The comments section on this post is temporarily open for all readers (usually it is for paid subscribers only). The previous threads were pretty active and interesting, so: Say what is on your mind, drop your hottest take, or ask me anything — but please keep it clean and civil.
(Many questions and comments arrive in various DMs and email inboxes. I don’t always have the bandwidth to answer, but here in the TT forum, where I’m on the hook to respond, I’ll do my best.)
For those looking for satisfying casual listening while eating turkey or decorating a tree, try The Bach Album, a 2-LP set of lush transcriptions of familiar themes performed by Eugene Ormandy the Philadelphia Orchestra. 1970. I miss this stuff, we had it pretty good in the middlebrow era for a time.
The astonishing and marvelous cover art foreshadows Stephen King’s The Children of the Corn. However, there is nothing terrifying in this sedate and charismatic music. Ormandy brings forth a gentle pulsation, just a little bit up and back in the tempo at all times.
I’m on Bluesky now. Anyone who follows me there gets an automatic follow back, at least for a while. Nate Chinen has posted a jazz starter pack.
Freddie deBoer made me laugh out loud with his take on the Twitter/Bluesky debate.
You’ve got X, a network owned by a guy who bases his whole life on making other people think that he doesn’t care what they think. (The kind of guy who would rename a popular social media site “X.”) And you’ve got BlueSky, a network populated exclusively by people who Googled “BIPOC” the day the term got popular and then proceeded to act like they had always used it. You’ve got a network that’s been invaded by guys who buy katanas at Epcot Center and you’ve got a network filled with people who get gluten-free water imported for $7 a bottle. It’s that guy at your high school who bought a black duster specifically because Columbine happened and the girl at your high school who successfully lobbied to have all gym classes canceled because gym is ableist. It’s a girl with “future tradwife” in her bio who DMs offers to send her nudes in exchange for Robux vs. a guy who’s very, very proud to own a shirt that says “Kill All Men.” It’s a Gigachad meme that infects your computer with malware that secretly uses your phone to mine PepeCoin or an inspirational Instagram account that posts girlboss quotes plagiarized from The Fountainhead. It’s aggressively weak men who fetishize strength or people who have based their personal and professional lives on performative vulnerability. It’s all of the worst tendencies of the backlash to our stumbling efforts against bigotry vs. those whose arrogance and myopia have empowered that backlash.
Other good stuff I’ve read lately:
Nate Chinen on Smokin’ in the Pit, an album from Steps that was a hit in Japan but relatively rare in the United States. My own adjacent gateway albums were Steps Ahead and Joni Mitchell Shadows and Light.
Robert Gilbert has a valuable Substack about music, Listening Sessions, where he also reviewed my live gig with Peter Washington and Peter Erskine.
Marshall Bowden looks at classic Ellington re-released in 2004. This is some of my favorite Duke.
Josh Haden posts some unseen photos of Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins in 1959. Wow!
Howard Mandel interviews Roy Haynes in 1996.
J.D. on the great Tim Robbins movie Bob Roberts.
There have been over 20 recent albums reviewed on TT since spring ‘24:
Miharu Ogura -- Plays Ogura
Jim Snidero, FOR ALL WE KNOW
Blaine Billingsley and John Fahey
Lina Allemano, CANONS + Manuele Morbidini
Nicole Glover PLAYS + Kevin Sun THE FATE OF THE TENOR
Timo Andres, Robert Carl, and Valerie Coleman
Scott Wollschleger, BETWEEN BREATH
Give Me a Complex: Matt Mitchell, Miles Okazaki, Anna Webber, Kim Cass, Alec Goldfarb, Phillip Golub, Zekkereya El-Magharbel
Bill Charlap and Grigory Sokolov
Large ensembles from Jihye Lee and John Hollenbeck (and the tenor saxophone of Jason Rigby)
I should review a new(ish) album or two in December; drop a suggestion in the comments if you feel like it. Classical as well as jazz. At this point I am only doing positive reviews. (Negative reviews are also important, perhaps even essential, but perhaps not by me, although I sure think about it sometimes LOL.)
The forum is open through Monday. Ask me anything, or just state your piece. If you don’t chime in this time, I will host another open thread around Xmas.
(Update: The comments are now closed.)
Re: yesterday's topic: Paul Desmond at 100. Many years ago New York Magazine used to devote the last page of each issue to some kind of competition for its readers. One was called "Higgledy Piggledy" and involved composing a few lines of doggerel to the nursery-rhymish scansion implied by that phrase. Desmond won the competition with the following submission:
"Higgledy Piggledy, Cannonball Adderley
Came on the scene like a bolt from the blue.
"His popularity, coincidentally,
Left me more time for women and booze."
For excellent and very easy listening (yet so tasteful) holiday music: "Steal Away" with Charlie Haden and Hank Jones 1994. Not easy to pull this kind of playing off but they do.