While little appreciated by audiences beyond avant-garde-music cognoscenti, his influence upon contemporary improvisers of all disciplines is profound. 

Taylor Ho Bynum reflects on the influence of Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, “a musical innovator of the first order,” who died yesterday at the age of sixty-five: http://nyr.kr/XSuAYh

Photograph: Michael Nagle/The New York Times/Redux

(Source: newyorker.com)

The jazz pianist Dave Brubeck died on Wednesday in Norwalk, Connecticut, one day short of his ninety-second birthday…

Looking back at Dave Brubeck, who was profiled in the magazine in 1961: http://nyr.kr/11MxnHr

Photograph by Guy Le Querrec/Magnum.

Alec Wilkinson catches up with the “hybrid classical musician and orchestral rapper from Montreal who lives in Paris,” Chilly Gonzales: http://nyr.kr/STqNXS

The restoration and reissue of “Ornette: Made in America,” Shirley Clarke’s 1985 portrait of Ornette Coleman, the saxophonist whose recordings and performances in the late fifties and early sixties were among the most liberating avant-garde breakthroughs in the history of jazz (and who, happily, is still performing, at the age of eighty-two), is cause for celebration—both for its value as a movie and for its exploration of Coleman’s art…

Click-through for more from Richard Brody on Ornette Coleman’s big adventure: http://nyr.kr/QUwZ0c

(Source: newyorker.com)

“Like any great musician and performer, Bruce Springsteen served a long apprenticeship. In various bands, he played the basics: Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, the Beatles, the Stones, the Animals, Sam & Dave…” Click-through for a selection of especially fine Bruce covers: http://nyr.kr/OMfNcE 

(Photograph by Julian Broad.)

Doug Springsteen was a deeply troubled, withdrawn, and depressed man, someone who was barely capable of holding a job or a conversation. And yet Springsteen needed to have a conversation with his father, and so he did it largely through his songs.

David Remnick on Bruce Springsteen’s songs about his father. Click-through to watch more concert videos: http://nyr.kr/OzkPJv

Springsteen wants his audience to leave the arena, as he commands them, with “your back hurting, your voice sore, and your sexual organs stimulated.”

In this week’s issue, David Remnick profiles Bruce Springsteen as he embarks on his new world tour.  Remnick talks to Springsteen’s band mates, wife, manager, and others about the musician’s early years, his evolution as an artist, the depression that he struggled with: http://nyr.kr/O1XqzZ

The Misalignment of Lauryn Hill with the World: http://nyr.kr/MY3pc2

…is it too much to ask of 2012 that we get Hill back, too? She’s only thirty-seven. Our education, and hers, seems unfinished.

Alec Wilkinson remembers Doc Watson, Virtuoso Guitar Player: http://nyr.kr/NcVyqe

(Source: newyorker.com)