Florian Arbenz and his twin brother Michael are like hand and glove, appearing together on numerous records. A prime example is the recently released stunning trio recording with bass legend Ron Carter, The Alpine Session.
Our parents were classical musicians,” says Arbenz. “My father played piano, my mother cello. But they had a very small but nice collection of jazz vinyl and me and Michael fell in love with this music from early childhood. It started with Louis Armstrong, Django Reinhardt, Ella Fitzgerald, Art Tatum and went on to Bill Evans. So, it was very obvious that we played a lot of music together, also because of lack of other ‘jazz kids’ in the neigbourhood.”
Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. Ira and Charlie Louvin. Thad, Elvin and Hank Jones. James and Bobby Purify. Art and Addison Farmer. Michael and The Jacksons. Chuck and Gap Mangione. Duane and Greg Allman. Michael and Randy Brecker. Stevie and Jimmy Vaughan. Beyonce and Solange Knowles. To name but a few. Brothers and sisters in music. It’s not unusual but special nonetheless. Especially when they are twins, like the Arbenz brothers from Switzerland, drummer Florian and pianist Michael. Forerunners of European progressive jazz, who have separate careers yet played on multiple records together, notably Vein’s Vein Plays Ravel and David Liebman’s Lemuria Live.
Florian’s ambitious, colossal Conversation 1-12 series of albums features Michael and a variety of talents and luminaries such as Greg Osby, Tineke Postma, Jim Hart and Kirk Lightsey. He’s also part of Convergence, which recently issued Moon, featuring Michael and regular collaborators Jorge and Michael Vistel (brothers!). Wide-ranging, contemporary fusion, by lack of a better word, underlined by Florian’s intricate rhythms and a balanced and varied sound of his drum kit that’s typically in sync with the overal atmosphere – Florian has a thorough knowledge of classical and Afro-Cuban percussion.
“Michael is my twin brother,” says Florian. “What can I say? We grew up together listening to the same crazy jazz music. We loved Miles Davis’s Live At The Plugged Nickel with Ron Carter on bass of course… Me and Michael share so many personal and musical moments. Playing with him always feels very familiar and easy. The music of Moon was written by myself and the Vistel brothers and Michael mainly had to deal with the amazing accordion player João Barradas. I thought it was highly interesting to combine him in a rhythm section with Michael.”
As opposed to Moon, The Alpine Session is a piano trio format and a creative conversation between the perceptive Swiss jazzers and the highly imaginative, sprightly, 88-year-old bass maestro from Ferndale, Michigan. You feel witness of a special cutting-edge occasion, Carter being swept along in a maelstrom of moods, becoming one with the Arbenz brothers on the skeleton remains of It Don’t Mean A Thing, deconstructed and ingeniously brought to a climax. On Florian’s wicked avant groove Old Shaman and Michael’s pastoral Lullaby. Not to mention on Florian’s furious, modal-tinged Evolution. Serious heat.
How does one go about setting up a one-off with a hero with a capital H on short notice? Florian: “Obviously, Ron’s understandable concern was that our music would be too complicated, with a lot of odd meters, so he wanted to see the music before the session. On the one hand, we wanted to invite him, musically, as a guest to play our own music, but on the other hand we wanted to take advantage of his history and his legendary playing. I think we managed quite well.”
Understatement. Florian: “It felt absolutely great! Very natural and inspiring. Ron was extremely easy-going, but his focus to create something valuable was also very strong. We played for four hours straight through and didn’t listen back even once to the music. It was just about the moment and creating good music. It was hugely inspiring to me that a musician that has played hundreds or even thousands of sessions with the greatest legends in his long life still takes every note he plays so serious.”
Florian Arbenz
Did you know that Florian performed Freedom Jazz Dance twelve consecutive times with different line-ups on his Conversations project and that Ron Carter was the bassist on Eddie Harris’s original composition as well as the famous Miles Davis cover?
What is the connection between Florian Arbenz and Elvis Presley? Search Florian’s Instagram page for the answer.
Photographer Ron Eckstein looks back on an extraordinary career that took him from a yellow cab to the legend and local hero-studded clubs of The Big Apple.
Ronald Reagan was an actor who had become President of The United States. Michael Jackson was a phenomenon that walked around like a zombie. Sarah Vaughan was the greatest living female jazz singer and was performing at the Blue Note club in Manhattan. Eckstein: “I was crouched on the floor in front and got up to take a photograph. A guy behind me was annoyed and said something like ‘get down, you’re in my way, get down!’ Sarah Vaughan said to me, ‘don’t listen to him, come up to the dressing room between sets and take all the shots that you want.'”
He didn’t have to be told twice. The Vaughan episode was one of the first times that Eckstein took a jazz photograph in New York. The New Yorker was already in his mid-thirties, child of a father that was born in Bucharest, Rumania and a mother that came from Vienna, Austria. Years before shooting pictures of the legendary, amiable singer, the immigrant son had joined a work force as common as cookery or factory, yet defined, besides the skyline, the global image of The Big Apple. Eckstein: “I was about thirty years old and driving a taxi cab. I’d have my radio in the cab and listen to mostly jazz, those were the days of the legendary DJ’s Symphony Sid and Al “Jazzbeaux’ Collins. There was this new camera, the point and shoot auto-focus camera, so I was able to take quick photos from behind the wheel. That was a big help. I did this for a couple of years. It made driving a cab much more interesting.”
One night, the voice of a customer sounded vaguely familiar. Eckstein: “I was driving on the upper west side and I hear this gravelly voice ask me ‘Who’s that you’re listening to, Tito Puente?’ I said ‘yeah’ and glanced over my shoulder and sure enough it was Miles Davis. It turned out I drove him to pick up some ‘stuff’. He gave me a toot and I layed some primo Hawaiian on him. A great exchange!
