Time Out
	Artist: Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck Quartet drummer Joe Morello died last week at the age of 82. R.I.P.

Not everyone transformed [pic a music genre]. John Coltrane did though. And when people said he was too abstract and difficulty to follow he shocked the jazz world in 1961 with an album called My Favorite Things which left people with their jaws agape. Let's listen to a hybrid of two recent edits-- the original, at almost 14 minutes, is too big for YouTube-- of the title track. Although it has since been covered by artists as diverse as Kenny Rogers, Sarah Vaughan, Bjork, Barbra Streisand, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Luther Vandross, Andre 3000 (OutKast), Brian Setzer, Tanya Tucker, Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Rod Stewart and The Supremes, it was Coltrane who took the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein song from the Broadway hit The Sound of Music and made it his own. This was Trane's first release on Atlantic and his first with a quartet that included McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones and Steve Davis.

(guest blogged by Steve Audio)

As a long-time classical guitar player, I'm always interested in seeing what other players are doing, especially outside the mainstream.

This is how I discovered the wonderful young Chinese women who all study under Prof. Chen Zhi at the Central Conservatory in Beijing. More about these amazing players can be found at Alma Guitar.

The most well-known and accomplished of these young women is Su Meng. Here's is a video of her playing Paganini's Caprice #24. Metal shredders will weep in humility after seeing this woman play. (note: sync is a little off)

And just in time for Christmas, here is a quartet of Wang Yameng, Su Meng, Chen Shanshan, Li Jie playing the Overture to the Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite:

SteveAudio.blogspot.com

(Blogged by Howie Klein) Last night I asked legendary drummer Jim Keltner, my neighbor, for his reaction to the news of Max Roach's passing. Jim hadn't heard yet and was too shocked to answer immediately. Later he e-mailed me a calm assessment: "Not only was Max with Bird and Diz at the birth of BeBop, he soon became the link between the great swing drummers and the exciting precision based bombast of early BeBop. Max was one of the most important and influential Jazz drummers of all time." The NY Times was as impressed with Roach as Keltner was, saying he "rewrote the rules of drumming in the 1940’s and spent the rest of his career breaking musical barriers and defying listeners’ expectations." As a teenager he worked with Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington, went on to work with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Cecil Taylor, and Anthony Braxton to name a few.

Here's a piece by the Max Roach Quartet (with Billy Harper, Cecil Bridgewater, and Reggie Workman) in the mid-70's:

I feel like a little classical tonight.

anitkeys: Enigma String Quartet-- Jakub Miller, violin; Any Bermudez, violin; Luis Diez, viola and Sinan Ercan, cello.
Excerpt from the final part of the First Movement of Borodin's Second String Quartet in D major.