Remembering Jim McNeely

From September 10, 2025 concert at NYC’s DiMenna Center.

It’s heartwarming to see the music community’s farewell to the great jazz composer and pianist Jim McNeely. I enjoyed a fantastic NYC tribute concert last month produced by several of his former students including Darcy James Argue. It felt like a real IYK,YK event with a great band, conductors, several amazing guest soloists including John Scofield and Chris Potter, and narration by the perennially cool Rufus Reid.  

Jim passed away last weekend at age 70 of cancer. It was obvious how much time and energy he had invested into his colleagues and students as well as his brilliant work. Their reverence in presenting some of his favorite pieces, with him present, seems well-earned. I’m thankful for exposure to Jim McNeely, his music and the grateful music community he leaves behind.

I had the chance to interview Jim McNeely for KUMD radio as a college student before his performances with UMD Jazz Ensemble I at the Head of the Lakes Jazz Festival. I also enjoyed playing McNeeley’s music as lead alto saxophonist in the band.

My memories of the interview and performances:

He talked about the importance of developing in the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis jazz orchestra at the Village Vanguard

• He said how much he was inspired by composer/arranger Bob Brookmeyer who came before him

• He talked about his initial collaborations with radio big bands in Europe (which would become a mainstay of his prolific career)

• We talked about the repertoire he brought to UMD, which was exciting, uncompromising, and to some of the students, challenging

• He was gracious about how I had conducted the interview, and then I walked him to his next commitment

• At the weekend performances, he played a solo piano version of Monk’s “Bye-ya” which blew me away

• My fellow bandmates in the UMD jazz combo were surprised to see him walk out the tunnel to the stage to watch us perform a fairly out-there version of Wayne Shorter’s “Fall” with synthesizers and digital delay. (At a jazz camp I had once seen McNeely perform an even more out-there duo set on synthesizer with Adam Nussbaum on drums, where a baffled traditionalist was heard to crack, “Of all the performances I’ve ever heard, that was definitely one of them!”)

• At the Festival we also witnessed some fish-out-of-water moments for a NYC jazz musician touring in a smaller city: McNeely’s fatigue after a long ride from the Minneapolis St. Paul airport, gallows humor about clinicing a middle school big band with way too many saxophonists, playing at an obligatory festival jam session where, to his dismay, multiple musicians (including yours truly at that time) were unprepared to play the standard “Invitation” from memory.

At that time McNeely lived in Brooklyn and would memorialize one of his addresses on 5th Avenue with a song and arrangement called “305.” 

This week I listened to Jim McNeely’s final album, the remarkable Primal Colors with Frankfurt Radio Symphony/Frankfurt Radio Big Band, with song titles like “Fuscia”, “Ochre” and “Blue” as a spectacular sunset cycled through similar colors outside my own Park Slope window.

Park Slope fire evokes accident memories, tributes

The scene at 7th Ave & Sterling Place, Brooklyn on May 2, 2025.

This Spring on a the morning of May 2, my spouse had stepped out for an errand, and called back to say that there was a fire at 7th Ave & Sterling Place, and I might want to have a look. This got my attention; she knew about my keen interest in this block.

7th & Sterling… the intersection marking a 1960 airplane disaster where the tail of a United Airlines jet was photographed for newspapers across the country, where a young boy named Stephen Baltz fell from the plane into a snowbank to survive just one more night, where the fuselage of a DC8 crashed into the ironically named the Pillar of Fire church, destroying it and several buildings, ending lives of the other passengers and six neighborhood people on the ground including the church’s caretaker, a dentist walking his dog and two sidewalk Christmas tree salesmen. A lot had happened there. 

Photo in Cousin John’s bakery.

As my spouse and I met up, we ran into our landlord Greg at the corner of 7th & Sterling who looked at the throng of emergency vehicles and knowingly proclaimed, “always this corner!”

Photos: Dave Anderson. The same corner on May 2, 2025.

