Nine Days before 9/11

  (9/11/11: second in a series) Before I made my way to Normandy, I stopped back in Paris, which Julia and I had left on September 9. She now remained behind in Provence to teach a photo workshop. My first arrival in Paris had been ill-omened, but then the connections between our personal lives and […]

Letter from Paris: a Lump in the Throat

Yesterday’s Jazz Is entry, a Dexter Gordon film rendition of “Body and Soul,” put me in mind, for a reason you will soon understand that number always now does, of an another experience of the jazz standard. It was September 2001, and I was beginning a sabbatical year with a month-long drive around Europe. Julia […]

Jazz Is: 29 – Dexter Gordon, “Body and Soul”

While I was laboring over the Wisconsin labor crisis and neglecting my regular features, Dexter Gordon, much beloved sax man, had a birthday. Gordon, who died in 1990, was born on February 27, 1923. Here is how his Wikipedia entry introduces him: Gordon is one of the most influential and iconic figures in Jazz and […]