“Then I went to Maui in Hawaii and worked odd jobs. I kept shooting pictures there around the island. I also went to local clubs photographing locals and visitors like Carlos Santana and Peter Tosh. When I came back to New York, I started going out to the clubs. The Village Vanguard, Sweet Basil’s and many smaller clubs. I’d always loved music, particularly jazz and Latin music. Before I knew it, I was the house photographer of the Blue Note club and Birdland. Soon, I was freelancing for The New Times and The New York Newsday. That’s how I got my start. Over the years, I literally shot about ten thousand images. Jazz, but also some blues and rock & roll, like Little Richard. I felt that this is what I was meant to do, be a photographer. I loved photography and music, it was a nice marriage of cultures.”
Eckstein reminds us that jazz musicians, not excluding the stars, are hard-working men and women, no different in a way from the garbageman, the corner grocer, the beat cop, the hustler, the sales woman, except that they sell their wares in the entertainment industry, off-Broadway. They are fanatics that have long since realized that their art form is born of misery, a form not without inner strife, nor without interracial revolutions while, not least, the all-that-matters-is-can-you-play-attitude, huddling together wherever some daredevil opened up shop.
There are only small hints of glamour in his pictures. His style is black and white realism. Eckstein’s photographs have a grainy texture, weird angles, off-beat imperfections, like Monk’s dissonant quips. But you’ll notice a vividly captured essence. Contorted faces. Outpourings of the soul. Contemplation. Concentration. But also backstage banter, laughter, relaxation. Jazz artists, in the act of creation or wandering about like people at the airport. Eckstein was up close, like UP CLOSE. The aura is street photography-ish, slightly Gary Winogrand-ish, Bruce Gilden-ish. Tinges of punk. If he would’ve been into that, Eckstein could’ve been the chronicler of CBGB’s or Max’s Kansas City.
But he was not. Eckstein was into people that practiced and played for hours, weeks, months and years on end. A who’s who of classic and contemporary jazz: Illinois Jacquet, Buddy Rich, Ellis Larkins, Ray Brown, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Kenny Burrell, Horace Parlan, Frank Foster, Archie Shepp, Dave Brubeck, Stanley Turrentine, Pharaoh Sanders, Sun Ra, Sheila Jordan, Clark Terry, Jaki Byard, Abbey Lincoln, Stan Getz, Frank Morgan, Nancy Wilson, Big Nick Nicholas, Maxine Sullivan, Kenny Garrett, Emily Remler, Geri Allen, Wynton Marsalis, Regina Carter, Mark Turner, David Sanchez, Roy Hargrove, Jesse Davis and many others.
Not to mention beloved heroes such as Dizzy Gillespie. Eckstein: “Eventually, I hung out backstage a lot. The musicians kind of accepted me after a while. I got on particularly well with Dizzy Gillespie. The first shot that I ever took of Dizzy Gillespie was a miracle. It was at The Village Gate. On Monday nights they used to have a thing called salsa vs jazz. They would invite soloists to play with a Latin band. Dizzy was the guest of Tito Puente that evening. Dizzy was standing around in the vestibule. We were hanging out and I took this picture from the hip. I didn’t know it at the time but when I developed the roll, it blew my mind! He could’ve been standing anywhere in the universe, but he happened to be standing in front of a poster with himself on it. The way he was framed in front of it was uncanny and just perfect, even to the patch of grey hair on his head to the halo of himself in the picture. After that I knew that there is a higher power than us on this earth and in this universe!”
If Herman Leonard’s famous photograph of Dexter Gordon is all about the hipness of jazz, the joy of creation and vitality, Eckstein’s portrait of Long Tall Dex defines the fragility and dignity of a hard-living, weathered veteran. Eckstein: “Gordon wasn’t performing much anymore. He came to The Blue Note one day to see his old friend Billy Eckstine. I was hanging out with the two of them and just happened to get that shot. It is one of my really good shots.”
The times they are a-changing. But jazz remains ingrained in New York City in places like Small’s, Smoke, Mezzrow. At 77, Eckstein is now living a quieter life. “I go out occasionally, though I don’t shoot so much anymore. My eyes are not so great. I would go club hopping. Sometimes I would visit four clubs a night. The musicians got to know me, they let me in. That’s how it goes in life, when you are younger you got to push yourself, get as well-known as you can in your trade. You just got to plug away. I wouldn’t say that I was wildly successful or anything. But I’m still alive and trying my best.”
Ron Eckstein is a photographer who lives in Queens, New York City. Over the years, there have been several exhibitions of his work in the New York area.
Check out Ron Eckstein’s ‘pictures of his pictures’ on his Instagram page ‘ronaldeckstein’.
She misses Amsterdam but there’s nothing like her birthplace Barcelona, where alto saxophonist Irene Reig plans her next move, typically working from her bop roots towards multi-layered contemporary jazz recordings.
Her background doesn’t need guessing, since one of her groups is called The Bop Collective. Reig: “I”d played clarinet and sax in school bands but it wasn’t until saxophonist Pablo Arias showed me what Charlie Parker was about that I really got into it. I am also influenced by Johnny Hodges, Sonny Stitt, Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane.”
One night in 2024, Amsterdam crowds (including yours truly) saw her jamming the bop in the Red Light District at the tiny and overcrowded Bar Zilt, warding off shoulder-brushing customers, contemplating the effects of constant draught, sweating like a construction worker, blowing hot on tunes by Bird, Dizzy, Tadd Dameron.
O yeah, bop is her bread and butter.
But it doesn’t stop there. On the contrary, the interesting thing is, Reig, who has been part of the Amsterdam scene since she attended conservatory approximately ten years ago, uses that language to studiously raise her game. Reig released a successful album of compelling, poetic repertoire – Alto For Two – with fellow altoist Kika Sprangers in 2024.
Furthermore, Reig, who also worked with Pennsylvania greats Dick Oatts and John Swana, has gradually developed The Bop Collective, which released three albums, into a modern post-bop unit, subliminally integrating outside influences, ablaze with her spicy and fervent alto style. Reig: “I started the band in Barcelona but when I moved to Amsterdam, I re-build it into a new group for the sake of my masters exam. We went from there and never looked back.”
