Fred Anderson: Customizing Conviction

Lyn Horton has written a nice, long piece on Fred Anderson.

Carrying on tradition brings history through time without imitation. Not all musicians make it their job to ensure that the music of the past, while changeable as a result of the passage of cultural time, stays intact. It’s all about new tunes and improvisation: the creation of music that upholds the tradition, with those to whom that tradition is handed down allowing it to continue. Saxophonist Fred Anderson has not relented in his intention to keep modern jazz alive. Anderson describes how the music, as he first began to listen to the Jay McShann band on record, captured him: “it was the concept of the music that was fascinating.”