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Kids are lucky today. They have so much music at their fingertips. The musical trajectory is no longer linear, and algorithms and playlists lead them down all sorts of twisted paths of discovery.

Lately I’ve been snatching up jazz 45s anywhere I see them, stuff I would have dismissed back in the day, Miles from the ’50s and ’60s, Cannonball Adderley, Horace Silver, Ike Quebec, Bud Powell, Lee Morgan. I wish Blue Note would re-release all the 45s they put out over the years.

The first jazz album I had was Charlie Mingus’s Town Hall Concert, and that was 1969, after a whole lot of pop and rock ‘n’ roll. That left me wide open for all those seventies Miles albums. Then backward to Coltrane’s albums from the sixties. Then Weather Report, Ornette Coleman, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Archie Shepp albums in real time, as they were being released. And through it all, any Sun Ra album I saw.

I am traveling backward with “Come Sunday.” I first came across it and immediately fell in love with it on Eric Dolphy’s Iron Man album. Dolphy performs the solemn piece on bass clarinet in a duet with Richard Davis’s bowed bass. I later learned it was a Duke Ellington piece, part of his Black, Brown and Beige suite. It was first performed in 1943 at Carnegie Hall and recorded the following year on RCA.

A few years ago I found an absolutely beautiful version on 45 by Johnny Hodges, who used to play sax in Ellington’s band. And only very recently did I learn that the Duke wrote lyrics for the song and recorded an almost a cappella version with Mahalia Jackson in 1958.

I looked for a seven-inch version of this song and found seven of them with picture sleeves for sale on Discogs for seven euros! But they are all from the Netherlands, where the song was released on Philips in 1958. The shipping is more than the record. But why was this masterpiece never released on a 45 in the US?

Come Sunday
by Duke Ellington

Lord, dear Lord I’ve loved, God almighty
God of love, please look down and see my people through

Lord, dear Lord I’ve loved, God almighty
God of love, please look down and see my people through

I believe that sun and moon up in the sky
When the day is gray
I know it, clouds passing by

He’ll give peace and comfort
To every troubled mind
Come Sunday, oh come Sunday
That’s the day

Often we feel weary
But he knows our every care
Go to him in secret
He will hear your every prayer

Lillies on the valley
They neither toll nor spin
And flowers bloom in spring time
Birds sing

Often we feel weary
But he knows our every care
Go to him in secret
He will hear your every prayer

Up from dawn till sunset
Man work hard all the day
Come Sunday, oh come Sunday
That’s the day

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Jack, who plays bass clarinet and guitar with Margaret Explosion, is unavailable on Wednesday, so Bernie Heveron will be joining us. Bernie played bass with Personal Effects back in the early eighties. And he played bass with Colorblind James for a few years in the mid-eighties. Margaret Explosion’s bass player, Ken Frank, took Bernie’s spot in Colorblind. And we are all still friends. This will be a fun gig.

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Trompe opened their night at the Bop Shop with a Don Cherry song, something to do with elephants. Their lineup, two cellos and a family of trumpets, felt good on the ears. Cornet player Taylor Ho Bynum also performs with Anthony Braxton, Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, Wadada Leo Smith and Mary Halvorson. The cellists when both bowing could sweep you away but each played pizzicato with precision as they sculpted their improvisations. I was amazed at how they stayed in complete control and pulled out of their compositions like masters.

Their second song, “Blues for Democracy,” written by the cello player, Je4 Song was a woozy, off-kilter, almost drunken stroll through city streets. At least that’s where I was going with it. It perfectly captured the wobbly state of our democracy today. This was a free show and one of the best we’ve seen.

A few nights later we were in Abilene to see Wren Cove. They sounded great once we moved in front of most of the crowd and slid into a spot along the wall next to Phil and Ry Marshall. Abilene’s days are numbered as Danny has decided to give it a rest. It’s so comfortable here we stayed for the second and then part of the third band on the bill. All of Rochester is going to miss this place.

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The neighbors decided to close the pool this weekend. Peggi and I have been on duty the last two weeks, making sure the bottom was vacuumed and there were no leaves on the surface. We took a final swim while Peggi’s bread was in the oven and waited for the alarm to sound.

We had tickets for Alarm Will Sound at the Eastman at 8 pm. The group was started twenty-five years ago at the Eastman by some of the same music students who started Ossia, the New Music group I’ve written about over the years in these pages. The students started Ossia, not the school, in order to perform pieces they wanted to perform, adventurous music that doesn’t fit in the classical or jazz categories, pieces by Morton Feldman or Steve Reich or even their own compositions, in Kilbourn Hall.