“My motivation was, I always like writing and arranging. I’ve always loved Count Basie and Duke Ellington. As a teenager, I played a lot in youth big bands and so I’ve learned how big bands work from inside, like the voicing, structure, how everything blends, and such. So, I use that knowledge to write for our octet. It is a reflection of my background of bebop, hard bop and post bop and mixes that language with the things I have always liked, like Brazilian music, soul, funk, and the counterpoint and melodic strains of classical giants like Bach.”
While Reig will continue exploring new vistas with The Bop Collective and Kika Sprangers in the future, her current focus is on her new album with her quartet featuring pianist Xavi Torres. “It is called Anima, which means ‘soul’ and will be released in November. We already lined up a few gigs, one in Münster, Germany, for instance. But the presentation, of course, will be in Barcelona.”
Barcelona is where Reig grew up in a family that spun records of Latin music, Debussy, Ella Fitzgerald. Where she studied classical piano and got her degree, where she got into jazz. All this resulted in Reig becoming one of Catalonia’s prime – as they say – female jazz musicians in Europe.
Female. The terminology is an issue. You never hear someone referring to a prime male musician. Reig: “We have to stop defining women in jazz as exotic, like, oh, that girl is playing drums, wow.”
When asked if men can learn something from women in jazz, Reig initially stares into space, weighing her words. Then, her eyes, clear as spring water now, reveal a twinkle, and she continues with a subject that likely kept her mind busy for a long while. “There are many things that we can learn from each other in society. In jazz, I think what men should do is give more space to women. Not only literally on stage, but in the business. I’m not complaining, things are on the upside, but still if bookers, journalists, conservatory managers, all these people on the business side of things, increase representation, this will change society. There are still not many girls that play saxophone and it’s difficult to light that spark of ambition in your head. It would be more easy to break through if more women are allowed the space to develop their art.”
She’s a fine example herself, at age 32. Why, actually, did she leave the vivid Dutch scene, historically known as a gateway to the European heartland? Reig: “When I returned to Barcelona in 2019, it was a mixture of things. I have a lot of work here, a lot of gigs. I was already traveling back about twice a month. I live close to my family and a lot of friends over here. I do miss Amsterdam a lot, I miss hanging out and playing with my friends, but of course I’m playing there now and then. It was a good choice, the balance is okay.”
Irene Reig
Check out Irene Reig and her quartet on a spirited live show featuring Xavi Torres in Barcelona on YouTube below.
Sonny Stitt suffered from the constant comparison with his friend Charlie Parker. Fact is, former manager of Ray Brown, Jean-Michel Reisser-Beethoven explains, that The Lone Wolf, contrary to common belief, already played bebop before he’d ever met Bird. A long-awaited debunking of myth.
You read about the nomads in North-Africa in history books. Or see them on tv on Discovery Channel. Weather-beaten people with leathery, wrinkled, red faces, dressed in full desert regalia, long robes from neck to feet, ingenuously arranged turbans on their heads. They’re wobbling on camels from dune to dune, finally reaching a tiny bit of half-fertile land, settling for a while, then moving on to the next challenge. Minding their own business. Until somebody takes them away as slaves. Or hires them as a tourist attraction below union scale.
The similarity with jazz legends is striking. You read about them in history books as well or, if you’re lucky, see them on public tv in a documentary, most likely on the European broadcasting systems. Somebody might give you a tip to go see the Miles Davis documentary on Netflix, featuring various fellow legends as supporting roles. This is the only way to know about them because, for various reasons, one being that America still hasn’t come to terms with the implications of an indigenous art form that simply by being itself defied white supremacy, the history of jazz is still largely absent from the curriculum of the educational system in the USA. (Let alone the history of serious rap and hip-hop, which was partly fueled by jazz and the most extreme – extremist – Afro-American outing in the history of American musical culture, essentially completely alien to WASP teachers, parents and kids and dealing with matters too scary to touch.)
In Hollywood, jazz is a tourist trap. To date, the jazz artist hasn’t been depicted on the big corporate screen in the manner he or she genuinely moves or behaves. Not even once. (Bird? Well… with all due respect: no) The latest effort was the jazz part of Babylon. Not quite. Unless professional jazz musicians are featured, e.g. Jerry Weldon and Joe Farnsworth in Motherless Brooklyn, these efforts are fruitless. (Not counting the indispensable European indie flick Round Midnight with Dexter Gordon)
So far, so bad. If poverty of portrayal is omnipresent, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that education falls short.
The jazz legends lived a truly nomadic life. Though they rarely if ever traveled with family. Jimmy Forrest worked on the riverboat in the band of the enigmatic Fate Marable. Up and down the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers time and again. Arnett Cobb journeyed with the so-called territory bands in the Mid-West, dust everywhere, in his nose, ears, crotch, brain. Duke Ellington worked around the clock, somewhere, somehow. He sat beneath Harry Carney in the car and traveled more miles on the American highways than Boeing 747’s fly over the oceans in their life span.
Charlie Parker, The Bird. Quite the wanderer in his all-too short and turbulent life. Sonny Stitt, The Lone Wolf. He liked to travel alone from East to West and North to South, picking up local rhythm sections and hard cash.
Speaking of Bird and The Lone Wolf. Whom crossed paths occasionally in their lives. Famously the first time, in 1942. Do you remember that story? Good one. Great jazz lore. Initially, it was chronicled by former promotor Bob Reisner in his book Bird: The Legend Of Charlie Parker in 1962. The story was quickly adopted by Ira Gitler for his liner notes of Stitt’s 1963 album Stitt Plays Bird. And repeated by critics and fans to this day.
However, Reisner and the herd forgot to mention or were ignorant of one thing. To be precise, nothing less than the punchline.
