Highly Opinionated

"Sacred cows make the tastiest cheeseburgers"

-- after Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989)

I have always said of popular culture, that like a McDonald's cheeseburger, it is to be consumed but never considered. Much of music is nothing more than a reflection of popular culture and certainly falls beneath that grand proclamation. A good deal of ...

"Years ago it would have seemed an impossible dream to get to record with this musical magus, but here we are... and what a thrill!"

--Charlie Kohlhase, From liner notes to Eventuality: The Charlie Kohlhase Quintet Plays the Music of Roswell Rudd (Nada, 2001)

I see him suddenly as if in a dream. ...

[Editor's note: Revised and expanded here, this piece originated as an oral essay for an installment of the Cosmoetica Omniversica internet radio series on the arts and sciences. The series was hosted by Dan Schneider and Art Durkee.]

More or less officially unveiled with the first New York appearance of the Ornette Coleman Quartet ...

The hair of the bow gently caresses the string, catching an “A" high on the upper register. Then, in a series of sweeping glissandos, it descends the diatonic scale in a minor mode. I am caught in its downdraft like a bird on a rapidly cooling thermal, falling... falling through air thick with saddening notes. The ...

It was cool in Bombay that July in 1985, or was it 1986? Somehow the year does not seem to matter quite as much as it did when the phenomenon first occurred. The other details, of course, I remember clear as day. Association PC were tearing it up on stage at the fabled arena of the ...

A measure of just how underrated a musician he was in his lifetime is reflected in the fact that even three days after he passed on most of the major publications had not even reported his death, much less celebrated his life in the glowing terms that he so richly deserved. Perhaps this was because oddly ...

T.D. Canada Trust Toronto Jazz Festival Toronto, Ontario, Canada June 26-July 5, 2009

To begin at the beginning: close encounters in a war against the abolition of free will by methodical conditioning and the servitude made acceptable by regular doses of chemically-induced progress and happiness from:

canned food,

vitamins, and

the business ...

The artist is alone. Not woefully or desperately alone, but more like willfully alone and enraptured... He empties his head of thought to make way for the flow of air. And in the air, notes of varying pitch and character. They bring their sound alone... then sometimes strung together like necklaces of varying beads--whole ones, halves ...

A study in sepia

It was the package that arrived, which prompted me to open an album of memories in the first place. Looking at the photograph, I recall some--not all--of the many details of the evening it was taken. The boy in the photograph is I, and I am in a black mood. Suddenly my ...

He is being carried on wings, a Black Icarus, further up, higher than the sun, so the wings will not fail this time. They carry him and the fingers of his left--and all those mad block chords from God knows where--and his right hand--running along the ebony and ivory keys drawing clusters of notes in elliptical ...

I will never forget my excitement--years ago--at learning that it would be possible for my family to live in Toronto again. I had been researching a book on Charles Mingus and often listened to one of my favorite vinyl records--The World's Greatest Concert--Jazz at Massey Hall. Not only was it a gem because of the dream ...

It is about thirty short strides, from my office in the cellar of my home, to a storeroom, where I keep the boxes-full of CDs that have remained unpacked since I have moved into this town home. But today will be different. I have something more to look forward to. Something I have waited a long ...

"The ant's a centaur in his dragon's world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace,           Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or ...

For days, looking at the darkening sky of the Canadian winter, I was preoccupied with the image of this deep-blue canopy as a mirror--a mirror not only to the individual, but also to the collective soul. For days I have wanted to say what I saw, but no words come to mind yet and the ideas ...