June 27, 2016 Issue

There’s a “Night Life” note in this week’s issue that caught my eye. Titled "Special Piano Extravaganza," it says,

This multi-generational meeting of piano luminaries brings together three exceptional stylists: Frank Kimbrough, George Cables, and Don Friedman. United in their authority of the post-bop idiom, each has a wholly distinctive approach to the genre—consider this evening a master class in keyboard expertise.

This event took place last night at Jazz at Kitano in New York City. I wish I could’ve been there. I’m a fan of all three pianists – Kimbrough, Cables, and Friedman. They truly are, as “Night Life” notes, “exceptional stylists.” I’m listening to Cables’ great 2015 album In Good Company as I write this. If Whitney Balliett were alive, he would’ve covered this gig. And he would’ve written it up in The New Yorker so that readers could imagine they were there, too. He loved piano jazz. He referred to it as a “pianistic river that flows through New York” (Night Creature, 1981). It appears that river is still flowing.

September 16, 2013 Issue

Writing this blog, tracking my New Yorker reading experience, my effort is mainly one of appreciation. Even on those rare occasions when the magazine seems, at first glance, totally uninteresting, which is the case this week, I find there’s always something – a line, a detail, a note – that attracts my attention. In this week’s “Goings On About Town,” for instance, I saw, under “Jazz and Standards,” that “the whip-smart pianist Frank Kimbrough released a fine trio album recorded at this night spot [Jazz at Kitano].” I love piano jazz. I wasn’t aware of this particular Kimbrough album. I went online to iTunes and purchased several tracks, including Duke Ellington’s great “Single Petal of a Rose.” Kimbrough plays it exquisitely. It went straight onto my “Best of Piano Jazz” playlist.