Early in his career, when he was 19 years old, Stitt played in the band of singer and pianist Tiny Bradshaw. Stitt had heard the records that Charlie Parker had done with Jay McShann and was anxious to meet him. Finally, one day, the band reached Kansas City, Bird’s place of birth. (see picture of Kansas City’s club-filled black district around Twelfth Street during the era of political boss Tom Pendergast below) Stitt: “I rushed to Eighteenth and Vine, and there, coming out of a drugstore, was a man carrying an alto, wearing a blue overcoat with six white buttons and dark glasses. I rushed over and said belligerently: ‘Are you Charlie Parker?’ He said he was and invited me right then and there to go and jam with him at a place called Chauncey Owenman’s. We played for an hour, till the owner came in, and then Bird signaled me with a little flurry of notes to cease so no words would ensue. He said: ‘You sure sound like me.’”
That’s it. That’s the official story. But it ends prematurely.
Because Stitt retorted: “No, yóu sound like me!”
“Yeah!” says Jean-Michel Reisser-Beethoven. “It’s amazing that none of the people in the business cared to tell the real story.”
(Stitt; Bird; Twelfth Street, Kansas City)
Swiss-born Jean-Michel Reisser was nicknamed “Beethoven” by the legendary Harry “Sweets” Edison. Son of a serious record collector that befriended jazz legends in the 1970’s, Jean-Michel sat on the lap of ‘uncle’ Count Basie as a three-year old kid. He eventually befriended Basie, Ray Brown, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Max Roach, Jimmy Woode, Milt Hinton, Sonny Stitt, Dizzy Gillespie, Hank Jones, Jimmy Rowles, Alvin Queen and various others. A savvy cat, he was hired as manager by Ray Brown. Besides managing Brown, Jean-Michel produced hundreds of records, tours and jazz documentaries. He has retired from the business now, lives in luscious Lausanne and, as passionate about his beloved art form as he’s ever been, is an enlightening jazz causeur.
“I would be stupid not to overwhelm all those legends with questions while they were still living and breathing. That way, I heard a lot of stories, directly from the source.”
Sonny Stitt, though, was rather reticent. “He was a great guy, but didn’t talk much. You had to take him by the arms and say, ‘hey motherfucker, I have some questions! He was the kind of guy that liked to drink and smoke and relax after a concert. It was only privately that Sonny ultimately got down to conversating about music.”
The punchline raises multiple issues. About the ignorance of the press. (Though Gitler, as we’ll see, spitballs something interesting at the issue.) About the mystery of parallel inventions in art. And, not least, about Stitt’s reputation and life. Much to his dismay, Stitt had to deal with comparisons with Charlie Parker all his life. Small wonder, since Stitt has always been a straight-ahead bop saxophonist, variating, apart from various commercial records, largely on the prevalent Tin Pan Alley changes and bebop’s contrafact compositions. However, a mere cursory afternoon of comparative listening between Stitt and Parker will reveal largely differing personalities to all listeners that trust their ears, whether beginners or aficionados.
Stitt’s a thoroughbred. Fine horse, plenty bulging muscle, shiny brown manes. Charging out of the gate, running powerfully but smoothly, eye on the finish line. Goal-oriented.
Bird’s a pinball at the mercy of a pinball wizard. It is eloquently maneuvered on the plate. Then, with a sudden push, it is smashed through the glass, careening around the arcade and miraculously jumping back into the machine.
No, yóu sound just like me!
Come again?
Reisser-Beethoven: “That’s the truth. It’s what Sonny told me when we talked about his meeting with Parker. Significantly, many people have told me about their interaction with Sonny. First of all, Ray Brown. Ray met Sonny in 1943. Ray said that he hadn’t heard about Parker until a bit later. He said, ‘I heard this young guy playing things I never heard before. Everybody says he’s playing like Bird, I said, no way. Sonny always had his own style’. Hank Jones played with Stitt in 1943 and he told me the same story. J.J. Johnson as well. He said he’d never heard about Bird until 1944, but he’d already played with Sonny Stitt: “This motherfucker had his style. He didn’t play like Parker. He played in the same vein, but it was different.’ Stan Levey told me a similar story.”
Vein is the word here.
Reisser-Beethoven continues: “This is the way of the arts. You sometimes see it happening in painting, that two great painters arrive at a similar concept. It works this way in music as well. For instance, the late Benny Golson explained to me that he composed a lot of tunes that he thought were pure originals but found out by listening to the radio that others had reached the same conclusion, without ever hearing Benny’s drafts. As far as the story about Stitt and Parker goes, Parker hadn’t totally arrived at his original style when he played with Jay McShann. It was only in 1944 when he had fully developed bebop harmonics. Stitt arrived on the scene a bit later and in the public eye and everybody said that he played like Parker. But historically, this is not the case.”
It is the way of the arts but also extends to other areas. Politics and social history, for instance, with strings of misunderstanding attached. Take Martin Luther King’s iconic I Have A Dream speech. Contrary to general belief, King didn’t invent the groundbreaking oneliner. He’d heard Prathia Hall, daughter of Reverend Hall, utter those words in a remembrance service in church after an assassination on black citizens. King used the sentence in subsequent speeches but it didn’t catch on until he so imposingly integrated it in his speech at the march to Washington, urged by singer Mahalia Jackson.
Back to our musical icons. Paradoxically, Reisner and Gitler mention an occurrence that backs up the idea that giants like Parker and Stitt arrived at the same musical conclusions apart from each other. (In this respect, it should also be noted that drummer Kenny Clarke worked on new rhythms in the very early 1940’s, a glimpse of the congruency of ideas of Parker, Gillespie, Clarke, Roach, Monk, Pettiford, Mingus, Powell in the mid-1940’s) Reportedly, Miles Davis saw Stitt coming through St. Louis (Davis’s birthplace) in 1942 with Tiny Bradshaw’s band, ‘sounding much like he does today as far as general style is concerned’. Gitler says: ‘We don’t know whether this was before or after the Kansas City confrontation, but Stitt has long insisted that he was playing this way before he heard Parker.’