My experience with the block

I had my own history with the block before I learned anything about the 1960 disaster. I had walked the block often in my first two years living in the neighborhood when, one morning in December 2013, I was stopped in the crosswalk at 7th & Park Place by a bus driver, asking me to check on a motionless man she had spotted slumped in a van. I discovered the man inside had apparently died of carbon monoxide poisoning while serving as the night watchman for a Christmas tree market on the corner. Having sat alone with my father in hospice just the previous month while he passed away, I was not afraid to help the deceased. I called 911 and greeted the Fire Department paramedics and police, later learning that the man, named Malik, was an immigrant from Africa. 

Later that winter, while walking on the same block between Park Place and Sterling, a woman cried out for help, having just slipped on sidewalk ice and injured her lower leg near an entrance to Oceans 8 Billiards. At her request, I once again called 911 and waited for the paramedics to arrive. Coincidentally, Oceans 8 had been the site of a bowling alley that served as a makeshift morgue after the 1960 plane crash.

By the following Spring I had learned about the history of the Park Slope plane crash, and was surprised that I hadn’t heard about it sooner.

May’s neighborhood fire

Fortunately the 2025 fire had not caused any loss of life, but the blaze at 118 Sterling Place brought over a hundred emergency workers to the neighborhood surrounding 7th & Sterling. Crowds gathered in the street to watch the fire’s extinction from the opposite side of the street, many of them standing near the original location of Pillar of Fire church. I wondered, how many of them know the history of this block?

Crowds gather May 2 to watch FDNY put out an apartment fire.

Did they know that the very building where the fire ladders rested on May 2 had been damaged by the United plane’s wing in 1960 (as you can see an archived photo here)? Subsequent removal of 126 Sterling’s cornice made an ideal resting spot for ladders seeking roof access to a building two doors away.

The building supporting ladders was damaged by a plane wing in the 1960 crash. The red brick structure at left replaced a crash-destroyed brownstone.

How could most residents of the neighborhood know about a local tragedy that hasn’t been visibly memorialized? Fifty years after the crash, a memorial was finally erected in Public Lot 38325 of Greenwood cemetery, honoring these victims and additional souls from a TWA Super Constellation that collided with the DC8 and crashed on a Staten Island air base. But that memorial is 2 miles away in a hard-to-reach corner of the vast cemetery, near a burial site of crash remains. Family members of some of those who perished on the ground told the New York Post in 1999 that they didn’t think a memorial was necessary at the 7th & Sterling crash site.

Memorial to crash victims in Greenwood Cemetery.

Of the many human stories from the Park Slope plane crash, the one I’ve come to identify with the most was the story of Dorothy (Campbell) Fletcher, a neighborhood woman who rushed to the scene, comforted young Stephen Baltz and got him to a hospital. New York Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital placed a small memorial to Stephen & the other victims in its Phillips Chapel, where Dorothy placed flowers every December as long as she was able. 

New York Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital memorial plaque to the crash’s temporary survivor, including the change found in his pocket.

A neighborhood ghost bike

…As I walked around the block this May 2nd, I came to the site of another tragic accident, one block away at the corner of 6th & Sterling – but this location is marked by an obvious memorial. In April 2016 a young cyclist named James Gregg was killed in a collision with an oversized truck. A white bicycle memorial stands there.

Bike memorial to James Gregg, who died in an unrelated 2016 accident.

I was touched by this poignant mode of tribute for Mr. Gregg, and many other bikers around the world, which inspired me to write a song called Ghost Bikes, recently released on my album In Lieu of Flowers. Twice this spring, when I walked by the bike to notice flowers added for another anniversary, people in the neighborhood started conversations with me about it. The neighborhood remembers, and the bike gives them a catalyst to pay tribute.

In Lieu of Flowers: Paying Homage Through Music

Art by Montreal mobile artist Mana Hemami, cover layout by Greg Williamson.

I’m happy that my new album In Lieu of Flowers is out and paying tribute to so many musical and personal influences. The new collection of songs pays homage to jazz luminaries Wayne Shorter and Maria Schneider, while also honoring the lasting influence of music teachers and personal inspirations. You can get the release from Bandcamp or your favorite digital channels.

The Quartet

On In Lieu of Flowers I play tenor and soprano saxophones, joined in a stellar quartet lineup by highly in-demand drummer Jimmy Macbride, versatile bassist Lorin Cohen on both acoustic and electric, and Chamber Music America grant-winning pianist Grant Richards. I’m psyched that together they have been able to create a cohesive modern quartet sound that propels music forward while staying in touch with the music’s roots. A special thanks to this great band!

