About Us

As a boy I studied the flute, learning 36 fingerings, playing Bach and Hayden, European classical music.  I sang this music in church, listened to my father's LP's---I loved this music!  Then, in high school, I encountered another kind of music, one with different harmonies, different rhythms, sometimes with weird names, like "Epistrophe" and "Salt Peanuts." 

 

I learned about Thelonious Monk an d Dizzie Gillepsie,  listened to Stan Getz"s "Focus," and Coltrane's "Africa Brass."  I listened to Gershwin's, which sounded like an opera but not quite.  I listened to the Ellington big  band and to the Freedom Singers as well as to

Daddy-o-Daley's jazz radio show in Chicago.

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What was this strange kind of music, so different from Bach and Hayden?  What were these strange harmonies and strange rhythms,?  I learned that these were 7th and 9th chords, syncopation, pulse not on the 1 and 3 but on the 2 and 4.  This music was jazz, when it was a big part of American culture.  When it was hip. When it was the American  classical music. Incorporating jazz into my life was crucial to my growing identity. 

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Any of the tunes in this website are the same pieces that excited me many years ago.  To these I have added some French songs as well as a few pieces that fit no category but that I like a lot, like "Something Told Me It Was Over."

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I hope that listeners will for a few minutes turn off their streaming services and enjoy these lovely songs.  The recordings are a collaboration among my wonderful pianists, Dave Manuel and Yvonne Monnett, my skilled and creative video producer, Steve Rizzo, and, me. 

 

My appreciation of them, my gratitude to them, is without bounds.

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