Fred Bouchard
Fred’s Contributions
January/February 1998 Books
The Bear Comes Home
Rafi Zabor
Is the creative musician really a different manner of beast? The alto-playing, talking grizzly bear anti-hero of this dark, grudgingly appealing novel stands as a perfectly imperfect metaphor for the artist as outsider: curmudgeonly, aloof, self-absorbed...
January/February 1998 Albums
Cuba: I Am Time
Various Artists
This little cigar box of four CDs of Cuban music is filled with more fire than smoke, and makes an intriguing, if only vaguely organized, introduction to the incredibly rich musical panoply for Americans rediscovering that fascinating isle's cultural goldmine...
January/February 1998 Albums
The Bass And I
Ron Carter
Forget the name, the title, the aura of legend. This is a decent little trio album by a primo rhythm section, with extra added percussion, without bass-clef sturm und drang. Carter doesn't even give himself a boffo feature, just a low-key extra chorus on...
January/February 1998 Albums
The Riverside Records Story
Various Artists
As a listener new to jazz and college in 1959, I gravitated to the brainy, saucy, all-blue Riverside label for my East Coast sounds, rather than the brawny, established blue-and-white Blue Notes. (I was getting my West Coast hits largely from Lester Koenig...
January/February 1998 Albums
Sunrise In The Tone World
William Parker with The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra
This 20-piece ensemble develops a powerful synergy out of strong if inchoate ideas of a humanistic and creative revolution welling from the heart and bowels of Brooklyn. Parker's own virtuosic bass is buried deep in roiling textures of caterwauling reeds...
January/February 1998 Albums
Normalology
Phillip Johnston
Microscopic Septet leader/founder Johnston recreates the saxophone quartet cum rhythm section of that historic (1981-'92) if under-appreciated ensemble. Charter (and almost charter) members aboard tip the balance toward the original MS: bassist David Hofstra...
December 1997 Albums
The Complete Landmark Sessions: Music of Monk And Evans
Kronos Quartet
How well jazz translates to string quartet has been demonstrated by Kronos, and precious few other such ensembles, since its inception in 1978. Kronos has exposed wide audiences to not only 20th-century serious (i.e., neither wallpaper-thin nor decibel-proud...
December 1997 Albums
Afro Blue
Dr. Lonnie Smith
Whole chapters in The Book of Coltrane have been revisited of late to good effect, e.g., Harold Danko's Quartet springboarding the momentous Ellington encounter. Dr. Lonnie Smith takes four Trane tunes for a spin on his power organ with John Abercrombie...
November 1997 Books
They’re Playing Our Song: Conversations with America’s Classic Songwriters
Max Wilk
The breezy, amusing dialogues in this slim tome give insight into the character and personalities of 26 great writers of the American songbook. The machers of New York musical comedy and Hollywood film are puffed and polished: Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen...
October 1997 Albums
The Debut Records Story
Various Artists
Charles Mingus and Max Roach ignited many a churning, probing rhythm section-for Diz & Bird, for Duke-but who'd have reckoned on them burning, brief but bright, in the realm of the record biz? In fact, Mingus and Roach fired up (OK, their ladies Celia Zaentz...
October 1997 Albums
Fina Estampa: En Vivo
Caetano Veloso
Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso is a master of mood, of poetry, of music, of all he surveys. In the instance of this brilliant concert, Veloso takes in the huge mural (1940) by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera-named for and celebrating Pan American unity...
October 1997 Albums
Endgame Brilliance
Sonny Stitt
Sonny Stitt was one of many great players who bounced back from '60s disillusion and disenfranchisement to hit second career peaks in the '70s, and this two-fer-one CD reissue marks a double parabola of his rubberized progress. Before and after Stitt's revivifying...
September 1997 Label Watch
Label Watch: Songlines
Vancouver (British Columbia) as a cultural enclave is North America’s final frontier: with its avid, freewheeling arts scene, ethnic crazyquilt, and open-minded sensibilities, you can feel those Pacific breezes whisper, “anything goes.” That newer, keener...
May 1997 Albums
Goodbye Mr. Evans
Kirk Lightsey
Goodbye Mr. Evans, a trio date, has several features to recommend it: the lead piano of Lightsey, a typically elegant musical godson of Hank Jones and Tommy Flanagan; an introduction to the excellent bass work of a young Hungarian named Tibor Elekes; a chance...
May 1997 Albums
Flight of the Eagle
Nick Brignola
Hearing Nick Brignola soar on his baritone does bring to mind watching eagles and albatrosses and vultures and magnificent frigatebirds: how do they keep those big engines in the air? And make it seem so effortless? The birds have their thermal air currents...
May 1997 Albums
Haywire
Thomas Chapin Trio Plus Wings
Tom Chapin is developing a real persona as a musician and composer, no matter which of his horns he picks up or what setting he devises for them. He writes from within, tells stories, and takes us along. On Live at the Knitting Factory, with his well-established...
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