Jimmy Macbride, Dave Anderson, Lorin Cohen, Grant Richards outside Samurai Hotel Recording Studios. Photo: Grady Bajorek.

How did an album of (mostly) tribute songs come about?

For me, people remain the most fruitful inspirations for writing songs. A person (or the sad loss of one), can create a strong feeling/impulse for a musical idea, and I will sit with a musical instrument (saxophone, piano or sometimes now guitar), jot down the original idea, and see if I can develop it into a song. This has produced original tribute songs on my prior recordings including Troubled Angel, The Aviator, Osby-An (for Greg Osby), Juror Number One/Two, Svetlana, Blue Innuendo (for Joey Defrancesco), The Phantom (for Joe Henderson), Querida and A Candle for Isaac. Person-al inspirations have been very productive!

I’ve also realized that paying tribute is sort of a family tradition. My father, Emmett, also believed in paying homage... After my mother, a dedicated geriatric nurse, passed away, he commissioned the design of a stained glass window for the facility she had worked (and died) in, depicting life’s journey through the seasons in a colorful composition.

River of Life stained glass at Minnesota hospital

My dad also honored the aunts and uncles who had raised him with an engraved stone monument in their Wisconsin farm field…

Stone memorial to my great aunts & uncle in Wisconsin

So while my dad found ways to pay tribute in physical forms, I have tried to do so via music.

Personal Tributes on this album:

More about the tribute songs on In Lieu of Flowers…

I had started writing a song for" late, great composer/saxophonist Wayne Shorter before he passed away, and finished “One for Wayne” afterward, which contains some nods to his tunes “Speak No Evil” and “Deluge.”

I wrote “Thilmany” in tribute to a family that was friends with mine growing up in Minnesota, including a peer who passed away as a young adult.

After losing my mother years ago, I created a small haven in my apartment to help process the loss, emerging from it one day to write the song “Sanctuary,” performed here as a duo on soprano sax with Grant.

I wrote “Lost City” the year I visited Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) on a student music tour, finding a beautiful city in decay from decades of totalitarian rule.

“Arms of Maria” honors active jazz composing legend Maria Schneider (a fellow graduate of the University of Minnesota). I was thinking about her graceful, ballerina-like conducting style when I wrote it.

“Stell” is dedicated to one-time National Association of Jazz Educators’ educator of the year James Stellmaker, whose reverent students secretly referred him by this nickname. “Stell” makes a musical pun out of “Stella by Starlight,” while honoring Mr. Stellmaker’s exemplary musical and family life.

A cyclist named James Gregg perished in an accident in my Brooklyn neighborhood; he is now memorialized by a white bicycle on the same corner. “Ghost Bikes” pays tribute to this type of memorial and the 33-year-old man who inspired it.

And finally, “Sandy’s Ladies” — originally written on guitar — is named for my friend and pandemic guitar teacher, Sandy Carter, a man whose life journey has taken him from West Coast guitarist, to hot rod aficionado, and now also a devoted attendant to his granddaughters.  

Thanks for checking out In Lieu of Flowers!

Jessica Williams 1948-2022

Photo: Elaine C Arc

This week the world has lost a great musical artist. I'd like to pass along my experiences with Jessica Williams to help others appreciate her music. Passing along her music is a way to dispense more of the light she seemed to want shining in the world. I'll mention my experiences with Jessica as a listener, as a potential music business associate and as a person. 

I first encountered Jessica Williams' music as a student DJ at KUMD radio, on the campus of the University of Minnesota Duluth. I don't remember whether it was recommended by an older DJ, or whether I found an early solo piano LP browsing the thousands of albums that graced the station library. I do remember that it made a strong impression on me, and that I played these songs on the air as often as possible, hearing stronger feedback about them than anything I recall playing on KUMD. I remember my college jazz ensemble director asking me after a radio show, who is Jessica Williams; why haven't I heard of her?  "Why haven't I heard of her" seems like the perfect reaction to Jessica’s stunning musicality. In fact, one of her favorite stories was playing for the great jazz pianist Bill Evans and having him ask, "Where the hell did you come from?"

