LATEST ADDITIONS

On Sunday January 15th, 2006 following a blizzard, the late musical greats trumpeter Roy Hargrove and pianist Mulgrew Miller flew into Newark Liberty International Airport, cabbed it to 449 seat Merkin Hall in the Kaufman Music Center near Lincoln Center—a venue with near perfect acoustics—and with no soundcheck or preparation and after standing in the wings and calling out some tunes, stepped onto the stage and delivered some of the remarkable music making documented on this two LP set. A second equally impromptu performance almost two years later (November 9, 2007) at Lafayette College in Easton PA where Miller lived with his family fills out the set of mostly standards indelibly performed.

In 2014, Swedish cloud rap artist and Drain Gang collective leader Bladee (Benjamin Reichwald) emerged with the lo-fi cloud rap single “Into Dust.” The song’s shallow lyrics (“I’m gonna bleed in the club/I got weed in my lungs/I don’t need any love/I can’t feel when I’m drunk”) and rudimentary video (a sunglasses- and sweater-clad Bladee stumbling through a forest with “WHYY” superimposed over the footage) are often memed, though he’s shifted styles several times since then.

JFH.

Jon F..king Hassell.

That’s what (guitarist) Gregg Arreguin and I called him. I realize as I write this that it sounds like we were always annoyed with him – and we certainly were, at times – but actually we said it in order to build him up, to encourage him. As in, “Hey! You’re Jon Fucking Hassell! You don’t have to put up with this shit!”

Thirty years on, it’s even more true. The coverage of his death is worldwide – so many languages, so many obituaries. The reach of his voice, his music, his trumpet, is across generations and without borders, and I think fully as he intended. He did it.

As jazz vinyl sees a great resurgence, new labels issuing archival material and recent recordings contribute to a now-overwhelming catalog of available records. Run by former ECM producer Sun Chung, Red Hook Records bills itself as “a place for encounters, where musicians have opportunities [to] carve new adventurous ways of creative wayfaring [and] dissolve musical boundaries.” Red Hook’s release focus and target audience remains unclear; not all jazz buyers are audiophiles, and not all audiophiles accept newer recordings. The label’s inaugural release is Hanamichi,