Email Author Gary Giddins

1999 Stories by Gary Giddins

• The Masters Have It

  published December 21, 1999

  The arbitrariness of annual top-10s always becomes clearer the week after, when you look at other lists and think, damn, how did I forget that... More >>

• Lester Bowie 1941–1999

  published December 7, 1999

  When an e-mail informed me of Lester Bowie's death—at 58, on November 8, of cancer—I was reading Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid... More >>

• Good Vibrations

  published November 2, 1999

  Before this year, jazz lovers often noted the odd statistic that all eminent players of the vibraphone (and its acoustic forebears, the xylophone... More >>

• 21st-Century History

  published October 5, 1999

  'Momentum Space' (Verve) by Dewey Redman, Cecil Taylor, and Elvin Jones — yes, the billing order is strange—was recorded last year and... More >>

• Prisoners of the Past

  published June 29, 1999

  Midway through the week, the JVC Jazz Festival kicked into life at a sedate homage to Charlie Parker's romance with strings, when the featured... More >>

• Between Intermissions

  published June 15, 1999

  Over the past two decades, Michael Dorf's Knitting Factory has justly emerged as one of New York's cultural landmarks. Its deceptively compact... More >>

• The Long-Playing Duke

  published April 27, 1999

  Always when writing about Duke Ellington there is the temptation to become a listmaker. Because once you get past the generalities and charge... More >>

• Out of the Vinyl Deeps

  published April 13, 1999

  All music lovers become record lovers and many record lovers become collectors. Records are like Malraux's muse um without walls, offering an... More >>

• Out of the Vinyl Deeps

  published April 6, 1999

  All music lovers become record lovers and many record lovers become collectors. Records are like Malraux's museum without walls, offering an... More >>

• Jaki Byard, 1922­1999

  published March 9, 1999

  Lea was two months old the first time we took her to a concert— Jaki Byard's 1989 recital at Weill Hall. He sat at the piano and played a... More >>

• Jazz's New Wing

  published February 9, 1999

  Given all the clamor over whether or not Lincoln Center should unload inanimate treasures to subsidize performing ones, I was surprised at the... More >>

• All This Jazz

  published February 2, 1999

  The best jazz films are not so much about jazz as they are of jazz, partaking of the music and finding ways to interpret it that honor the... More >>

• Old Guys Yes, Retro Never

  published January 5, 1999

  The retro vogue muddied the water a bit in 1998. Some jazz enthusiasts thought they had to proffer at least qualified support, as in: Isn't this... More >>