Jim Hynes

You’ve seen many collaborations between bassist Scott Colley and drummer Brian Blade on these pages, typically backing Danish saxophonist Benjamin Koppel. The two have long collaborated with pianist Edward Simon, going back to groups involving saxophonist David Binney and guitarist Adam Rogers three decades ago. Recently, this trio appeared to wide acclaim along with a string octet at the Detroit Jazz Festival, where Blade was the artist-in-residence.

When the legendary pianist and composer NEA Jazz Master Andrew Hill’s live A Beautiful Day was issued in 2002, he had long left Blue Note in 1969. The intervening years were sketchy, with releases on European labels and long hiatuses to care for his ailing wife on the West Coast. In the late ‘90s, Hill returned to New York to record Dusk (200O) and the subject at hand for Palmetto Records. A Beautiful Day, recorded five years before Hill’s passing in 2007, is often called Hill’s big band record, but it sounds like no big band recording you’ve heard.

The semi-annual Exit Zero Jazz Festival held October 25-27, 2024, in the nation’s oldest ocean resort, Cape May, NJ, featured the usual loyal, enthusiastic jazz audiences and its famed eclectic lineup. The mild temperatures made it conducive to taking in acts at the nearby clubs overflowing the entire weekend. Nonetheless, with the main activities centered around Convention Hall, fans had opportunities to walk the beach and enjoy the balmy mid-60s temperatures. Yes, shorts, tee shirts, and beach umbrellas were seen on the last weekend in October. We attended from Friday through Sunday, shared meals with friends, met many jazz lovers and a few artists, and witnessed acts in Convention Hall and nearby Carney’s.

The semi-annual Exit Zero Jazz Festival, held October 25-27, 2024, in the nation’s oldest ocean resort, Cape May, NJ, featured the usual loyal, enthusiastic jazz audiences and its famed eclectic lineup. The mild temperatures made it conducive to taking in acts on the sunny deck or at the nearby clubs, which were

The Deer Head Inn, in the unlikely locale of the Delaware Water Gap in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, is America’s oldest continuously running jazz club, presenting live music since 1950. It’s a relatively easy destination from New York City, straight out on Interstate 80. One can see national acts in the intimate room that holds about 100 comfortably. The famed venue has been “home” for those who live relatively close by, such as Dave Liebman, the late Phil Woods, and Keith Jarrett. Jarrett first played the club at age 16, leading a trio in 1961, and often played there in the early years as a drummer for Paul Coates’ house trio and a guitarist for visiting musicians. Only five years later, in 1966, he was the pianist in Charles Lloyd’s legendary quartet with bassist Ron McClure (and later Cecil McBee) and drummer Jack DeJohnette.

Seldom has a band so radically reformed itself as did The Bad Plus in 2022. The piano trio format was replaced by adding saxophonist Chris Speed a nd guitarist Ben Monder to the co-founding bass-drum tandem of Reid Anderson and Dave King. While the press materials and the co-founders argue that the core principles of the band remain intact, they sound nothing like the Ethan Iverson or Orrin Evans-led versions of the band, which added a pop-rock and often daring flair to jazz music. The music now is even harder to define, rather genreless and embracing rock, fusion, and even new age sounds.

In recent years around this same time, Kelly Peterson, the wife of the late, iconic pianist, Oscar Peterson, released live performances from her archives. This is the fifth. Up until now, those records featured Oscar in his prime with both hands blazing. City Lights; The Oscar Peterson Quartet – Live in Munich, 1994

Guitarist Jeff Parker built his reputation in Chicago with Tortoise, The Chicago Underground Trio, and Isotope 217 and as a member of the AACM as well as other wide ranging endeavors. Yet his home base has been Los Angeles since 2016. He and his band, the ETA IVtet, held a Monday residency at the since-shuttered club ETA, where this album, The Way Out of Easy, was recorded on January 2nd, 2023. The group had developed quite a following, holding down that residency for seven years. What began as a band playing primarily standards evolved into one known for improvised, intriguing, long-form journeys that could run as long as 45 minutes. Don’t worry. These, too, are long tracks but only half as long.

No other 100-year-old musician is leading a band, and no bandleader has remained in the same band for 67 years. NEA Jazz Master and alto saxophonist/EWI

Blue Note, in conjunction with the Jazz Detective Zev Feldman, Jack, and Lydia DeJohnette, have unearthed one of the most explosive jazz recordings heard in recent years with Forces of Nature: Live at Slugs. Four icons of jazz, tenorist Joe Henderson, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Henry Grimes, and a very young and most impressive drummer, Jack DeJohnette. performed at the long-shuttered NYC jazz shrine, Slugs’ Saloon in 1966. Joe Lovano confessed that at one point, he just had to turn it off and catch his breath because of its white-hot intensity. Several terrific archival albums are coming in the next week or so, but none match the energy of this one. (Hint: Charles Tolliver comes very close, though).