Brief notes for the holiday weekend:
*Brian Morton-co-author, along with the late, great Richard Cook, of the Penguin Guide to Jazz-has an article about Roscoe Mitchell in the latest issue of The Nation. Keep an eye out for Mitchell's classic late-1970s album Nonaah, which should be surfacing as a Nessa Records reissue very, very soon.
*Copacetic Night Lights friend Bill Kirchner is taking his monthly turn on WBGO's Jazz From the Archives this Sunday evening with a program on pianist Dick Twardzik. From Bill's e-mail:
In the list of jazz's might-have-beens, pianist-composer Dick Twardzik (1931-1955) ranks high. A genuine innovator, he left only a small body of recorded work, including half of a piano-trio LP and memorable sessions as a sideman with baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff and trumpeter Chet Baker. Twardzik, brief as his career was, pointed the way towards important developments in the following decades.
The show will air this Sunday, November 25, from 11 p.m. to midnight, Eastern Standard Time. If you live outside the New York City metropolitan area, WBGO 88.3 also
broadcasts on the Internet at www.wbgo.org.
You can hear a bit of Dick Twardzik in the Night Lights programs Boppin' in Beantown and Bird Alive. I've wanted to do a fullblown Twardzik Night Lights show for a couple of years now, but I've held off in hopes of interviewing Jack Chambers upon publication of his Twardzik biography, Bouncin' With Bartok. Mr. Chambers is willing and eager to talk about his subject, but the book, through no fault of the author, remains in publication limbo.