Kevin Whitehead

He puts his own stamp on a prevailing style once again. Baritone saxophonist Claire Daly, who died in October, sang a little also, as if to remind us the jazz horn is an extension of the human voice. The baritone has a larger and more commanding range to explore, but the same capacity for personal expression.

Claire Daly got a fat, gritty, classic bari sax sound and danced it around, light on its feet. You hear it on her jazz calypso version of Hoagy Carmichael's Little Old Lady. .

Claire Daly got a fat, gritty, classic bari sax sound and danced it around, light on its feet. You hear it on her jazz calypso version of Hoagy Carmichael's Little Old Lady. .

Claire Daly got a fat, gritty, classic bari sax sound and danced it around, light on its feet. You hear it on her jazz calypso version of Hoagy Carmichael's Little Old Lady. .

piano plays

piano plays

piano plays

And finally, on December 10th, we lost one more musician jazz could barely contain, the irrepressible downtown New York brass man Herb Robertson, who played some of the wildest trumpet around, a wizard at using mutes for outlandish effects. But he'd also get deep into the contours of a melody, infusing it with deep feeling to match.

And finally, on December 10th, we lost one more musician jazz could barely contain, the irrepressible downtown New York brass man Herb Robertson, who played some of the wildest trumpet around, a wizard at using mutes for outlandish effects. But he'd also get deep into the contours of a melody, infusing it with deep feeling to match.

And finally, on December 10th, we lost one more musician jazz could barely contain, the irrepressible downtown New York brass man Herb Robertson, who played some of the wildest trumpet around, a wizard at using mutes for outlandish effects. But he'd also get deep into the contours of a melody, infusing it with deep feeling to match.

His friend Andy Laster's composition, Devotional, sparked that side of Herb Robertson's personality. So let that be our recessional hymn to bring this memorial session to a close. ¦

His friend Andy Laster's composition, Devotional, sparked that side of Herb Robertson's personality. So let that be our recessional hymn to bring this memorial session to a close. ¦

His friend Andy Laster's composition, Devotional, sparked that side of Herb Robertson's personality. So let that be our recessional hymn to bring this memorial session to a close. ¦

Pianist Sun Ra called his sprawling orchestras orchestras, and like Noah's Ark, they crammed in an improbable amount of vibrant variety. He had his earworm melodies like that one, Watusi, with its percolating Afro-Cuban percussion.

The orchestra played squalling free jazz barrages and sang genial vocal chants connected with Sun Ra's personal cosmology involving space travel and an interplanetary exodus.

June Tyson, longtime singer and costumer for the orchestra, who decked them out in striking, spangled outfits that looked good when the chanting musicians did a ring dance in front of the stage counterclockwise like the ancestors. At the other end of time, Sunrise Keyboard Synthesizer could become a rocket taking off for, and maybe arriving at, a more hospitable planet than this one.

This music comes from newly released recordings of Sun Ra in 1978 playing one of the Left Bank Jazz Society's weekly Sunday concerts in Baltimore. Some Left Bank regulars dislike the jazz avant-garde to the point of scolding musicians who went too far. And yet this show was Sun Ra's fifth for the Left Bank in under two years, making him very much a house favorite.

He did draw his own audience, but the Left Bank's African-American standbys dug him too, knowing a comic persona and a black carnival act when they saw one. Sun Ra was serious, but it's not like he didn't know he was funny. His wisdom was couched in puns and wordplay. But Sun Ra's warm welcome was really because his rocket to the future flew straight through the jazz of the 1930s and 40s.

Thank you.

I attended a few of Sun Ra's Left Bank concerts, and this one got even odder than usual when documentary filmmaker Bob Muggy's overhead movie lights came up after the first set, as if the gods were checking in from above. Some of Muggy's footage turns up in his fine film Sun Ra, A Joyful Noise.