Author Archives: The Independent Ear

This year’s annual Mary Lou Williams Festival at the Kennedy Center must have been a thing of great pride for the matriarch beaming down from her heavenly position. Friday evening’s performance was dedicated to the marvelous production A Conversation with … Continue reading →

My friendship with author-educator Robert Fleming dates back over 40 years. We both grew up in an area of the East side of Cleveland known as Mt. Pleasant and as budding writers we bonded over our mutual passion for jazz … Continue reading →

A recent review of the new Miles Davis motion picture Miles Ahead made reference to and included a link to our 2011 interview with the late Dickie Habersham-Bey, owner of the former Brooklyn jazz club the Blue Coronet. The significance … Continue reading →

In celebration of Randy Weston‘s 90th birthday, Wednesday, April 6 – which included a joyous surprise birthday party at a restaurant in Brooklyn – and in recognition of April as National Poetry Month, we remember Langston Hughes. Randy and Langston … Continue reading →

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is… — Noel Coward No truer words have ever been spoken (and thanks to WBGO deejay Sheila Anderson for that one, taken from her valuable book The Quotable Musician (Allworth Press). If jazz could only … Continue reading →