Jessica was from Baltimore, classically trained at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, and played with Miles Davis alum "Philly" Joe Jones, before moving west to the San Francisco area in 1977, and living out the balance of her life in the Pacific Northwest.

Over the years I passed along Jessica's music to musical friends who had not heard of her, like an unsolicited favor that was always well received. I became interested in re-releasing that first piano solo album of Jessica's, and had some delightful phone conversations with her. I learned that she was recording solo piano records at home on her own piano. She maintained her website, received the orders and brought CDs to the post office every day to ship them. She was very suspicious about others trying to make money off of her music, no doubt from decades of creating great music only to hand it off to businesspeople of questionable ethics.

I attended two of her solo piano concerts at the home of Seattle music supporter Richard Rodseth, to whom many of us are grateful for the chance to meet her, and hear her up close despite her declining health. She was very humble and willing to talk with other musicians about the challenges of playing improvised music on a high level, sharing remarks like "thinking is bad" and "sometimes I try too hard” along with priceless anecdotes about music legends like Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

Finally in 2017 I made a push to re-release that early solo piano album, which will remain nameless for reasons you will soon see. I tracked down the label owner from that 70s recording I found so brilliant. He proceeded to find the master tapes, and suggested I approach her about publishing royalties for her original songs on the album. To my surprise, besides having bad memories about her personal circumstances at the time of the recording, she didn't feel that it was up to her artistic standard. She didn't want it re-released despite her stretched finances. I wrote to the label owner and told him we wouldn't be able put out the record.

Interestingly, she did tell me about three out of print recordings that she did want see issued/reissued:

• A recorded 1992 concert in Victoria, British Columbia with a 2 minute standing ovation from 2,000 people. This is apparently different from the 1996 "Victoria Concert" album on Jazz Focus records.

• Her episode as featured guest on the legendary Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz show which can be heard here.

• Organomic Music - with Eddie Henderson, et al. in San Francisco.  She said they "really got into some spaces" for that 1981 recording. Here is one of the songs from this record.

Jessica Williams is my favorite solo jazz piano player. I’ll share just one of many favorite performances here for people to enjoy, a rendition of the jazz standard “They Say It’s Wonderful”:

Chorus 1 (from 0:00): plays the melody 

Chorus 2 (from 1:21): beautiful arrangement on the melody

Chorus 3 (from 2:30): in full flight as an improviser with melody, depth and wit

Chorus 4 (from 3:34):  variations on the melody with flights into octaves, winding back to earth with a gorgeous coda

Here is a fundraiser organized by a trusted friend of hers, to help her husband with expenses: https://gofund.me/33edbc81

Xenophobia in the Melting Pot (A Photo Essay)

all photos © Dave Anderson 2018

I had the chance to visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Islands last week, and wanted to share some pictures and impressions…

Huddled masses yearning for a good picture of Manhattan, as the boat leaves

The statue was called “Liberty Enlightening the World (La Liberté éclairant le monde)” by its French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. But to immigrants who sailed into New York harbor, the message they got from the statue was “Welcome.”

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Emma Lazarus’s famous poem with “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” was written before the Liberty’s completion in 1883, and added as a feature inside the statue in 1903. The poem captured the public’s imagination.

The New Colossus said, don’t send me your best, send me your least impressive people, and we will welcome them.

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Next our boat landed at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration. Covering America’s immigration history, it also tells our anti-immigrant story…

Here are xenophobic writings and visuals, mainly from the 1920s, in the Museum.

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We’ve reached a new time of pushback on immigration, greater than at any time since the 1920s. We should ask: what do people have to gain by making us afraid of outsiders? Are the fears grounded in reason? Is there also a cost to turning people away?

The immigrants of today are like those of the past in many ways: they are disparaged, they are exploited as a political issue, yet in the end they will succeed as a group and be accepted.

As my boat left Ellis Island, a rainbow cracked through. At a time when the light seems to be straining against darkness — around us and inside of us — it was nice to feel a ray of hope.

Watch the Melting Pot video.