Chockfull of lore, Gitler’s liner notes of Stitt Plays Bird (by the way, a record with some stellar solos by Stitt, regardless of the underwhelming band spirit) also mentions something that Charlie Parker supposedly said to Stitt a little while before his death in 1955: ‘Man, I’m not long for this life. You carry on. I’m leaving you the key to the kingdom.’
Epic. Lord Of The Rings-style. However, nobody in his right mind believes Bird to be capable of uttering such pompous near-last words. ‘Please pass that piece of lobster,’ seems more likely. Or, in a more serious friend-to-friend/father-to-son vein, ‘I urge you not to do as I did, stay away from the needle’.
In fact, Bird did say something of the sort to young disciples, that didn’t listen and with few exceptions got hooked. Nothing of the sort was advised to Sonny Stitt, though, who lived with his own demons and did time in Lexington, Kentucky in 1947/48. Precisely at the time that bebop gained nation-wide traction. Bad luck. Reisser-Beethoven: “I’m sure that his being out of the public eye was a setback, but his main problem was criticism. He suffered from big depressions throughout his career. Everybody presented him as a clone of Charlie Parker. It was problematic. He wanted to quit many times. Eventually, he alternated with tenor saxophone. Dizzy Gillespie came up with this idea in 1946, when Sonny was in Dizzy’s band. Suddenly nobody said anything about Bird! Although he played the same lines, chords, improvisations. Dizzy said to me that, when Parker didn’t show up, he’d either call Lucky Thompson or Sonny Stitt. He loved Sonny Stitt.”
“In his view, Norman Granz saved his career. Granz took him out on the Jazz At The Philharmonic tours. He recorded him with Dizzy, Sonny Rollins and produced all those Verve albums. Sonny considered his Verve albums as the highlight of his career; notably Sits In With The Oscar Peterson Trio, New York Jazz, Plays Arrangements From The Pen Of Quincy Jones. He also believed his albums in the early 1970’s with Barry Harris, Tune Up, Constellation and 12! to be among his best.”
And so, the nomads traveled from East to West, North to South, dark-skinned birds and lone wolfs roaming from one asphalt jungle another, sometimes jubilant, rejoicing notes brimming with blues and Debussy, as excited as kids on a funny farm, sometimes shivering, hiding in a torn raincoat, at the end of the rope and the track. Charlie Parker and Sonny Stitt crossed paths more than once. Reisser-Beethoven: “Allegedly, they met several times. As far as I’ve heard, they were good friends. Charlie Parker didn’t say anything bad about Sonny’s style, no way. Dizzy said that sooner or later the critics were bound to put walls between them. It’s not only like that in music. But also in politics, religion, history. All too often, one guy tells the so-called definitive story and the rest follows it blindly. It’s a pity.”
From sitting at the feet of her grandmother and the turntable as a toddler in Osaka to jazz mecca New York and the international stage, organist Akiko Tsuraga has come a long way, still thriving on the inspiration from mentors Lou Donaldson and Dr. Lonnie Smith. “I’m trying to do as they did as much as I can, which is playing for the people first and foremost.”
She keeps staring into space. At a point beside the screen where, it seems, a dehydrated spatula has fainted while walking to the faucet on the kitchen counter. Then she simply says: “I miss him so.”
Tsuraga refers to alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson, who passed away on November 9, 2024, at the venerable age of 98. She was part of Donaldson’s organ group for many years, heir to a line of illustrious forerunners that includes Lonnie Smith, Baby Face Willette, Big John Patton, Charles Earland and Leon Spencer.
A while later, while discussing her entrance in the New York scene in 2001 – troubled and tragic times in American history – Tsuraga falls silent again. When she has regained her posture, she explains that, without denying how horrible the WTC disaster was, she already knew all about tragedy, referring to the horrendous earthquake in Kobe, Japan in 1995.
Humble Tsuraga goes for content instead of verbosity, ‘less is more’ instead of waterfalls of words. No mistaking, she offers plenty expression and often exhibits her typical laughing mood, laced with delicate twists of consent, puzzlement, unease and enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the mood that she carries to the stage, where she oozes joy and where her notes laugh like kids in the playground and smile like grandparents sitting at the curb of the sandbox. The Osaka-born organist is a fixture on the New York scene, collaborating frequently with stalwarts as saxophonists Jerry Weldon and Nick Hempton, guitarist Ed Cherry and, not least, her husband, ace trumpeter Joe Magnarelli. Tsuraga released seven albums as a leader on various labels. Her latest is Beyond Nostalgia on Steeplechase. She doesn’t rest on her laurels and recorded a new album with drummer Jeff Hamilton, to be released in 2025. In May, Tsuraga hits the studio in Vancouver for a recording with the Vancouver Jazz Orchestra, a future Cellar Music release.
New York City remains home base, the Bay Ridge area in South Brooklyn to be precise. Her unlikely journey from Osaka to the jazz heart of The Big Apple is a curious mixture of talent, perseverance and pivotal encounters with the cream of the classic jazz crop. “Before I went to New York, I was working in clubs in Osaka. I used to play at an after-hours-club across the street from the Blue Note Osaka club. Many musicians who played there stopped by after their gigs. The after-hours-club had a Hammond B3 organ. I met so many people and had a chance to play with Grady Tate, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Brother Jack McDuff, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Kenny Kirkland, Joey DeFrancesco, Larry Goldings, Earl Klugh.”
