(November 2025) Episode 692 is CHARLIE PARKER. I’ll use this occasion to commit heresy. First, I admit I don’t like bebop, to the shame of all the jazz people I grew up with (including my father). To me it comes off as noodling for noodling’s sake, in the same way I react to jam bands. It doesn’t provide the emotional response I seek in melodic lines, hooks, or sonic textures and mood. Second, I’ve never really liked Charlie Parker; there’s a reason he slipped all the way to episode 692. This goes way back as part of a trumpet player’s reflexive aversion to the saxophone. I appreciate his legendary skill and immense influence on jazz music. But what I hear is music that makes virtuosity an end in itself rather than a means to a musical whole (not entirely unlike an Al Di Meola or Yngwie Malmsteen) which has limited appeal to me. I know I border on sacrilege here, but just being honest.

Favourite album: Bird and Diz*

Favourite song: A Night in Tunisia

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Jazz aficionados will point you to his most sublime live performances but I can’t.

* Did you notice that? My favorite album is half trumpet.

(June 2025) Episode 659 is DAVE BRUBECK. This was a welcome learning experience because I didn’t know him beyond “Take Five” and “Blue Rondo à la Turk.” His music is a rare mix of brainy and popular. These famous songs are representative of his group’s experimentation with unusual time signatures, following a visit to Turkey on a global tour. His West Coast jazz comes off as an urbane version of cool jazz. His playing and compositions often seem to have classical piano as a substrate; in fact he later composed pieces for classical orchestra. He let his style evolve, such as the recordings with his sons in a fusion of jazz, rock, and blues. I enjoyed his late-career solo piano recordings.

Favorite album: Time Out

Favorite song: Take Five*

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: His quartet years in the late 50s, early 60s, with Paul Desmond on sax, are the classic period, but check out Two Generations of Brubeck for something different.

* written by Paul Desmond

(January 2025) Episode 625 is PHAROAH SANDERS – a good example of how this Project, despite its laboriousness, is helping me discover new worlds of music. In this case, Pharoah Sanders’ spiritual jazz. The saxophonist got his break recording on John Coltrane’s watershed free-jazz Ascension album (my favorite of his), influencing him to chart his own path in that direction. Sanders’ sax voice is different than Coltrane’s, and his music (in the late 1960s and early 1970s) became more mystical, incorporating world music and vocalizations. Over the decades, his recordings returned to more conventional jazz styles and even R&B, although he did experiment with electronic and orchestral formats. But to me those spiritual jazz albums are magic.

Favorite album: Karma          

Favorite song: Village of the Pharoahs

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Pretty much any album from Tauhid (1967) to Village of the Pharoahs (1973).

(September 2024) Episode 604 is CHARLES MINGUS. I feel sheepish in my jazz artist write-ups because I have such a weak foundation in the genre. Thus my reviews are mostly experiential and ill-informed by history or context. I really liked listening to Charles Mingus. There’s a wide range here from bebop to post-bop, avant-garde and big band. He is known as an iconoclast and that comes through, especially in the group improvisation dynamic which treads into the land of free jazz that I like. Centering most things (he played piano too) is Mingus’ phenomenal bass playing.

Favorite album: Pithecanthropus Erectus

Favorite song: Hobo Ho

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: I checked off the albums I liked as I went, and they turned out to be what critics rate highly, so I felt I was on the right track.  They are Pithecanthropus Erectus, Tijuana Moods, Mingus Ah Um, and Let the Children Hear Music.

(May 2024) Episode 568 is ORNETTE COLEMAN. A motivation that keeps me going through the time-consuming, often tedious slog of the Opus Project is the joy of discovery. And Ornette Coleman was a supreme joy to discover. Of course, I knew who he was and had heard some of his work. But with my limited knowledge of jazz music and history, and as I am finding that free jazz might be my favorite form of it, here I stumble upon the guy who invented it. Wonderful. Free jazz’s improvisation without harmony, melody, chord changes made Coleman polarizing, but inspired John Coltrane’s “Ascension” (my favorite of his) and the development of avant-garde in music. He wasn’t limited to just the jazz idiom, and composed works performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and others. While saxophone was his main instrument, he also took up trumpet and violin (I love what he does that that).

Favorite album: Science Fiction

Favorite orchestral album: Skies of America

Favorite song: Theme From A Symphony (variation one)

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Start with Free Jazz (1960), which launched it all. To me his peak are the five albums between Science Fiction (1971) and Body Meta (1976), including Skies of America (1972) with the LSO