Whatever I was going to write today was pre-empted by noticing this teaser above the mast in The Daily News: Sax Genius Doesn’t Let Kidney Troubles Slow Him Down.

Dayna Stephens first appeared on my radar in 2007 when Peter Apfelbaum performed and was in residence at the Stanford Jazz Workshop. He gave them an interview in which he said his two favorite jazz players under 30 were Ambrose Akinmusire (who I befriended that night, and met with later that summer, in Santa Cruz) and Dayna Stephens. I recall Josh Roseman either played with Peter that night or was also in residence or both. I interviewed Peter albeit clumsily for KZSU and he later sent me his set list, as I proposed to (someday) write a follow-up to our interview.

Here is the link to the same interview.
http://stanfordjazz.org/archive/artists/apfelbaum_peter.html

Meanwhile, Richard Scheinin has the update on Dayna, who is 33 and has been struggling with a kidney ailment for several years. Scheinin’s article states that Stephens is on a list with 9,000 names of people awaiting a transplant.

I wrote briefly about Dayna Stephens while preparing my Alden Van Buskirk event in December. Van died of a rare ailment called PNH, which I thought was somewhat similar to what the sax player’s flesh is heir to.

The article says that there are two upcoming Bay Area shows featuring Dayna. He is from the Bay Area — East Bay — but like many other rising stars of jazz relocated to the Big Apple.

Scheinin by the way rates among the top tier of jazz writers, up there with Andy Gilbert. His son Jesse Scheinin is said to be making waves as a reeds player (comparable to Jacob Garchik, son of Leah Garchik of the Chon; how many offspring of newspeople are there in jazz? I still wonder about Bill Workman, who profiled me once for the Chron and a young player with the same last name, but I digress).

I met Scheinin once on the stationary bikes at the old JCC, at Terman; he was with a woman from the Redwood Symphony, whose card I have somewhere. I occassionally leave him comments on his voice mail at the Merc about his stories or my suggestions for potential stories.

I first noticed Richard Scheinin in 2003 when I was John Ellis’ manager and John was playing Kuumbwa with Charlie Hunter Trio. I called John the next day to share the good news that the Mercury (RS) compared his playing to that of Sam Rivers and Gene Ammons. Of course, I had no idea what that actually meant other than it sounded like a compliment; that led to my starting the “One Thousand and One Saxophone Knights” project, a binder in which I have recorded information on close to 1,000 sax players, culled and curated from Penguin, All Music Guide and Rough Guide to jazz, plus more recent updates from the current publications. I also imagined a la Turing a machine that would let a novice play like any of those predecessors, by setting a dial.

My thoughts are with Mr. Stephens with a tip of the hat (in my own Plastic Alto stylings) to Mr. Scheinin and all the others I am recalling and riffing on this a.m.

I have been meaning to excavate from my email file the Apfelbaum set list, and will post as appropriate.

edit to add: the list of Americans waiting for a kidney is 90,000 names.

A funny anecdote about that article Richard Scheinin wrote about Charlie Hunter, Derrek Phillips and John Ellis that night in Santa Cruz is that one “clam” in his otherwise excellent reporting is that he claimed John had an effects rack on his belt that gave his bass clarinet a special “foggy” sound and John said that was wack and it was merely a wireless pickup transmitting a signal to the amps but clean feed (so to speak) and that whatever Richard and all of us were hearing was either technique or something about the room. Kind of a weird seque (even for Plastic Alto) but this story calls to mind the late great Steve Lacy and the weird noises he could conjure out of his soprano sax. When you got to the point you could laugh at Steve you either knew nothing or a lot about jazz.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lg6IEAOvFY

edit to add, that afternoon: Here is the set list from Peter Apfelbaum’s shows. They were five years ago nearly, but I bet his fans would find this interesting, the opportunity to see shows like that still somewhat rare. And the connection to Dayna Stephens is that Peter talked about Dayna, and they are both from the East Bay living in New York and I am pretty certain that despite their overlapping instruments they played together, or this is rather esoteric connection, I admit:

Hi Mark –

Here are the set lists for those shows:

STANFORD 7/15/07

Set 1:
Unforgotten
Long Road/Motherless Child
Incarnadine Pts. 1 & 2
Song Of The Signs

Set 2:
Acharei Mot
Hanging Gardens
The Hand That Signed The Paper
Petroglyph Extension
Titiwa

FREIGHT & SALVAGE 7/16/07

Set 1:
Unforgotten
Loag Road/Motherless Child
Incarnadine Pts. 1 & 2
Song Of The Signs
Acharei Mot

Set 2:
piano introduction
Hanging Gardens
The Hand That Signed The Paper
Petroglyph Extension
Sketch (solo piano)
5 Ways To Know

encore: It Is Written

Good luck on the article – if you do end up doing one, please do
forward it to me or E_ if possible. Thanks for offering to send the
interview, but you don’t need to – I hear my own voice enough 🙂

all the best,
Peter

On 7/24/07, mark weiss <earwopa@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Peter Apfelbaum:
>
> Thanks for the interview for KZSU Stanford radio.
>
> I’m going to write an article, based on the transcript
> of our talk and my observations at the two shows I
> went to, at Stanford and Freight — not sure where it
> could be published, maybe All About Jazz.
>
> Can you send me the set lists for the two shows? I can
> probably figure most of it out, but if its not too
> much trouble, I’d appreciate the song titles for the
> respective shows — personally, I like the fact that
> on Sunday, at Stanford, you gave longer introductions
> to the songs.
>
> Also, let me know if you want me to send you a copy of
> the air-tape from KZSU, or the transcipt. If I get an
> article printed, I’ll forward that as well.
>
> Thanks. And best wishes (mazel…namaste..)
>
> Mark Weiss
> Earthwise Productions, Management & Publicity/Radio

and sorry I did not write anything more specifically about the music….I saw Peter Apfelbaum and Josh Roseman more recently in November at Stanford where Peter played bass parts on organ for Josh’s “reggae jazz” project, which was much more Sun Ra than Skatalites to me.
>