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 […]
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 […]
Soaring With Bird. The Astrology of Charlie Parker
Looking deeper into the astrology of Ornette Coleman inevitably led me to the astrology of Charlie Parker. Bird is where Ornette started. Thanks to Massimo Magee who asked me when I would do Eric Dolphy’s chart. That idea made me realize I had to go to Bird first. Looking closely at Bird’s cosmic relationship with […]
49
49 trips around the sun is not just a quick skip through the park. My older friends are quick to tell me that I’m still young. It seems that as long as someone is older than you, then you’re still young. It goes right to the top. My father, in his mid-70’s, was telling me […]