NYC is a Melting Pot of Culture, Food and Music

I’ve heard it said many times: the great thing about living in New York is that the whole world is right here. It seems like one can find so much of the world’s offerings here – and in interesting combinations and mashups. That’s true, whether one is talking about culture, food or music.

 First there are the cultural experiences. I had the chance to see a South Korean movie with a buddy recently in Times Square only to find that we seemed to be the only Caucasians there. Rather than seeing a film loaded with our own cultural values – and clichés – it was fun to see one with Korean themes such as honor and reincarnation playing a strong role. Yes, there are times when the majority gets to be the minority in New York.

Then there’s the food – I remember when I first moved to NYC, I got a kick out of seeing a Chinese/Cuban restaurant on the Upper West Side called La Caridad 78. (How did they come to mix Chinese & Cuban cooking?)  The restaurant is still there, and the city is similarly full of food fusions. There’s also authentic real-thing cooking from a countless number of countries. You can walk certain blocks of Jackson Heights, Queens, and feel like you’re in India with all the authentic restaurant and groceries.  I recall taking a Siberian-born friend to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn and seeing her shed (happy) tears, because the exact same foods from her childhood were there, triggering vivid memories of home.

Fusion food vendor at Smorgasburg in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park

Finally, there’s music – lots of great music from many places. One experience which helped to inspire my new album Melting Pot was participating in jam sessions organized by the Brooklyn Raga Massive (BRM). BRM is a music collective presenting Indian classical and cross-cultural Raga inspired music blended with other traditions. To me, the most interesting thing about their jam sessions, besides the beautiful and groovy Indian sounds, is the lack of almost any imposed structure. As an American jazz musician, I’m used to navigating lots of rules around a public “jam” – who’s leading it, when you can get up to play, who chooses the song.  BRM’s jams have none of that – you just go up when the time feels right; there’s no formal leader and no “tune.” American jazz is traditionally known as “free music,” yet BRM’s version seems to have even more freedom for performers. It’s beautiful to experience the vibe as a performer — or audience member. Highly recommend!

The Songs of Melting Pot

A couple years ago, I looked out at our culture and began to see a lot of fear, especially around the issue of immigration and cultural change. So I decided to make an album to pay tribute to the great North American melting pot. I feel that people coming here from abroad add so much our lives and culture.

The new album, like my previous recordings, is built around a set of original compositions, about which I’d like to write. Melting Pot begins with a three-part “Immigrant Suite.”  I wanted to pay tribute to some specific to immigrants I’ve known who have inspired me to write songs:

• The initial sketch for ”Juror Number One” was written a day of New York City jury duty.  The first juror — our foreman — was a very charismatic and proud Cuban immigrant, and during break he told us a story. He had come to the US from Cuba as a young man in the early 1960s, taking a job as night janitor in a Manhattan office building. One night in 1962, while cleaning the office alone, listening to the radio, he heard the Cuban Missile Crisis erupt on the radio, realizing that two superpowers were on the verge of destroying the world (and him) over a dispute back in his home country. After I trip of my own to Havana in 2016, I finished this tune, trying to represent the juror’s vibrant personal style, and that absurd and scary moment, in musical form.

• The second movement of the Immigrant Suite, is titled “Querida,” for the Portuguese feminine word meaning “sweetheart,” after a Brazilian immigrant friend I met in New York who liked to call the dear people in her life “Querida” (“Querido” if male). Musically, the song is based on the chord progression of Jobim’s standard bossa “How Insensitive” but in 6/4 time. The drum solo is framed to suggest conflict before a final resolution. 

• The suite’s closing movement, “A Candle for Isaac,” is dedicated to my girlfriend Ilana’s father Isaac Judah, who was an East Indian Jewish immigrant to Canada (and for a time, Israel).  Isaac loved singing the traditional song Ma’oz Tzur on the first night of Hannukah. This song starts with this theme quoted sentimentally on the Indian sitar, before being joined by the trumpet and alto sax. I wanted to pay tribute to a daughter’s sadness of missing her father, and a father’s joy.

A “mantra” in Eastern usage refers to a sacred, meditative utterance. In the West, it can mean a motto, slogan or catch phrase. In the same way that mantras are repeated responses to the changing situations in our lives, the song “Mantra” is an attempt to play a single melodic phrase, changing it as little as possible while moving through a changing series of chords.  It was a fun challenge to play over, and to explore the Latin American, Eastern and jazz fusion implications of the song.

