January 29th, 2011 by admin
This photograph of Dee Dee Bridgewater was taken in September 2010 at the historic Madame Walker Theatre in downtown Indianapolis as part of the Indianapolis Jazz Fest.
Dee Dee gave a great performance dedicated to Billie Holiday. She sounded great throughout the show, flirting with some male fans in the front row and the musicians in the band, Craig Handy on saxophones, Gregory Hutchinson on drums, Edsel Gomez on piano; I don’t recall the bass player.
Dee Dee was singing a great rendition of Billie’s “Strange Fruit” during the photograph above. A color version of this image was featured in the January 2011 issue of DownBeat magazine.
After the performance, Dee Dee stuck around for another hour or so sitting on the edge of the stage signing autographs and posing for photographs with everyone that stuck around which was nice to see.
January 29th, 2011 by admin
This 2010 photograph was taken a hour or so before a sold out performance at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago. I had a while to speak with Pat about several topics including his favorite B3 players, his first time seeing Wes Montgomery and a chance encounter with a young Joe Pesci while Pat was playing with Sonny Stitt at Small’s Paradise in NYC…probably somewhere around 1960 or so. At the time, Pat was probably about 16 or so, certainly underage at the time and Pesci was a little order and a musician himself. Joe reminded Pat of this encounter some years later; Pat told me he did remember some parts of the meeting….amazing!!!
January 29th, 2011 by admin
This image of bassist William Parker was made at the 2010 Vision Festival in NYC.
January 29th, 2011 by admin
Unidentified bass player at the 2010 Vision Fest in NYC.
January 29th, 2011 by admin
This image of Matthew Shipp was made at the 2010 Vision Fest in NYC.
January 29th, 2011 by admin
The amazing Marcus Belgrave from a 2010 appearance at the Jazz Kitchen in Indianapolis. Marcus was generous enough to give me a few minutes to photograph him before the show. We had a great time that night, spent some time talking with Marcus and his beautiful wife Joan. I decided to stick around for both sets…Marcus on trumpet, the legendary Kirk Lightsey on piano, Marion Hayden on bass and Gayelynn McKinney on drums. Joan sat in on several tunes…man, that lady can sing!!!
January 28th, 2011 by admin
The great Edward "Kidd" Jordan performing with Fred Anderson.
I’m a big fan of Edward “Kidd” Jordan. I met Kidd several years ago at Fred Anderson’s Velvet Lounge. It always seemed like Fred and Kidd were connected at the hip….wherever you saw Fred, you could be sure Kidd was somewhere near by. Kidd is from New Orleans and always visited Chicago during Jazz Fest week for an extended stay at the Velvet. You could always count on him to make a yearly appearance at the Vision Fest in NYC as well. The image above was made at the Velvet Lounge in Chicago along side Fred Anderson.
After Fred passed away in June of 2010, I sent Kidd several images of him and Fred playing together including the image above. A couple weeks later, Kidd called me up to thank me for the photos. He was just a few weeks away from moving back into his home that was destroyed by hurricane Katrina. Can you imagine….five years after the hurricane and just moving back home…. amazing
January 27th, 2011 by admin
This night of the APA’s Cole Porter Fellowship Awards competition featured Aaron Diehl, a wonderful pianist along with friends bassist Frank Smith and drummer Kenny Phelps.
The Jazz Kitchen, Indy’s premier jazz club was sold out and for good reason. Tunes included “From this Moment On”, a solo version of the tin-pan alley classic “Indiana”, “Midnight at the Palace”, “Tag, You’re It”, Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin”, “Toys”, Jelly Roll Morton’s “Finger Buster (another sole piece)”, Bud Powell’s “Tempus Fugit”, Gershwin’s ”Bess, You is My Women Now”, “St. Elmo’s Fire” and a great finale of the classic ”Moonlight in Vermont”!
January 27th, 2011 by admin
Corey Wilkes / Velvet Birdhouse Coalition
On the heels of the Velvet Lounge closing down, several Chicago based musicians including Nicole Mitchell and members of the AACM formed a coalition to pay tribute and remember the great Fred Anderson. The coalition, aptly named the “Velvet Birdhouse Coalition” after two clubs founded and operated by Fred, staged their first of hopefully many performances in the L26 Lounge in the South Loop Hotel. This performance featured the Corey Wilkes Quintet including Corey on trumpet, Justin Dillard on piano, Christian Dillingham on bass, Kevin Nabors on saxophone and Isaiah Spencer on drums. The music was great as would be expected and the place was packed. The lighting was pretty poor making it difficult to photograph but other than that, a great night!
January 27th, 2011 by admin
A really nice line-up once again at the Portland Jazz Fest, it’s theme for this year is “Bridges & Boundaries-Jewish & African Americans Playing Jazz”. I will be covering the festival for Downbeat…look for a recap of the festival in an upcoming issue.
The festival runs from February 18-27 and features Randy Weston, Anat Fort, Dave Frishberg during the first weekend and Don Byron Plays Mickey Kazt, Esperanza Spalding, Nik Bartsch’s Ronin+Blue Cranes, Pancho Sanchez, The 3 Cohens (Anat, Avishai and Yuval) + Afro-Semitic Experience, the SF Jazz Collective doing the music of Stevie Wonder, Regina Carter, Joshua Redman and Maceo Parker.
Tickets can be purchased at www.pdxjazz.com
The image above of Pat Martino was made inside the Crystal Ballroom at the 2009 Portland Jazz Fest.