Hello everyone—
Welcome to our penultimate issue of 2018. We’ll have one more issue coming on December 31, with our end-of-the-year Summation, plus plenty of new reviews (and hopefully, some exciting news about our future!). Of course, late November is the usual time for our annual survey of holiday jazz, “Music for a Cool Yule“. The Christmas spirit was a slow starter this year: usually by September, I have a handful of holiday discs; this year I had none. Thankfully, I found six new releases to add to our growing list. Take a look through, and perhaps you’ll find a new favorite for tree-trimming, gift-giving or spiritual meditation.
For the book review, we present two biographies of Dexter Gordon, the most recent one written by his manager and widow, Maxine. The Retro Review features Mosaic’s new boxed set of vintage Teddy Wilson tracks. I’m very excited by several of our newly reviewed CDs. Renee Rosnes and Helen Sung have just released new collaborations with poets. The resulting compositions are wonderful, representing a marriage of the art song with jazz. Among the vocal CDs, we have Alyssa Allgood’s dynamite new release, plus a new duet disc from Cheryl Bentyne and Mark Winkler, a quirky but interesting late album by Bob Dorough, and a marvelous set from Judy Niemack and Jim McNeely. Finally, the instrumental CD reviews spotlight bebop musicians Richie Cole, Christopher Hollyday and the jazz faculty from Temple University (including Terell Stafford, Bruce Barth, Dick Oatts and Tim Warfield.)
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Best,
Thomas Cunniffe