The EP-length album closes with ”Trance-like,” a melody which suggested the East Indian context in which we performed the tune. I’ve long admired East Indian culture for its attention to trance. The sounds of Indian music, the practices of Indian spirituality, and spices of well-cooked Indian food all seem capable of transporting us into trance-like states of mind and body, which can help us escape our current troubles for a higher perspective.

The songs of the Melting Pot album went live everywhere this month for the world to hear!  I’m excited to share this music on behalf of myself and the talented Melting Pot ensemble.  Thanks for checking it out!

 In my next post, I’ll write about the cultural melting pot that is New York City. 

The People of Melting Pot

Melting Pot (L to R): Ehren Hanson, Hans Glawischnig, Bryan Davis, Dave Anderson, Neel Murgai, Dave Restivo, Roberto Quintero, Memo Acevedo  

Just like the immigration melting pot is ultimately the story of the people in it, so it is with the Melting Pot music project and band. I’m excited to bring together such great musical messengers fluent in multiple musical dialects of the world.

Drummer Memo Acevedo was born in Colombia, lived and played in Spain, started his family in Canada, and immigrated to the US. He has been a big part (with a big heart!) of the NYC music scene since the 1990s. Memo was mentored by percussion legend Tito Puente, and is a musical encyclopedia of Afro-Cuban and Brazilian rhythms. Memo holds residency at the Zinc bar the first Friday of every month with his Manhattan Bridges Orchestra (in which I play saxophone).

Percussionist Roberto Quintero was born in Caracas, Venezuela, growing up in one of the most its renowned musical families as the son of Ricardo Quintero and Eglee Correa. After success in his home country, Roberto moved to New York to fulfill his musical dreams, and he now performs in high-profile music acts in all genres, from symphonic to Jazz, Latin Jazz and Latin House.

Bassist Hans Glawischnig was born in Graz to a musical Austrian father, and an American mother.  He relocated to the US to study at Berklee School of Music before becoming an in-demand bassist all over the world. Our bassist for the Melting Pot September 6 CD release performance, Gabriel Vivas, was born in El Paso Texas, raised in Venezuela, studied at the University of Miami, and performs with some of the top names in the Latin Jazz world.

Born in New York, Dave Restivo is one of Canada's most respected and influential jazz artists. He is a 3-time winner of the National Jazz Awards' Pianist of the Year Award, and is listed in the current edition of Canadian Who's Who. Dave first played with Memo in Toronto as a student in the 1990s.

Neel Murgai is a sitarist, overtone singer and co-founder of the Brooklyn Raga Massive, a raga-inspired musician's collective that I’ve enjoyed jamming with on multiple occasions. Neel's music ranges from Indian classical to original compositions and contemporary cross-cultural collaborations with influences spanning the globe.

Ehren Hanson began learning tabla at age 15 under Misha Masud in New York City. In 2000, he became a disciple of Pandit Anindo Chatterjee and performs frequently with Brooklyn Raga Massive and other groups. Ehren’s wife is Colombian, and he puts the Spanish he has learned communicating with Melting Pot’s Latin percussion team! Melting Pot also features a guest tabla performance by Deep Singh, who was born in London, England, and currently lives in the US, exploring ways to combine Indian percussion with modern Western grooves.

Trumpet and flügelhorn player Bryan Davis hails from the UK, is now based in New York and enjoys an international reputation as a lead trumpet player while performing regularly with groups including Arturo O’Farrill & the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. Bryan has adopted the American sport closest to my heart, baseball, becoming an ardent fan of the New York Yankees.

Israeli flutist Itai Kriss, now based in New York, contributes to a couple of songs on the Melting Pot CD as a special guest. Itai’s terrific flute playing can also be heard on his new album Telavana, exploring connections between Middle Eastern and Caribbean music.

These are the people of Melting Pot, and I couldn’t be more excited about their contributions to our new album! Melting Pot gives us the chance to celebrate the ideas and energy that people bring from everywhere, to make this a better place.

In my next post, I’ll talk more about the songs of Melting Pot.