Jazz Chronicles

It doesn't get much better than catching two of my favourite young musicians in one of my favourite venues, especially when a cold rain ...

It's akin to the so-called 'fog of war.' When proponents dig in on two sides of a debate, some key facts get lost. It foll...

It is beyond cliché to say that jazz is akin to a conversation, and often not true. In many bands—especially during festival season, when tr...

In Canada, the myth about top-rank musicians has long been that, once they relocate to Toronto, they become part of a homogenous whole, play...

When the TD Ottawa Jazz Festival announced its lineup in late winter I dubbed it the Year of the Voice because of the number of highly disti...

Congratulations are due to pianist Cecil Taylor, recipient of the Kyoto Prize  from the Inamori Foundation for "fully exploring the ...

As summer officially begins, I'll be settling in for 10 days of music at my hometown jazz festival, the TD Ottawa Jazz Festival. This ti...

There are only three musicians I clearly remember hearing for the first time: Charlie Parker, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. Of these,...

I have a hard time even beginning to think about how important so-called alternative weekly (or alt-weekly) newspapers have been to culture ...

Don't let my silence here at JazzChronicles make you think that nothing is happening in my little world o' jazz. On the contrary, I...

Note: My longtime friend Jacques Emond, former programming director for the Ottawa International Jazz Festival, died Sunday night after suf...

Every year, jazz critic Francis Davis undertakes the mammoth task of polling more than 100 of his peers to determine the past year's bes...

Yes, I know I recently stared into the evil side of year-end top 10 lists, but I get requests. How else are my friends and relations going ...

When an artist remains creative into his or her tenth decade there is a temptation to overstate the person's importance. Longevity has a...

Dave Brubeck was an enormous influence on my early jazz listening, and—along with his sidemen Gerry Mulligan and Paul Desmond—probably the o...

Maybe it's human nature, but there's always a certain temptation to make things appear harder to do than they are, all in pursuit of...

My father died two weeks ago at the age of 90. He had a good life—charmed, actually, in many ways—and he was lucky to slide away from us ...

Aside from jazz, one of my favourite interests is cities and how they develop, and no city attracts my interest more than my own. I grew...

Photo by Michael Jackson Wasn't that a man? David S. Ware made a mighty sound, and was one of those musicians whose soulfulness wa...

Heading off this week for the sixth Quebec City International Jazz Festival , which always forms a nice bridge between the end of the summer...