Sonny Clark, by Francis Wolff, courtesy of Mosaic Images. Circa 1960.

Two entries were posted today related to my piece on Sonny Clark in the current issue of Tin House.  One is a list of some of my favorite jazz writings and the other is a Clark playlist on Spotify.

My latest piece in Paris Review Daily on saxophonist Branford Marsalis, with photographs by Frank Hunter.

A saxophonist's supplies. Photo by Frank Hunter.

A report on my recent visit to Gene Smith’s hometown of Wichita, Kansas, with photographs from his childhood home by Kate Joyce.

Little Arkansas River Homage to Jun Morinaga's River, Its Shadow of Shadows

The Cover, Tin House #50, the Beauty issue. Winter '11-'12.

I’ve got a new piece Sonny Clark: Melody and Melancholy* in the ‘11-’12 Winter issue of Tin House magazine, #50, the “Beauty,” issue.  Earlier this year I wrote two pieces about Clark for Paris Review Daily (Pt. One and Two).  This piece features new material about the black-owned hotel in Herminie #2, PA where Clark grew up outside Pittsburgh, an interview with a longtime bartender at the Five Spot in NYC, references to the work of August Wilson, A.B. Spellman, and Nat Hentoff, and comments from novelist Haruki Murakami about Clark’s popularity in Japan.  I also included an analysis of the Japanese symbols often used to describe Clark’s music.  A book on Clark could be down the road.

*My wife Laurie, who grew up just a few miles from Herminie #2, came up with the subtitle for this piece, which Tin House accepted.

Update:  The New Yorker’s Richard Brody commented on this Tin House piece in his New Yorker blog today. 11/28/11.

The Invisible Dog Art Center. Brooklyn. September 16-17, 2011. Photo by Kate Joyce.

It worked.  Or, at least, it failed productively.  You can see more photos from Chaos Manor photographer Kate Joyce HERE and from the Invisible Dog’s Simon Courchel HERE.

You can read a preview of the shows by Dawn Chan for Paris Review Daily HERE.  For the August 24 press release go HERE.

Now, working with Chris McElroen and the Chaos Manor creative collective, the goal is to see if we can make it a sustained and growing concern.

Photo by Kate Joyce

I just finished a 12-part series about my affinity for late night sports talk radio for The Morning News.

Pamlico River, Hawkins Beach, outside Bath, North Carolina, looking west. October 2011.

Part 12: Better in the Dark.  11/9/10.

Part 11: Homage to Terrence Malick, Part Two.  10/24/11.

Part 10: Whose Fantasy is this, Anyway? 10/10/11.

Part 9: Los Tiempos van Cambiando.  9/30/11.

Part 8: Everyone Gets A Go.  9/22/11.

Part 7: The 5 a.m. Pugilist.  9/9/11.

Part 6: Before Sunrise Nobody Cares about Tennis. 9/2/11.

Part 5: Into the Heart of Things. 8/24/11.

Part 4: Homage to Terrence Malick. 8/12/11.

Part 3: Everyone’s Relative.  8/2/11.

Part 2: Voices in the Country.  7/22/11.

Part 1: The First Viola Player in the New York Phil is a Bum.  7/13/11.

A conversation between Sam and Japanese-American writer Roland Kelts following Sam’s trip to Japan earlier this year was published at A Public Space this month.  The conversation was transcribed by Hank Stephenson.

Durham Bulls Athletic Park, last week in August, 2012. Photo by Kate Joyce.

Over the past eight days I’ve been experimenting with a small team of colleagues on a pilot project called Bull City Summer: A Season at the Ballpark and Beyond, which would be focused on the AAA baseball team the Durham Bulls in 2012.  You can read more about the project HERE.

Clark seated at piano backstage at Syria Mosque for Night of Stars event, 1946. Courtesy Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Heinz Family Fund; © 2004 Carnegie Museum of Art, Charles “Teenie” Harris Archive.

Yesterday I wrote a JLP blog entry, “Sonny Clark’s Birthday,” in memorial of his birth and anticipating my new piece on Clark that will be published in Tin House magazine’s Fall issue.  The New Yorker’s Richard Brody picked up on my blog entry and wrote one entitled, “Sonny Clark at Eighty.”  I’m grateful to Brody.

The (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) Triangle’s alt-weekly, the Independent, honored me with one of their annual arts awards this week.  Pretty good article.  Aaron Greenwald’s evocation of Studs Terkel and John Dos Passos is generous; Terkel’s always been a hero of mine and the latter’s work influenced the varied documentary-narrative structures of the JLP book.