April links

I'm not in Paris, but Charlottesville is pretty nice in April, too. Time for some links to wash away the Monday.

• Ethan Iverson on Mal Waldron. I may say this too often, but it bears repeating: if more musicians shared Iverson's zeal for writing, the world (and internet) would be a better place.
• Is Dr. Teeth a jazz muppet? An excellent post with equally incisive comments (mine excluded). 
• Pat Metheny discusses Orchestrion with Philip Booth. I will be reviewing the album and revisiting this Metheny post soon.
• Bop and Beyond is reconsidering the music of Lee Morgan. I was a bit surprised that Christopher did not care for The Sidewinder, but share his enthusiasm for Search for the New Land. Here's Part 2.
• Josh Jackson interviewed Randy Weston last week.
• Jason Parker issued a thoughful piece of media criticism over the weekend.

Ides of March

I'll go with the Ph. D. in astrophysics over the dude who may have been a plagiarist. Okay, he probably wrote those plays, but still...

• Last week at All About Jazz Frederick Bernas interviewed Christian Scott. Also interviewed at AAJ recently: Luis Bonilla and Robin DG Kelley.
• Peter Hum discovered a surprising entry in the Urban Dictionary earlier this month. He also pointed out some video from a Dave Holland master class.
• New Yorker classical critic and author of The Rest Is Noise Alex Ross has written a new book, Listen to This. Here's the table of contents. The book drops in September.
• Ethan Iverson on Wayne Shorter. If Do the Math is not on your RSS reader already, now you have no excuse.
• At Destination: Out this month: Max Roach + Archie Shepp = solid gold. 
• Darcy James Argue is giving an in-depth analysis of some of his compositions on his blog. First up: Zeno, Parts 1 and 2, with more to come. I love it when artists nerd out on their blogs and Twitter feeds. Thanks Darcy.

Here is a live recording of the Secret Society playing Zeno at Le Poisson Rouge back in 2008:

Links From Out In The Cold

• George Wein is still going strong. I hope I'll have that much vigor when I'm 65, much less 85!
  
• Jason Parker reflects on the Grammy Awards and the state of the music industry. He likes where he stands.
• In case you missed it, read Peter Hum's thoughts on competing aesthetics of beauty in jazz, his thought-provoking response to David Hadju's profile of Fred Hersch.
• Dave King of The Bad Plus just released a solo album (you can preview a track at Nextbop), and bandmate Ethan Iverson offers his thoughts on the album.
• Mark Myers continues to kill it over at JazzWax. Check out his recent interviews with Dave Brubeck, Gunther Schuller, and Buddy De Franco.
• If you're interested in the academic side of jazz, do yourself a favor and head on over to Lubricity, where Alex Rodriguez, an M.A. student and trombonist at Rutgers, is blogging with renewed vigor, focusing on "the history of how jazz has been represented in writing." Recently, he reviewed Bruce Boyd Raeburn's New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History. I recommend this blog highly.
• Christian Scott's Yesterday You Said Tomorrow is becoming one of the most anticipated jazz albums of 2010. Over at Nextbop, Seb has the first review. He also has some nice words for yours truly. Here's Christian playing Died In Love at the 2008 Newport Jazz Festival:
  

Wein photo via New York Times

Happy New Year

Start it off right with Ethan Iverson's Hall Overton extravaganza at Do The Math. And just like that, my weekend is solid booked.

When you're done with that, relive TBP's New Year's hit at the Village Vanguard. 2010 is looking good so far...

Read This Today

Whenever I sit down to play, I'm quiet for a couple of seconds. Then I ask permission from the ancestors to allow me to do these things that have already been done.

A joke about that comes from "Sweets" Edison. After I played a drum solo, he said to me, "Yeah, you thought that shit was something, huh?"

I said, "Well..."

"That shit was nothin' but a bunch of old Sid Catlett licks!" Of course, nobody in the club even knew who Sid Catlett was.

-Albert "Tootie" Heath, interviewed by Ethan Iverson

Ethan Iverson posted a wonderful interview with Albert "Tootie" Heath at Do The Math last week in anticipation of the pair's short trio run with Ben Street at Small's this week. Read it! Then go listen to last night's set at Smalls' website. You won't be disappointed by either. Many thanks to Ethan, who is fast becoming the Art Taylor of the new millenium.