She continues: “I was already very good friends with my mentor (drummer, FM) Grady Tate in Osaka. When I started out in New York, he helped me out a lot, showed me around places and introduced me to people. Dr. Lonnie Smith helped me in similar ways. I’d met him through drummer and mentor Fukushi Tainaka, who also introduced me to Lou Donaldson. I went to the Showman organ club in Harlem every week and met Jerry Weldon for the first time. Eventually, the club gave me a gig. When Dr. Lonnie left Lou’s group (After Smith’s tenure with Donaldson’s group in the mid-1960’s, he reconnected with him for many years the 1990/00’s, FM), Dr. Lonnie and Fukushi recommended me. Lou came to the Showman and after the first set he said, ‘Ah, Akiko, you’re so brave! Coming to New York by yourself! And you sound better than any male organist around New York.’ Lou said that I needed to learn how to comp behind horn players and that he was going to teach me. We played all over the world, long tours in Europe, Japan and on American festivals. It was an unforgettable experience.”
A far cry from her youth in Osaka. Though, that’s disregarding the Japanese fascination with Western/American culture in the 20th century, regardless of world wars. Tsuraga: “My grandmother was a big jazz fan. I heard many jazz records that way. And I loved the sound of the organ. My parents bought me a Yamaha organ when I was three years old. I started taking piano lessons as a kid and studied at Yamaha Music School. I got the chance to play all sorts of music there, American popular music, jazz, fusion.”
Plenty reason for nostalgia. But Tsuraga, as her latest album reveals, rather looks beyond nostalgia, without forgetting the richly layered roots of organ jazz. Beyond Nostalgia is an unabashed variation of organ themes. Sassy swinging modern jazz originals like Tiger alternate with the old-timey reenactment of Mack The Knife. The souped-up What A Difference A Day Makes is counteracted by the relaxed shuffle of The Happy Blues, which precedes the modal album highlight, Middle Of Somewhere, conceived after an ice-fishing trip with a friend in Wisconsin. The title track is a lovely mood piece. What’s the story behind Beyond Nostalgia? “I wrote that song after I visited the temple in Kyoto. I went with my sister. It’s a very spiritual place. It was such a beautiful experience, we were crying. Birds were humming and suddenly that melody came to me. The temple is the birthplace of ‘reiki’, hand-healing.”
Tsuraga has been involved with reiki for a long time. “I love it. Since I followed classes, I started to realize that when I play organ, my fingers feel much stronger and more sensitive. I love that feeling. You know, Dr. Lonnie Smith had really powerful hands. He would unintentionally break Iphones and Ipads! A friend of mine who works at Apple says that people with exceptionally strong hands sometimes break those screens. I was thinking, if I have the same power, my playing will improve and be just like Dr. Lonnie’s!”
She tells it with one of her enticing variations of laughs, part apologetic, part matter-of-factly packaged see-what-I-mean. It’s easy to see what she means with her final remark, though it must be said that by now her playing is nothing less than Tsuraga’s.
Sought-after bassist Joris Teepe has been on a very tight schedule for decades, a Holland-born New York stalwart with an imposing career as leader, sideman and composer. One of various latest projects is The American Dream Today. Teepe’s personal good fortune contrasts sharply with worrisome socio-political developments. “It seems like everybody continues to live as if everything will eventually turn out fine. But I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”
He’s a tall, solid man, the kind you don’t accidentally want to bump into in the crosswalk. Regardless of his solid frame, Teepe suddenly found himself falling to the ground just recently, dazed and confused. On stage, to boot, at the Blue Note club in Athens, Greece. “I suddenly felt awful, sweating profusely. Danny (Grissett, FM) saw that I was collapsing and the guys rushed over. I had to go to the hospital. It turned out that I had a bacterial infection. Unfortunately, we had to cancel the last two shows.”
Teepe is charging his batteries at his home in Amsterdam, a cup of tea in front of him. His wife is out, his son is at school. At his large kitchen table, Teepe casually goes through some of his recent activities, his unassuming manners differing strikingly from the impressive nature of his list. His itinerary included promotional gigs of Steve Nelson/Joris Teepe/Eric Ineke’s Common Language album, the release of saxophonist Johannes Enders’ The Creator Has A Master Plan B and his umpteenth recording with his soul mate, saxophonist and flutist Don Braden, At Pizza Express Live In London. Teepe recently recorded with Polish trumpeter Piotr Wojtasik and will make his debut on Steeplechase in January on Mythology by drummer Steve Johns. He’s playing with young piano wizard Theo Hill and continues to perform with piano maestro Rob van Bavel as Dutch Connection, not least on the upcoming North Sea Jazz Festival. Finally, Teepe released his Joris Teepe Real Book, a collection of 96 Teepe compositions and a rare feat.
A busy bee, right from the start in the early 1990’s, when Teepe burned some bridges and settled in New York City. He made fast friends and colleagues and never looked back, the only Dutchman in history, amazingly, that permanently made his mark in The Big Apple. Teepe’s career includes shows and recordings with luminaries as Chris Potter, Cyrus Chestnut, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Randy Brecker, Billy Hart, Tom Harrell, Lawrence Clark, Lewis Porter, Tim Armacost, Jeremy Pelt, Gene Jackson and many others. He regularly toured with Benny Golson. From 2000 till 2009, Teepe was bassist in the band of Rashied Ali, Coltrane’s last drummer.
Living the dream, so to speak. That’s partly why he titled his latest record The American Dream Today. “When I grew up as a musician in The Netherlands, I saw all those crazy and top-rate American cats in Europe. I desperately wanted to be part of that crew. Eventually, I succeeded to become a part of the scene in New York, which was and to my mind still is the jazz mecca. I’m glad I persevered because I wouldn’t have been able to experience and feel the history of jazz in The Netherlands as you do in the USA, with all due respect. Besides, obviously, over there you get a crash course in taking care of business.”
