At this point I think I'm just talking to Tim, but that won't stop me.
Last Friday morning I had a newsletter in my inbox from Maria Schneider, the visionary composer and big-band leader whose album
Data Lords topped this year's
NPR Jazz Critics Poll (started years ago at the
Village Voice and overseen by Francis Davis ever since). This issue was a tribute to Frank, who played a core role in Schneider's band for 25 years.
Data Lords is colored--haunted, now--by Frank's presence in ways that Nate Chinen, former jazz critic for the
Times, now at WBGO in Newark, captures beautifully in an elegiac essay that appeared on NPR Music that same day. Titled "We Need to Be Able to Feel," it grieves for Frank, whom Chinen invokes at the start and finish of the piece. Nominally about
Data Lords, it's finally about loss and community and critical objectivity and "Looking Up." I think it's really moving, whether you like music writing or no.
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/957115575/we-need-to-be-able-to-feel