Farlow's speed, his... More >>

• Bach-Loving Bassist Pays Tribute to Mexico, Puts Beauty Before Bush

  published September 7, 2004

  "Nostalgia" and "De Siempre (Forever)," which follow each other midway through Charlie Haden's Land of the Sun and are among the CD's most... More >>

• Trumpets No End

  published August 10, 2004

  I'm vacationing in California as you read this, you're bracing for the Republican occupation, and FONT, the second annual Festival of New Trumpet... More >>

• No, Not Lee Greenwood—The Kind of Bush Music With Uhuru in It

  published August 10, 2004

  Why jazz is no longer as political as in the days of "Fables of Faubus" and "Alabama" has been the subject of much recent Internet chatter. You... More >>

• Look, Up in the Air, It's 81-Year-Old Von Vonski Freeman

  published August 10, 2004

  I've figured out why I like Von Freeman's The Great Divide less than the 81-year-old Chicago tenor saxophonist's 2002 The... More >>

• Dancing in Her Head

  published July 13, 2004

  Duke Ellington's real instrument was his orchestra, Billy Strayhorn once said, echoing the maestro's own modest assessment of himself as a... More >>

• Carla Bley's (and Pals') Crepuscule With Raymond Chandler

  published July 13, 2004

  Don't let the collective billing fool you. Recorded in concert last fall in various European cities, The Lost Chords is Carla Bley's... More >>

• That Old-Time Religion—Plenty of Piano, but No Vaudeville

  published July 13, 2004

  Mary Lou Williams's "St. Martin de Porres," recorded soon after the 1962 canonization of "the patron saint of the broom," a 17th-century Peruvian... More >>

• The Music of What Happens

  published June 15, 2004

  It suddenly seems as if everybody's playing vintage Ornette Coleman: Jazz at Lincoln Center's oddly reproachful tribute earlier this year; Wynton... More >>

• Steve Lacy 1934–2004

  published June 15, 2004

  "It's only when you see the totality of someone's work that you understand what they were doing," Steve Lacy once said about a posthumous... More >>

• With His New Trio CD, Pianist Uri Caine Takes His Place on the Bench

  published June 15, 2004

  The problem with being a polymath is that some of your attainments can fly right by people. Uri Caine has garnered no end of praise for his... More >>

• Fleishedik and Milchedik

  published May 25, 2004

  Jazz being human, it covets whatever it thinks it's being denied. From Paul Whiteman and George Gershwin's attempt to make an honest woman of it... More >>

• Elvin Jones 1927—2004

  published May 18, 2004

  "Is the drummer always that loud?" a displeased Lincoln Center subscriber asked me during intermission of a concert featuring Elvin Jones with... More >>

• More to the Story

  published May 18, 2004

  Unless it was something new by the Art Ensemble of Chicago or Dave Holland, you could play me an ECM I've never heard, and chances are I could... More >>