That Farm Kid Can Play: Matt Wilson’s Vanilla Fury

In the mid-40′s, when the young autodidacts of bebop swept away the Swing Era dance band leaders, a certain hauteur seemed to permanently attach itself to the music. (Dizzy Gillespie, a great entertainer-intellectual, was the exception.) In the 60′s, when Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane opened the door to a perfervid, squalling “New Thing,” jazz Read More

The Trouble With Leon: Drum Rebel Loses Control

In the early 90′s, the jazz world was snapping out of its fixation on the Young Lions, with their instrumental technique and nice looks, and realizing, to its embarrassment, it had no good answer to that seemingly innocent question, What’s new in jazz? Well, Leon Parker didn’t sound like anybody else. (Mr. Parker plays solo Read More