By Don Heckman Sheila Jordan was in town last weekend for a two night gig at Vitello’s. Any appearance by Sheila is a significant event for jazz fans. And this one was no exception. On Friday, she teamed up with singer/author Ellen Johnson for a combined words and music event. Johnson read a few passages… Read More Here, There & Everywhere: Sheila Jordan at Vitello’s
By Don Heckman Well, the jazz Grammy winners are in. The good news is that Esperanza Spalding has won the Best New Artist Grammy, the first jazz artist to do so. And in the five jazz categories, the winning choices are, for the most part, deserved if largely predictable. But they also raise a couple… Read More Here, There & Everywhere: The 2011 Jazz Grammy Award Winners
By Don Heckman It’s no mystery that producing the Playboy Jazz Festival – a two day event for 18,000 listeners (each day) with eight straight hours of music – is a different task from what it was thirty or forty years ago. After all, at that time it was possible to program schedules including the… Read More Here, There & Everywhere: The 33rd Annual Playboy Jazz Festival Artist Line-Up
By Don Heckman Like everyone else who ever heard Mary Cleere Haran perform, I was stunned last weekend to see the news of her death. It couldn’t have happened in a more unlikely, even absurd, fashion. Riding a bicycle in Florida, where she’s been taking a break from performing, she was struck by a car… Read More Here, There & Everywhere: R.I.P. Mary Cleere Haran
By Don Heckman As painful as it was to hear of James Moody’s death yesterday, it was no surprise. For at least the past ten months Moody has endured the awful tribulations of pancreatic cancer. After surgery in February to have the tumor resected turned out to be too life threatening, he spent nearly two… Read More Here, There & Everywhere: James Moody R.I.P.
By Don Heckman James Moody’s loving wife and companion, Linda, sent out the news a few days ago that most of his friends and fans had been anticipating with dread. Prior to her email statement, the only public information about Moody’s condition was that he had been enduring a long recovery from gall bladder surgery. … Read More Here, There & Everywhere: James Moody Battles Cancer
By Don Heckman I’ve written before about Allen Mezquida’s remarkable animated character Smigly — an Everyman for the 21st century. Not only is Mezquida an imaginative visual artist, he’s also an impressive jazz alto saxophonist. In this latest installment of Smigly’s adventures, titled “Noise,” the little guy discovers how difficult it is to live life… Read More Here, There & Everywhere: “Smigly” returns
By Don Heckman Allen Mezquida is a fine jazz alto saxophonist. But he’s more than that -– talented and imaginative in a field that is, he says, “a unique way to also present my jazz music.” That field is animation. And Mezquida, a brilliant animator, has created a character – an irresistible character – named… Read More Here, There & Everywhere: Allen Mezquida’s “Smigly”
By Don Heckman I’ve written several times here about the remarkable talent and the remarkable life of Carla Zilbersmith. A gifted singer, writer, humorist and teacher, she approached all those professions with an abundance of wit and intelligence. On Monday, May 17, she passed away, after two and a half years of suffering with the… Read More Here, There & Everwhere: R.I.P. Carla Zilbersmith
By Don Heckman I’ve written dozens of obituaries for the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere, some for close friends. No one, however, will write a better obituary for Carla Zilbersmith, who is experiencing the advanced stages of ALS, than she will do for herself. But an appreciation of the work of this extraordinary woman is… Read More Here, There & Everywhere: Carla Zilbersmith
The International Review of Music 