One thing I like to do is listen to live music sourced in free jazz/improvisation and try to answer my favorite question when looking at artwork or listening to music-what do you see? I’ve done this many times, but for the first time I wrote it out at the request of writing linear notes […]
This is it
Photo: Reuben Radding Last week I was in Washington Square Park in NYC to march with Artists for a free world that was joining up with a massive group with the message to end police murder of Black people and to defund the police. I marched a couple weeks before that, but on this one […]
Giuseppi Logan rises to the stars
The very first time I met Giuseppi Logan, I didn’t know it was him. He was an older guy looking to get a reed at Sam Ash in Times Square where I worked. I thought I knew all the street musicians in NYC at that time. A name popped into my head though. In […]
Epicenter
Yesterday we reached over 15,000 cases of Corona here in NYC. We’re now the epicenter of the virus. Why wouldn’t we be? It’s certainly nothing to be proud of. Long term NYC dwellers and survivors sometimes find unity looking at all the things we’ve gone through as a group. Tragically that always leads us back […]
Power and Transformation: The Astrology of Eric Dolphy
King Eric For me, Eric Dolphy is the Louis Armstrong of the bass clarinet. I’ll never forget the first time I both heard and saw him for the first time. I had a John Coltrane videotape I rented from the library in the late 80’s. Trane was reaching down into the molten core of […]
Giuseppi Logan and the Big Picture
I recently received the word that my buddy G had a new round of health adversity. The stars lined up for me to head on out to check on him. I reached out on social media to see if I could assemble a squad to join him in person to lift his spirits. The only […]
Evolve or Die
In my earliest days in NYC I used to haunt Smalls. After hearing me play, Jimmy Lovelace sat me down and told me to quit music because I just didn’t have it inside me. He insisted he was stopping me for my own good. I was shook but I came back the next night and […]
Sound Manifesto
Sound Manifesto We’ve never seen sound We’ve measured it, transcribed it, analyzed it, and spent countless hours listening to each other speak. The sounds of the world are infinite Sound can absolutely be identified in many cases but not always What is it? Sound can communicate emotions that may be impossible to […]
Boundaries
Boundaries is a tune written by Bern Nix. Celebrating his life and music last week has me musing once again on musical identity. It has occurred to me that I have been trying to figure out my musical identity for many moons. Bern was a straight ahead Berklee graduate when he joined Prime Time. His […]
Giuseppi Logan Saves the World
I got the call from the universe, or a feeling from deep inside, that it was time to go see my buddy Giuseppi a few days ago. I tried to get other folks to join me, but it looked like it was me and G again. I found him in his room wearing a fly […]
