I’ve found it punishingly hard to write music during these last nine weeks (nine weeks!), but I did manage to do this, a tribute to the great Bucky Pizzarelli and all the extraordinary jazz musicians lost to the coronavirus. Many thanks to the folks at Local 802 for asking me to create something, and toRead More »

Quarantine does strange things to people. In this case, it compelled my old college buddy Mike Titlebaum (now the Director of Jazz Studies at Ithaca College) to reach out to me and ask if I wanted to do a social-isolation collaboration. Almost immediately, I thought of this song, and then improvised this totally arbitrary andRead More »

I think it starts with Barry Manilow, who included “Cloudburst” and “Avenue C”, both with Jon Hendricks’s lyrics, in the “Jump Shout Boogie Medley” on his 1977 “Live” album, which I listened to religiously as a child. I think the next thing was that my Dad had Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan Recorded Live at BasinRead More »

Marsha Norman and I had just opened The Trumpet of the Swan at the Kennedy Center, and the reviews that morning were the best either of us have ever gotten in our entire careers. More importantly, we’d had a great time working together – we seemed to be in sync about what the piece wantedRead More »

UPDATE! Tonight, September 19, Ariana and I will be performing “Jason’s Song (Gave It Away)” with the Roots on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon! To celebrate, you can now purchase the track on iTunes AND you can purchase the SHEET MUSIC on SheetMusicDirect! — Once upon a time, I signed a contract with aRead More »