Category Archives: People

Composer, arranger, guitar player, and former WNUR DJ (back in the eighties) Charley Harrison stopped by the studio to chat. He was amazed at how nice the place was compared to our old studio in the basement, but it shows how long it is since his last visit as we have been upstairs for more than ten years and we are currently preparing to move to a studio in a different building.

Charley was in town for a concert at Raviania with the Chicago Jazz Orchestra. He also dropped off a copy of his new CD, Keeping My Composure, also with the the CJO and others (Freddy Cole, Kurt Elling, Cedar Walton…). It was good to see him after so long, and I look forward to playing more of the album over the coming weeks.

One of those things that make you realize that our grip on life is tenuous; trip and fall and you might end up dead. Unfortunately it appears that just such an accident occurred to Hilton Ruiz. In New Orleans for a Katrina benefit project he fell in Bourbon street on May 19, spent a couple of weeks in a coma, then died on June 6. A sad loss for jazz.

Certainly a case of it’s not what you play it’s how you play it, Rufus Harley is the principal exponent of the bagpipes in jazz. Marv turned me on to Rufus on the occasion of his seventieth birthday; somehow I had managed to miss his existence up to now. Brief bigraphical details and links to articles can be had from the Wikipedia, and some of his music is available on CD reissue.