Welcome aboard!
Hello! Welcome to Intermission Riff, my blog about jazz and life. I hope you find the content here enjoyable. I am always open to suggestions and critiques, so dive in and share your thoughts.
This blog exists for one main reason: Google will no longer let me access Mingus Lives, the jazz blog that I operated until 2012 when life began to intrude on my ability to write regularly. I have tried many times to reboot my old account with no success, and no assistance from the good folks at Google. So Mingus Lives will fade away and Intermission Riff will (hopefully) live on for some time.
If you don't recognize the name of the blog, "Intermission Riff" is a tune written by trumpeter Ray Wetzel in 1948 for the Stan Kenton Orchestra (heard in the video below). It's one of my favorite pieces in the jazz canon, and a bittersweet reminder of what a talent Ray Wetzel was. He was killed in a car accident at the age of 27, much too young and with too little of a recorded legacy. One of my goals for this blog is to help keep alive the memory of jazz stars, brighter and dimmer, who have left the earth a better place for having been here. The blog title is also a nod to my need to riff on the music I love during my occasional intermissions from life's demands.
And who the heck am I? I'm a writer in San Bernardino, California, husband to a wonderful high school teacher, and dad to two strong teenaged boys who make me proud every day. I am the author of Free Jazz and Free Improvisation: An Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press, 2004) and I Know What I Know: The Music of Charles Mingus (Praeger, 2006). I contributed the sections on 1960s jazz and 1970s blues to The Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Watson-Guptill, 2005). My writing has appeared in a good number of publications: Down Beat, All About Jazz, Signal To Noise, Route 66 Magazine, Uncle Jam, Inland Empire Weekly, and others.
Jazz has been a major component of my life for as long as I can remember. My father was the drummer in an Atlanta swing band, and he immersed me in everything from Harry James to Dizzy Gillespie in the early 1970s. My love for the music has only expanded since then, and I find myself learning something new about its history and performers every single day. I hope this little blog will enlighten and entertain whomever happens to stop by. Thank you for visiting!
This blog exists for one main reason: Google will no longer let me access Mingus Lives, the jazz blog that I operated until 2012 when life began to intrude on my ability to write regularly. I have tried many times to reboot my old account with no success, and no assistance from the good folks at Google. So Mingus Lives will fade away and Intermission Riff will (hopefully) live on for some time.
If you don't recognize the name of the blog, "Intermission Riff" is a tune written by trumpeter Ray Wetzel in 1948 for the Stan Kenton Orchestra (heard in the video below). It's one of my favorite pieces in the jazz canon, and a bittersweet reminder of what a talent Ray Wetzel was. He was killed in a car accident at the age of 27, much too young and with too little of a recorded legacy. One of my goals for this blog is to help keep alive the memory of jazz stars, brighter and dimmer, who have left the earth a better place for having been here. The blog title is also a nod to my need to riff on the music I love during my occasional intermissions from life's demands.
And who the heck am I? I'm a writer in San Bernardino, California, husband to a wonderful high school teacher, and dad to two strong teenaged boys who make me proud every day. I am the author of Free Jazz and Free Improvisation: An Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press, 2004) and I Know What I Know: The Music of Charles Mingus (Praeger, 2006). I contributed the sections on 1960s jazz and 1970s blues to The Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Watson-Guptill, 2005). My writing has appeared in a good number of publications: Down Beat, All About Jazz, Signal To Noise, Route 66 Magazine, Uncle Jam, Inland Empire Weekly, and others.
Jazz has been a major component of my life for as long as I can remember. My father was the drummer in an Atlanta swing band, and he immersed me in everything from Harry James to Dizzy Gillespie in the early 1970s. My love for the music has only expanded since then, and I find myself learning something new about its history and performers every single day. I hope this little blog will enlighten and entertain whomever happens to stop by. Thank you for visiting!
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