Let’s have a look at a truly inimitable pianist this week, the incredible Keith Jarrett.  A very controversial figure in the “jazz press”, which often focusses on his lecturing the audience about making noise, or the temperature in the hall, and so forth.  As a musician, I focus on the crazy lyricism of his playing, the instantly identifiable touch no matter the piano, the stunning depth of his left hand and the harmonic approach that no

Hey, Jazz Piano School:  Today I'd like to just quickly highlight a great pianist who unfortunately passed away a few years back but whose brilliant playing really left a mark on me.  Michel Petrucciani was a unique pianist;  he was born with a condition called "Glass Bones", which resulted in him being considerably smaller than most people and somewhat fragile.

   One of the very best ways to improve your playing is LISTENING to great jazz as much as you can!  Jazz, particularly, is like getting a nice, soulful massage for your ears;  I’d bet that if they hooked us up to some machine to measure what happens when we listen to good jazz all the indicators would start flashing GREEN.  Tower of Power has that great tune “Soul Vaccination”, and if we ever needed such a vaccination, th

I have finally recovered from the Jazz Cruise, which actually docked a month ago.  It’s not the music overload, or the hang overload;  it is, of course, the buffet overload and ensuing comatose state.  I calculate that I was eating the equivalent of 4 Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity® breakfasts at IHOP every day.  But I am back to my old self, plus about 5 pounds.

I have always really loved this interview, with Andre Previn interviewing Oscar Peterson.  When I was about 15, Oscar came through Oregon to play, but he was playing in Portland, 220 miles from my home town.  And my folks weren't up to driving all the way up there for it, so I organized it as a school field trip for my high school swing choir.  And it's still one of the best concerts I ever saw, Oscar, Joe Pass, Ella Fitzgerald, and the Basie band (who totally blew me away) all at once.  And like a lot of musicians, Oscar was sort of an enigma;  what could he possib

Just returned from the Jazz Cruise;  there’s a few blog posts worth of insight to post from THAT extravaganza.  But I’ll just start with this great pic of Brandon Goldberg, who sat in with a bunch of bands on the cruise and just tore it up.  I was on with the Brecker Brothers Band Reunion, which was a huge blast, and on the very last night, we played the very last show, at 10:30 PM.  Brandon

Just a quick post to alert you all that there's a really great little internet feature on an incredible, famous photo that was taken in Harlem in 1958 that featured about 60 of the greatest jazz musicians of that era and some before.  You might have seen this iconic picture before, but the New York Daily News has taken it a really great step further in this interactive feature:  Click on any of the musicians in the photo at this link, and you can hear a clip of their music!  Amazing;  what a wealth of talent gathered on those steps that day (Count Basie got tired of stan

I'm playing this Sunday (1/21) at the Baked Potato in Los Angeles with Armand Sabal-Lecco (bassist on the big Paul Simon tours in the '90s), with Joel Taylor on drums and Toshi Yanagi on guitar.  And like every musician I know from west Africa, Armand has this incredibly highly evolved approach to rhythm and time, so sophisticated that it takes the other 3 of us a good while to get our heads around some of the tunes we play.  The song below is a good example.  Like a lot of polyrhythmic music from Cameroon, it starts off in a way that makes you think "I got this".  But t

To kick off 2018, let's do a new "Lick Of The Month".  And for this month, we're gonna look at...The ACTUAL LICK!  The one from this viral YouTube made by somebody with WAY, WAY, WAY too much time on his hands:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krDxhnaKD7Q