Email Author Gary Giddins

2002 Stories by Gary Giddins

• Jazzman of the Year: Clark Terry

  published December 17, 2002

  Dear CT, It's that time of year again—holidays, wrap-ups, and your birthday, number 82 on December 14, which undoubtedly seems more... More >>

• Christmas Gilt

  published December 3, 2002

  The annual profusion of Christmas albums suggests a bottomless appetite for the same dozen or 15 songs done in every conceivable fashion, and a... More >>

• Point Counterpoint

  published November 5, 2002

  Musical reductions are commonplace, expansions less so. Nineteenth-century virtuosos displayed their wares in keyboard adaptations of symphonies;... More >>

• Purely Piano

  published October 22, 2002

  Mid September's 2002 Verizon Music Festival—note the absence of the J-word—offered little to the J-audience beyond McCoy Tyner and Tony... More >>

• The Present Moment

  published October 8, 2002

  "Give yourself a gift," Marcus Aurelius advised, "the present moment." Aldous Huxley populated his island paradise Pala with parrots that fly... More >>

• Lionel Hampton, 1908–2002

  published September 24, 2002

  Putting aside the probability that in the fullness of time every musician, from Palestrina to Perry Como, will be looked upon as a precursor of... More >>

• Alive and Kicking

  published September 3, 2002

  Rumor has it that jazz is dead except as purveyed by beautiful young women with smoldering eyes and/or big hair, and sometimes it seems that way.... More >>

• Black Arthur's Return

  published August 27, 2002

  Arthur Blythe's story may not make a movie, but it certainly works as jazz allegory. He came to New York from San Diego in the magical mid '70s,... More >>

• Continuing Education

  published August 13, 2002

  Marian McPartland's learning curve is apparently infinite, an Escher-like, Velcro-covered loop that keeps picking up incremental details as it... More >>

• Almost Peas in a Pod

  published August 6, 2002

  Tony Bennett is a pop singer who records extensively with jazz musicians but always comes off as a pop singer with a keen appreciation of jazz.... More >>

• Where's Waldo?

  published July 16, 2002

  A brief July 9 press release about the flagship event that ran from June 16 to June 29 begins with an announcement from George Wein ("CEO of... More >>

• Say It Isn't So

  published July 2, 2002

  The unceremonious booting of the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band from Carnegie Hall is old news, but hasn't been much addressed in or out of the jazz... More >>

• Post-War Jazz: An Arbitrary Road Map

  published June 4, 2002

  The initial idea was to create an overview of jazz (and jazz-related) records from 1900 to 2001. After several weeks of revelatory listening to... More >>

• Post-War Jazz: An Arbitrary Road Map

  published June 4, 2002

  1970 Art Ensemble of Chicago, "Theme de Yoyo" In perhaps the worst year ever for jazz records, two of the slyest of... More >>

• Jazz

  published May 28, 2002

  'CELEBRATE BROOKLYN' Prospect Park Bandshell, entrance at 9th Street and Prospect Park West,... More >>

• Personality

  published May 21, 2002

  One might argue, though not too strenuously, that three central tribes of tenor saxophonists emerged just after the war: those who played Lester... More >>

• Fetishizing the LP

  published May 14, 2002

  Old recording artifacts die hard, their value increasing in ratio to the ethereality of their replacements. Last year boxes of Billie Holiday and... More >>

• Apostle of LS&N

  published April 23, 2002

  In making his brief for Kipling, Randall Jarrell wrote of those oppressively mighty figures in politics and art upon whose leave-taking the... More >>

• She Writes the Songs

  published March 26, 2002

  The result of Abbey Lincoln's decision to make her concert triptych at Alice Tully Hall March 7 through 9 a referendum on her songwriting can only... More >>

• Our Chopin

  published March 12, 2002

  Some people decry Cecil Taylor as a composer because he rarely revisits pieces and doesn't provide song-form themes for others to play, just as... More >>

• Unsentimental Journey

  published March 5, 2002

  Jazz's spring schedule should whet the appetite of anyone with a pulse. In addition to veterans who are never far away for long (the Heath... More >>

• Singing Cool and Hot

  published February 26, 2002

  Can it be that little more than a decade ago, jazz singing was widely written off as a dead art? No one had come along to take the stages... More >>

• Microtones and Bebop

  published February 19, 2002

  One of the infrequent pleasures of ethnic weddings and bar or bat mitzvahs in the era before DJs began contributing to musical unemployment (may... More >>

• 'Gypsy' State of Mind

  published February 5, 2002

  Bireli Lagrene, whose electrifying new album, Gypsy Project (Dreyfus Jazz), represents his best work in several years, must have days when... More >>

• Work for Hire

  published January 22, 2002

  All artists who have to work for a living are coaxed into adjusting the aspirations of their talent to the fashions of the marketplace. Recent... More >>