Brick Wahl

Ya know, we've been dissing the Grammys for a long time, probably since "Boogie Oogie Oogie" back in 1979. "Boogie Oogie Oogie." We feel like an idiot just typing it, yet the NARAS folks decided it was the greatest thing ever in 1979. Maybe you had to be there. But......

Miles Davis. Maybe you've heard of him. Columbia Records is just making sure. They repackaged everything He did for them, then repackaged the repackages and...

Christmas falls on a weekend this year, which has certainly done a number on the jazz listings. This might be a good thing, else we'd be subjected to a helluva lot of very tired holiday standards complete with bass solos. Soprano saxes come out, too. Singers by the swarm. And......

Let's start this week with one of L.A.'s hidden treasures, trumpeter Richard Grant. About the only place you'll ever find him is the World Stage in ...

We've been listening a lot to A Handful of Stars, the excellent debut CD from baritone saxophonist Adam Schroeder. You've seen him a zillion times if you love big bands — he's effectively taken Jack Nimitz's empty chair in a slew of them. He plays a big, fat, solid and......

We used to see Tigran Hamasyan at the Foundry pretty regularly — he spent a lot of time at that upright piano. The kid was vastly talented, a virtuosic improvis...

It's always a weak week jazz-wise right after Thanksgiving, like everyone is off somewhere digesting and watching football and not playing a lot of jazz. Bu...

We thought Raymond crossed the freeway. It doesn't. The 210 cut the once-proud street clean through. Swinging the car around in front of a huge church, we swore we heard a saxophone. We stopped. Sure enough, it was a tenor — sounding huge. So we parked in front of the......

There's a benefit for bassist Louis Spears this Sunday. Spears you have heard and seen more times than you know. He played with Horace Tapscott, on a mess of Eddie Harris (like Free Speech) and Billy Harper (the amazing Somalia) sessions. He's on some of drummer Matt Marucci's discs. And......

There's a great gig to open your weekend on Friday at LACMA, when pianist Theo Saunders and quartet do a couple sets of Thelonious Monk. You watch Theo and you realize he is all over Monk (or is that the other way around?). The way his left hand sometimes hangs......