Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Blindfold Test: Buster Williams
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Pianist Andrew Hill died on Friday after a lengthy battle with lung cancer. He was 75.
A true modernist, Hill’s compositions displayed an esthetic and intellectual stance that was new to jazz in the early ‘60s when he began recording for Blue Note. The way he used repetition, asymmetry, dissonance and silence were not found in the music of his acknowledged influences: Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and Art Tatum.
Hill was born in Chicago on June 30, 1937, attended the University of Chicago’s lab school and performed a novelty act in talent shows as a youth. He began playing piano at 13 and had composition lessons from William Russo and Paul Hindemith while still a teen; he also backed Charlie Parker and Miles Davis in local clubs.
Hill left Chicago in 1961 to join Dinah Washington in New York City, where he also backed Al Hibbler and Johnny Hartman. After a gig with Roland Kirk in California in 1962, Hill returned to New York, where he began recording for Blue Note both as a leader with three startling sessions in eight months. Those sessions resulted in the landmark albums, Point of Departure , Black Fire and Judgment! . He also worked as a sideman on dates with Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, Joe Henderson and Woody Shaw.
In 1965 Hill became music coordinator for Amiri Baraka’s Black Arts Repertory Theatre; and in 1970 he worked as composer-in-residence at Colgate University, where he received his doctorate. Hill toured with the Smithsonian Heritage Program (1972-‘75) and received a fellowship from that institution. He later taught in prisons and public schools in California while continuing to record.
Hill’s final years were especially productive. He recorded Dusk (Pametto, 1999) and a two-CD set with his big band, A Beautiful Day (Palmetto, 2003). His recent Time Lines (Blue Note) received the 2006 DownBeat critics poll album of the year award.
“What I got from Percy was the dignity of playing the bass,” Buster Williams said of Percy Heath.
Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Don and Maureen Sickler serve as the keepers of engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s flame at Van Gelder Studio, perhaps the most famous recording studio in jazz history.
Sep 3, 2025 12:02 PM
On the last Sunday of 2024, in the control room of Van Gelder Studio, Don and Maureen Sickler, co-owners since Rudy Van…
The Free Slave, Cosmos Nucleus and Sunset To Dawn: three classic Muse albums being reissued this fall by Timer Traveler Recordings.
Aug 26, 2025 1:32 PM
Record producer and “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman has launched his next endeavor, the archival label Time Traveler…
Butcher Brown, clockwise from top left: Marcus Tenney, DJ Harrison, Morgan Burrs, Corey Fonville and Andrew Randazzo. (Keyboardist Harrison couldn’t make the gig, so special guest Jacob Mann sat in with the band at the Reno Jazz Festival.)
Aug 19, 2025 12:41 PM
The band known as Butcher Brown has enjoyed the last half-decade basking in the glow from the twin engines of critical…
This year’s Jazz em Agosto set by the Darius Jones Trio captured the titular alto saxophonist at his most ferocious.
Aug 26, 2025 1:31 PM
The organizers of Lisbon, Portugal’s Jazz em Agosto Festival assume its audience is thoughtful and independent. Over…
