Brick Wahl

Ken Poston likes his jazz Big Band big. He seems to have a dozen of them on hand at any time, tight, exciting musicians playing "Cherokee." But this year there&...

Hope you got some bread, jazz fans. Lots of great stuff this week, but some will cost ya a little. LACMA on Friday night is always free, and pianist Jon Mayer a...

Let's start with the weird: San Francisco's Rova Saxophone Quartet are at the Blue Whale on Saturday. Formed back in the late 1970s when, for some reaso...

So last Sunday night we're writing this column, snickering, feeling pretty good. We flip on the TV and some newscaster's babbling, just beside himself with excitement. Osama's dead, Osama's dead, Osama's dead. The foreign correspondent agrees. Osama's dead. The experts chime in. Osama's dead. The kids singing the national anthem......

Don't you just hate Fridays like this? Easily half a dozen great gigs the same night and, corporeal existence being what it is, you can only be at one at a ...

The many, worthy benefits for victims of the cataclysm in Japan reminded us that jazz itself needs funds. We're not talking about tip jars and cover charges...

We talk a lot of jazz concerts and festivals and happenings and whatever, but, when you get down to it, that’s not what we think jazz is really all about. What ...

When you think about jazz, you just don't think about naked women. Well, drummers might, but everyone else is way too busy reading the charts. The fans don&...

Japan's been awful good for jazz. Not Smoke on the Water good maybe, but it's been a steady gig, a source of albums and kids who come all the way from T...

We still haven’t the vaguest idea how a piano works. Well, we know how it works, literally. You press a key and a little hammer plunks down on a wire and the wi...