Greg Burk

Photo by Debra DiPaolo Bobby Bradford plays his cornet in public several times a year, but mostly he teaches. Turning 69 next month, he’s where most jazz masters find themselves at some point or permanently: You work the first half of your life perfecting your lip action, finding your special......

I grab a Stan Getz CD off my shelf at random. Well, not completely, since I’m never not in the mood for Getz, and the disc is one of producer Joel Dorn’s Label M projects, where he digs up forgotten tapes from here and there — always worth hearing. So......

Slapped in the middle of an omnibus mall complex that makes you wish you were in hell instead, the incongruously beautiful Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts is the jewel of a community renowned for its car lots. Cerritos wants to gentrify the image established in years past through late-night......

You could listen to Lamb of God quiet. They play modern metal — “extreme metal,” some call it. Therefore low volume isn’t the obvious choice. But turn it down, and it’s like jazz. Think of the bark-rasping guitars of Mark Morton and Will Adler as an alto sax and a......

Some complain about the middlebrow stagnancy of U.S. culture; others do something about it. Chris Heenan, Jeremy Drake and David Rothbaum, for instance, run the Line Space Line improvised-music series every Monday at Silver Lake's Salvation Theater; they're celebrating its first anniversary this weekend with a four-day festival. The series......

Some current jazz-related events have got me thinking about the necessities of life. A quintet featuring saxists Frank Morgan and Sonny Fortune is running at Catalina’s. A benefit for the stroke rehabilitation of reedman Buddy Collette is happening at the same place on Sunday. A tribute to the late pianist......

JAMES CHANCE IS A GREAT MUSICIAN. Also a philosopher, like the Marquis de Sade or Obaku. Around 1979, when he was most visible in New York clubs, many observers thought he was a joke — this doped-up, snotty little white boy who blew bent sax and sang/danced like the Godfather......

Photo by Brandon Fernandez GEARHEADS AT PLAY. IT'S DECEMBER, AND Scott Amendola, a do-anything drummer who lives in the Bay Area, is in town on business. He's staying at the Culver City abode of guitar melter G.E. Stinson, with whom he's previously performed in numerous situations. They're hashing over a......

Photo by Gregory Bojorquez "THE 21st CENTURY DOORS" at the Universal Amphitheater, February 7 Doors keyboard shepherd Ray Manzarek assured us that it was all about the music, but no. It was also about saving the planet; about real live feathered-up dancing Indians; about video projections of war dead and......