Jazz Poems

Miles’ muted horn penetrates

like liquid, melancholy medicine

to the pinched nerve

of an old misery. I’d hit

the winning shot at State that night;

teary-eyed, Tina kissed me—

way past any doubt, then

wore distance like

a torn red dress the next day.

I feel the rend again–in the piano,

I hear her long, practiced excuses

in Coltrane’s troubling tenor—

mixed with the loneliness

I’d felt at seventeen, standing

between rusted railroad tracks

in July.

I turn the lights off–

they go black.

Spare, midnight tones tug at me,

I lean back hard into the past:

I see that winning shot go in,

I see her run at me, again,

and for a moment—she’s there

mingled in Coltrane’s tenor.

What if

I never get past this pain,

just then Miles wavers back in

with an antidote—

traying eights behind

the ivorys. It works

this time, if I only knew

how it means.

DARRELL BURTON

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Terry Vosbein was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 8, 1957. He received his Masters in Composition from James Madison University and his Doctorate in Composition from the Cleveland Institute of Music. He has composed works for orchestra, wind ensembles, chamber ensembles and choirs. He has written works for jazz bands of all sizes and his compositions have been performed all over the world.

His latest release with the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra is titled Fleet Street and is infused with a sense of humor, adding a special dimension that is too often missing in contemporary big band writing. His 2009 Progressive Jazz album also with the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra has garnered critical acclaim.

He has been awarded seven residencies and a fellowship at University College in Oxford, where he composed Masque for Cello and Orchestra. Terry also teaches music composition at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

For over twenty-five years Vosbein was an active jazz bassist and arranger, performing and arranging for a variety of ensembles, including the Glenn Miller Orchestra and the Atlanta Pops. He has performed in a wide range of genres from country western twang to big band swing, disco and country club wallpaper, and continues to play a never ending assortment of jazz combos and studio sessions.

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Jazz Poems

CHARLES PARKER: ALMOST LIKE BEING IN LOVE

These are the shadows of water when water

is thick and no longer transparent

They are everywhere–on the walls

across the ceiling.

It was always this good.

One night you undressed me in your sleep.

Very slowly, you told me later. You said I smelled good.

The sweater i said I’d taken it

out of the drawer where I kept

my winter clothes.

It smelled of pine and a long summer.

No, you said. Not wood.

More like the inside of a saxophone case,

all velvet and sweet regrets.

All blues, I said. Blues

and whatever shadows are made of,

I said, falling on you like slow water.

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Andy Sheppard was born on January 20, 1957 in Warminster, Wiltshire, England. In the late Seventies at the age of 19 he emerged as a musician in the Salisbury-based contemporary quartet Sphere, gigging only three weeks after picking up the saxophone. He honed his skills in the wine bars and jazz clubs of the United Kingdom (UK) and Europe in the early 1980s.

He also played with world music groups and with more established improvisers such as Keith Tippett. While still with Sphere, he moved to Paris, France working with French bands Lumière and Urban Sax. The mid-1980s saw Sheppard returning to the UK, playing often on Ki Longfellow-Stanshall and Vivian Stanshall’s Bristol, England-based Old Profanity Showboat. He released his self-titled debut solo album, featuring trumpeter Randy Brecker and bassist/producer Steve Swallow in 1987 and was awarded the Best Newcomer prize at the 1987 British Jazz Awards, followed by the Best Instrumentalist Award in 1988.

Andy would go on to join George Russell’s Living Time Orchestra and tour with Gil Evans. His sophomore solo album, Introductions in the Dark, also received Best Album and Best Instrumentalist at the 1989 British Jazz Awards. He toured the world and became the first to bring a Western jazz group to play in Outer Mongolia.

The Soft on the Inside Band was Sheppard’s first big band in 1990 for an album of the same name. This band turned into In Co-Motion, and after this he signed a deal with Blue Note Records, who issued Rhythm Method in 1993. That band expanded to Big Co-Motion and recorded a live album Delivery Suite at London jazz club Ronnie Scott’s which was released by Blue Note in 1994.

Saxophonist and composer Andy Sheppard, who has had the television movie The Music Practice, based on his music, continues to perform and compose.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Nguyên Lê was born Le Thanh Nguyen on January 14, 1959 in Paris, France of Vietnamese ancestry. He began playing drums at the age of 15, then took up guitar & electric bass. After  graduating in Visual Arts he majored in Philosophy, writing a thesis on Exoticism. A self-taught musician, Nguyên started out playing rock, funk, jazz standards, avant-garde jazz, pop, African, Caribbean, and other world music.

Devoting himself to music, in 1983 he created Ultramarine,  a multi-ethnic band whose recording DÉ  has been considered 1989’s Best World Music album. He went on to record several albums and worked  with such musicians  as  Miroslav  Vitous, Trilok Gurtu,  J. F. Jenny Clarke, Dewey Redman, Andy Emler, Jon Christensen, Nana Vasconcelos, Glenn Ferris, Kenny Wheeler, John Taylor and numerous others.

He has played with the O. N. J., the French  National  Jazz Orchestra in which he played with  Johnny  Griffin,  Louis Sclavis, Didier Lockwood, Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, Randy Brecker, Toots Thielemans, Courtney Pine, Steve Lacy, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Gil Evans, Quincy Jones, Randy Brecker, Vince Mendoza, Carla Bley, Per Mathisen, Marc Johnson, Peter Erskine, Trilok Gurtu, Paolo Fresu and Dhafer Youssef and numerous others.

He has released albums as a leader and as a sideman. His 1996 album Tales from Viêt-Nam blends jazz and traditional Vietnamese music. In spring 2011 he released Songs of Freedom, an album with cover versions of pop hits from the 1970s.

Guitarist and composer Nguyên Lê  continues to perform, record and compose.

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