Teepe continues, referring to revealing titles as Polarization, Fake News, My Car Is Bigger Than Yours, The One Percent and Today’s Dream: “But there’s more to it. That’s why I added ‘Today’. I’m an American citizen because I also have an American passport. What is happening since Trumpism, and today, what with the re-election of Trump, is very troubling. The classic American Dream of having a big house, a family, two cars, both preferably bigger than those of your neighbors, may have beenregarded as a bit silly, but it’s far better than what is happening today. Polarization and fake news are very dangerous developments. Trump’s climate denial is disastrous. The Western Gaza-policy is horrible. I’m more politically conscious than I used to be. As an artist, you’re in a unique position, having a stage figuratively speaking but also quite literally, with a microphone in your hand. Admittedly, I’m preaching to the choir, but it’s better than nothing. Maybe someone after a concert might be inspired and become a member of Amnesty International, little things like that are worthwhile.”
The American Dream Today, which offers solution with the lively Music Is The Answer, is as varied as a wild veggie patch, full of shiny strawberries, heavy zucchinis, fresh parsley, intense ginger. It includes Marc Mommaas on saxes, Adam Kolker on saxes and woodwinds, Ian Cleaver on trumpet and flugelhorn, Leo Genovese on piano and Fender Rhodes and Matt Wilson on drums. Teepe’s band at his recent live tour, which mixes Dream with other songs from the Teepe book and was seen by Flophouse at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam, consisted of Ian Cleaver, Don Braden, trombonist Luis Bonilla, pianist Danny Grissett and drummer Gene Jackson. (This band minus the lamented Jim Rotondi was the logical choice after a performance with the Noord-Nederlands Orkest) Both bands make the most of Teepe’s strong repertoire, which links uproar with melancholy, jubilance with a sense of foreboding and is marked by a striking tension between composition and freedom. How did the prolific tunesmith arrive at his method? “There is before and after Rashied Ali. I have always written compositions, basically in the mainstream. Meeting Rashied changed everything. It was not only unforgettable to work with someone who had such a close connection with Coltrane and had such great stories of that era, but a life-changing period for me as a musician and writer. He had a very different way of thinking about music and composing. For Rashied, it didn’t matter if everything fell into AABA and 4 bars. He just said, well, about one minute of this is okay… For him it wasn’t about the rules but about the feeling, about how people would react and a deeper level than just the technical side. It was so exceptional because it didn’t come out of the blue. Rashied knew all the songs from Broadway. He used to hum and sing those tunes all the time back in the van. He had grown up with those tunes but wanted to transform those tunes into something else.”
Teepe professes an admiration for the writing of Wynton Marsalis, notably Black Codes (From The Underground) and Vince Mendoza and Bill Holman, both of whom Teepe worked with in orchestral projects. Teepe is also artistic advisor and teacher at the Prins Claus Conservatory in Groningen and brought countless American friends and colleagues over to The Netherlands for workshops and performances. He’s been traveling between his apartment in New York and his home in The Netherlands for many years. How long is the 62-year-old bassist going to keep up this relentless commuting? “I feel like a New Yorker, even if I’m here a lot of the time. I met my wife when I was living in New York twenty years ago. She lived there for some years, though she prefers Amsterdam. So, what can I say! It takes two to tango. My son is 14 and would love to live in New York. At any rate, I live the biggest part of my jazz life over there. When I walk into a club, everybody knows who I am. It’s not like that over here. I remember touring with Benny Golson. We played in the Bimhuis. So, Benny introduced me, saying something like, ‘on bass, it’s your homeboy… Joris Teepe. Well, three fourth of the audience didn’t know who I was.” Teepe laughs: “It’s twenty years ago. I’m a bit better known these days in The Netherlands, because I have been more active. I’ve found a nice balance of shuffling between New York and The Netherlands.”
Does his son play an instrument? Teepe, matter-of-factly: “He started out on piano, then switched to bass. He’s a great bass player. He’s a fast learner and grooves like mad. You may catch him playing Jaco Pastorius stuff from the top of his head, it’s crazy. But he doesn’t like to practice. It seems that he wants to quit. Obviously, he’s in puberty, so there you go. I’ve never put any pressure on him, it’s his own choice. He thinks twice because he sees the amount of traveling that I need to do. And all those old people sitting in the audience.”
Portuguese guitarist Ricardo Pinheiro is all about melody and tone and meanwhile making up musical stories with a who’s who from Europe, USA and Brazil. “I’m working with my idols, so I’m very happy.”
Pinheiro shows the view from his house with his camera. A big garden, rows of trees of multiple heights at the edge. A crystal-clear blue sky. It’s Sintra, a short drive from Lisbon. The gorgeous Sintra Woods and Mountains were a retreat for Portuguese nobility, full of opulent castles and villas. The forests are dense like giant wombs, the hills are jagged like gigantic rock elbows and various locations offer a breathtaking view of the ocean nearby. To say the least, living in Sintra is not a punishment. “It’s beautiful. I grew up in Lisbon, but I came to Sintra when I was 17. My parents built a house. I lived here for three years before I went to study at Berklee in Boston. When I got married, me and my wife were wondering where to live. Prices in Lisbon were high. Not as crazy high as nowadays, but higher than Sintra. We got an apartment and then, after the birth of our second child, moved into this house.”
The beauty and splendid serenity of Sintra inspired Caruma, Pinheiro’s refined and moving piece of guitar and voices featuring singers Theo Bleckmann and Monica Salmasso from 2020. Clearly, Pinheiro can’t be confined to a small space. He got plenty heads turning as a sidekick to Dave Liebman and never looked back, releasing various, singular albums of standards, straight-ahead and prog jazz, acoustic and Brazilian-Portuguese flavored songs, free improv, jazz and poetry and cinematic scores. A kid in the candy store of guitar music. “There wasn’t an instrument in the house until I asked for a guitar at age 14. I was soon playing heavy metal. Metallica and Iron Maiden. I was in a band that even recorded in the UK. But when I was about 17, I felt the need to study theory. That meant playing jazz at the Hot Club Jazz. My grandfather listened to Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Broadway tunes, Brazilian music. It was old people’s music to me then. It was okay, but old! Still, I started to get into standards, learning harmony. Then I got into John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson. Charlie Parker. Slowly but surely I started understanding it and loving it.”