I prefer the minimal side of New Music. With twenty-two members, Alarm Will Sound leans mostly in the other direction, although they performed one absolutely beautiful solo piano piece last night. They have a fascination with Aphex Twin, and the group performed two of his pieces last night, both from their new CD. Alarm Will Sound won a 2026 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance, and their Grammy was under glass in the lobby.

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These guys have been around. Tenor sax player Ricky Ford played with Ellington’s band, Charles Mingus, Dannie Richmond, Mal Waldron and Abdullah Ibrahim. Drummer Thurman Barker grew up in Chicago in the 1950s and was a charter member of the AACM, Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. He has played with the Art Ensemble’s Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Leroy Jenkins, and Henry Threadgill. Bassist Jerome Harris worked as a sideman to Sonny Rollins, Bobby Previte, Don Byron and Bill Frisell. Pianist John Kordalewski has played with Chico Freeman, Charlie Rouse, Julius Hemphill and Oliver Lake.

So the Ricky Ford Quartet was fully equipped to pay tribute to John Coltrane last night at the Bop Shop. Except for one small concern. A pad had come off one of the valves on Ricky’s tenor sax. He looked very worried before the show, and the piano player asked if there was someone in town who could work on his sax. Peggi recommended Carl from Shuffle Music. Every horn player in this town goes to Carl.

Peggi gave Carl a call and put Ricky on the phone. Ricky put some super glue on the pad and made an appointment to see Carl in the morning at ten o’clock. Carl works out of his home now, and Peggi said she could hear Carl’s wife in the background telling him they would not be home on Saturday morning.

The gig went off without a hitch. The band roared through seven Coltrane songs and then two Wayne Shorter tunes and a gorgeous version of the Ellington song “Passion Flower.” I have a 45 of the song by Johnny Hodges that I love. This was something else.

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I live under a rock and have no idea what Ed Sheeran sounds like. I read the article about Robert Kraft, the New England Patriots owner, saying that Sheeran’s tour could not play at Gillette Stadium if it continued with Macklemore, a rapper who proclaimed “Free Palestine.” That announcement was followed by the withdrawal of Sheeran’s other support acts and the Irish folk band that backed him up on his two-hour-plus performances.

Everyone has to decide for themselves whether or not they want to ignore injustice, but I was impressed that Sheeran went on to play solo at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. The article said he used an array of guitar pedals to loop and layer short snippets of sound to create a live, repeating backing track.

Jake Wark’s tenor saxophone is hiding behind his laptop in my photo. He works in much the same manner, sampling and mixing while improvising on his sax. He sampled some crazy stuff and made it work in loops, weaving layers of electronica with melodic lines.

Pianist Michael McNeill was the perfect partner, such a quick improviser. The duo never let things get out of hand. Their performance stayed musical throughout, and it was quite impressive to watch them land the plane as they pulled out of the soundscapes they had created.

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Duane sent us an article on the Missy Mazzoli world premiere of “Lincoln in the Bardo,” opening at the Metropolitan Opera. The 45-year-old says her entry to opera came through MTV with its eye-popping barrage of splashy, jangling videos. Coincidentally, we have been watching a lot of XITE, one of those free channels that come with a Samsung TV, over at Kevin and Jeanne’s place.

The channel’s slogan is “See Your Music,” and it really fits, as they keep the sound off when we’re there. Janet Jackson, Gary Numan, Electric Light Orchestra, Quiet Riot, and even Kansas videos look operatic without the sound. Kevin says he likes the station because they play a lot of Kool & the Gang and all those Black groups that MTV refused to play back in the day. Not only that, they mix in performances from The Ed Sullivan Show like the Carpenters, Petula Clark, and Pearl Bailey. We had to ask them to turn the sound on for Neil Diamond’s “Holly Holy.” I never thought those videos from the ’80s would live on, but they do in a wonderful way.

I had my teeth cleaned last week, and I had to interrupt Amy, the hygienist, to tell her I liked “Give Me One Reason,” the Tracy Chapman song that was coming out of her tiny Sonos speaker. Got me thinking about the Beach Boys song: “You’re sittin’ in a dentist’s chair. And they’ve got music for you there.” Her playlist was heavy on Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty, and it all sounded so good. She told me it was a Pandora playlist called “Stevie Nicks Radio.”

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