Blog Profile / Jazz Beyond Jazz
| URL : | http://www.artsjournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Music / Jazz | |
| Posts on Regator: | 308 | |
| Posts / Week: | 1.1 | |
| Archived Since: | March 2, 2008 | |
Blog Post Archive
House Appropriations Committee to NEA: Keep Jazz Masters
The National Endowment for the Arts has been directed by the US House Appropriations Committee in its report to Interior to continue the American Jazz Masters Fellowships and dump its proposed American Artists of the Year honors. The report also supports continuation of the NEA's...
Urban Realism and Treme
"Life is glorious and vibrant and joyous at points, but it is essentially tragic. That's not a unique David Simon perspective." So sayeth David Simon, (pictured left; right is a Mardi Gras Indian portrayed by Clarke Peters), executive producer with...
Hurray for Treme
"Do Watcha Wanna," the season finale of Treme, had everything I watch the series for: Compelling characters embodied by terrific actors; plausible and suspenseful quick-cutting across and interweaving of plot strands;confident command of realities afflicting post-Katrina/pre-Gulf oil spill New Orleans, andthe extraordinary depiction...
Symphonic "jazz" compositions, big bands and holiday blasts
The American Composers Orchestra readings of short symphonic works by jazz-oriented composers which I wrote of in my CityArts column and posted about here are now available to hear, thanks to Lara Pelligrinelli at NPR's A Blog Supreme. The 23rd...
Jazz in Jordan: Yacoub Abu Ghosh explains and plays
Jazz and its evolution goes on everywhere - as bass guitarist/bandleader/composer/producer Yacoub Abu Ghosh explained and demonstrated to me in Amman, Jordan last March. Ghosh and his Stage Heroes performed at their weekly gig at Canvas Cafe Restaurant Art Lounge....
American Composer Orchestra: Jazz composers welcome
The American Composers Orchestra gave eight jazz-oriented composers a year to work up five minute pieces and composer-mentors to help, then staged readings conducted by George Manahan during one of the busiest weeks of the jazz summer. Read about it...
New NEA Jazz Masters: A classy last class
The National Endowment for the Arts's final designated Jazz Masters are all worthy: drummer Jack DeJohnette, saxophonist Von Freeman, bassist Charlie Haden, singer Sheila Jordan and trumpeter-educator-organizer-gadfly Jimmy Owens have had long and profoundly influential if not broadly celebrated or financially rewarded...
More on Scott-Heron -- artist in the American tradition
I turned to the recordings of Gil Scott-Heron after writing that he should have and did known better than to abuse drugs as he did, leading to his decline and demise. They make me ever more impressed with his scope...
Gil Scott-Heron, hard-eyed realist, dead of self-inflicted escapism
Gill Scott-Heron, dead at age 62, was a poet, prophet and spokesperson of the black urban American experience. A merciless and unsentimental truth-teller when he emerged on the scene in the '70s, by telling Afro-identified kids dancing to Motown and...
Celebrating jazz excellence -- Awards, honors and privileges
The NEA zeroes out its Jazz Masters program, the Grammys cuts categories so pop best-sellers regain prominence vis a vis less obviously commercial stars, but the Jazz Journalists Association's 15th annual Jazz Awards -- to be held June 11, 2011...
South African jazz hero Zim Nqgawana dies, age 52
Neil Tesser has written an informative post about Zim Ngqawana, the South African jazz musician who died at age 52 of a stroke May 10. Ngqawana, whose name is pronounced with a glottal "click" between the "N" and first "a,"...
CityArts New York June jazz fests bustin' out-all-over supplement
CityArts New York let me play jazz supplement editor. Read my lead feature on upcoming in June the NYC Blue Note Jazz Festival, UnDead Festival, gigs everywhere and more respect! Also Kurt Gottschalk on the Vision Festival's backstory, David Adler on three...
Steve Reich @ Carnegie Hall @ 75, with devotees
Composer Steve Reich, age 75, knows secrets of correlating pulsating rhythms and interlocking layers of sycopated melodic patterns which he's eager to reveal in every work he writes. His musical signature is so unwavering it might veer into self-parody, but...
Creative Music Studio, Woodstock at Columbia U and East Village
My CityArts - New York column is about the Creative Music Symposium, organized by Karl Berger, pianist/vibist with his wife Ingrid Sertso, who cofounded with free-thinking Ornette Coleman of the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock NY (1972-1984). The symposium at Columbia University's Center...
Vionlinist Billy Bang on being a "tunnel rat" in Viet Nam
Violinist Billy Bang, died at age 63 on April 11 of cancer, was a composer of enduring, affecting music based on his military service in Viet Nam. Prayer for Peace, Vietnam: Reflections and Vietnam: The Aftermath deal directly, bravely and...
Central Brooklyn Jazz Fest reiterates jazz/race divide
The Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival, during what the Smithsonian Institution promotes as Jazz Appreciation Month, is a powerful statement of hard core, grass-roots support for the music Congress has ratified as "a rare and valuable American national treasure." My City Arts column...
Subotnick, Lillevan, Unsound make Lincoln Center an electric circus
Morton Subotnick re-mixes original materials of his prophetic and unprecedented late '60s electronic music classic "Silver Apples of the Moon" with kinetic imagery by video artist Lillevan tonight (April 7) at the Rubenstein atrium of Lincoln Center -- as detailed in my column in City Arts -...
Jazz, blues & beyond in Amman: Pops, Bird, Diz, Lady Day @ UJordan
I spoke on jazz and blues at the University of Jordan, a modern 45,000-student institution, in an event sponsored by the American Embassy while in Amman on family matters a couple weeks ago. About 50 avid students of music, arts...
Beyond jazz, in and to Jordan
Jordan's capitol Amman isn't an obvious hot spot for jazz, yet I found interest, knowledge and exciting players during my visit there a couple weeks ago -- from which I'm barely recovered. A couple of postings and I hope a video...
UNsafe concert: Threadgill, La Barbara, ACO dare to fail
"Playing It UNsafe" is how the American Composers Orchestra characterizes tonight's concert of works by Henry Threadgill, Joan La Barbara, Sean Friar and Laura Schwendinger at Zankel Hall, NYC. Afraid of classical musicians improvising? Multi-layered "sound paintings" of multi-tracked voice, electronic ambiance and...