You could do worse than, a couple decades later, assembling a line-up of saxophonist Chris Cheek, bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Jorge Rossy. They are part of Pinheiro’s newest Fresh Sound Records release, Tone Stories. A set of standards that includes well-known warhorses as When You Wish Upon A Star and Blame It On My Youth and seldom-played hard bop classics as Elmo Hope’s De-Dah and Dexter Gordon’s Fried Bananas, marked by the angular yet lyrical playing of Pinheiro, embedded in the colorful sounds of the all-star cast. It’s a warm and smoothly flowing album, apple pie fresh out of the oven. And nothing tastes quite as good as his version of Jimmy Rowles’s seminal ballad The Peacocks, achingly beautiful from start to finish. “Tone is the quality of sound. I like to think of the album as a set of stories that are told with the tones of each player, which together make the sound of the band. And we’re telling a story with each song. Chris and Michael have incredible tones. Jorge as well. He had definite ideas of how he wanted his drums to sound, especially during the ballads. He said to the engineers, ‘I’m not playing like a typical drummer, behind everything, chink chink… Please put me up forward in the mix. I’m painting sounds.’ Jorge is one of my favorite drummers of all-time, period. So, this album is a dream come true.”
From heavy metal, the tradition of Wes Montgomery to the invigorating input of the school of the 90’s. Pinheiro enthusiastically reflects on the influence of his postmodernist elders. “I belong to the first generation that was inspired by people like Jorge Rossy, Brad Meldhau, Mark Turner, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Chris Cheek. They incorporated a lot of tradition but with a new flavor, used the same tools in a different way. It’s not Wes but also isn’t fusion. When Meldhau did those pop songs, it really connected with me. Jazz can be like this, wow. It wasn’t playing pop as pop, but pop like jazz. Brad, Jorge and Chris redefined things, formed new musical proposals. Nobody played even eights like Jorge. Nobody had the timbre of Kurt or the two-handed independence and the classical vibe of Brad. Or played the upper part of the horn like Mark. Their groups joined two worlds, tradition and fusion, together in a peaceful way. They deserve all the credit.”
He sometimes starts solos where you least expect it. Paves the way to a resolution with quirkily melodious twists and turns. Pinheiro’s style is a refreshing mixture of asymmetry and lyricism. He doesn’t restrict himself to the vintage 1950’s aesthetic. On the contrary. He allows himself the odd display of effects and volume and tone control, with extraordinary results. During The Peacocks, his handling of volume control mingles like a human voice with Cheek’s suave soprano. Back in 2017, he made When You Wish Upon A Star into a psychedelic tour de force, almost as if he was playing in The Grateful Dead or Iron Butterfly or Pink Floyd or was playing along with the thirteenth take of The Beatles’s Tomorrow Never Knows, with Massimo Cavalli and Eric Ineke on Triplicity. The same trio repeated the uncanny feat on their 2022 version of Bill Evans’s Time Remembered. And effects and tone control are all over Caruma or 2013’s Tone Of A Pitch. Pinheiro stresses an important fact: “Melody is all-important. I’m not thinking about hip runs or large intervals. If music has no melody, there’s no point in my opinion. But I like different things. I’m like a chameleon. Tone aesthetic comes with the history of jazz, in a way. The classic guitarists were thinking about their tone. Way back, I started listening to John Scofield and Bill Frisell and started experimenting with delay, overdrive and reverb to color the music. But I avoid exaggerating at all costs, I don’t want to obscure the message and the melody. I envision sounds and try to go for it, either with thinking about strings, how to use my hands or with effects. The incredible Ben Monder has been very important to me. He taught me how to use effects and tone control without confusing things up. It took a few years of experimenting.”
Pinheiro hooked up with various class acts through the years. He met Dave Liebman and Dutch drummer Eric Ineke through the International Association of Schools of Jazz, which was founded by Liebman. His albums were released on Greg Osby’s Inner Circle label and Jordi Pujol’s acclaimed Fresh Sound Records, among others. A well-connected gent. “Fresh Sound was one of my favorite labels. I fell in love with those records from Meldhau and Rosenwinkel. I kept in touch with Jordi ever since the release of my debut album Open Letter in 2010. It’s kind of my nature to take matters in my own hands. I’m a little… how shall I say this, not ashamed.” Pinheiro laughs. “I harass people! That’s how I got in touch with Chris Cheek. Back then, I knew Chris was coming to play here. He had done four albums on Fresh Sound and I thought they were absolutely fantastic. I sent him an email and asked if he wanted to record and he agreed. I asked if he could talk with Jordi. He happily obliged and that is how my first album Open Letter came about. Now we’ve got Tone Stories and another one in the can already with the same quartet.”
Neatly trimmed coupe, healthy tan, bright eyes, rapid, enthusiastic flow of speech. One easily understands why colleagues, apart from his original musicianship of course, like to work with the resident of Sintra and jazz teacher. He’s eager to continue his striking partnership with Massimo Cavalli and Eric Ineke. “We’ve got another album coming up, we’ve finished recording just last month. Massimo and I have a great understanding. And I love to play with Eric. He’s one of the most swinging drummers out there, so easy to play with. Energetic, yet sensitive. There’s no effort, strain, doubt, he always is totally aware of the structure of the music. He carries with him this big history of playing with loads of giants of jazz.”
Among other endeavors, notably working with Grammy-winning Brazilian singer Luciana Souza and having the exceptional improvisational skills of Portuguese Maria João on a soon-to-released solo album, Pinheiro is currently striking up a cooperation with none other than famous Brazilian composer and singer Ivan Lins. “I contacted him and sent some songs. He said that they were beautiful and suggested that he write lyrics. I couldn’t believe it. I’m over the moon.”
Ricardo Pinheiro
Check out Ricardo and his discography here.
And find Tone Stories on Fresh Sound here.
