Bill Kohlhaase

Some things that went into the making of composer-guitarist Steve Tibbetts’ current CD: a wasp nest, impending surgery, one of the world‘s most extensive sample collections, the sonic properties of his bathroom. Blame the wasps for the guitarist’s new-found buzz, the intensity that separates A Man About a Horse from......

This is one appropriately named recording. Guitarist/ vocalist/songwriter Buddy Blue’s latest CD is a dipsomaniac’s delight, a happy-hour smorgasbord of roadhouse blues, jump and jazz of the kind that goes down well with belts of Old Crow and an equal number of Pabst chasers (not that you need to be......

Photo by David Gahr When Joe Zawinul, ensconced inside a nest of keyboards, leads his Zawinul Syndicate into a tune, several images come to mind: Baseball coach flashing signs to base runners. Mafia don trading winks with his wise guys. Captain Nemo at the prow of the Nautilus diving into......

In a drafty, bare-bones band room around the corner from the Luckman Performing Arts Complex on the Cal State L.A. campus, the 25 members of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts Big Band Ensemble are tuned and ready. Their director, Bobby Rodriguez, has a reputation as a......

IN A TIDY MALIBU NEIGHBORHOOD ABOVE THE OLD Getty Museum, the man who dreamed up the hard-bop movement of jazz, Horace Silver, lives alone in a house surrounded by images. Entire walls are dedicated to artwork, much of it done by lifelong friend Carol Forbes, much of it given to......

When it was released in 1973, the first Headhunters recording changed the shape of jazz fusion to come. Welding electric funk and steel-plated instrumental improvisation in ways that recalled both Miles Davis and Sly Stone, Headhunters, with its familiar, oft-sampled riff "Chameleon," set new standards for crossover sales. Miles had......