The faces of jazz musicians Sánta István Csaba hears, sees and snaps are indelibly expressive -- like the memorable phrases, inspired improvisations and magical connections these players play, so meaningful to listeners in the moment, remembered or recorded. JazzTimes magazine has published some of Sánta's images from the Northsea Jazz Festival in early July -- here are more, not included in that publication. Northsea, held in the Hague, is a multi-stage, non-stop, international showcase of bands on tour now. Having worked with him … [Read more...]
Great new jazz photography — Dee Kalea’s campaign
Dee Kalea of Creative Music Photography is old school, in that she's created black and white images of jazz musicians in performance, closeup, usually one-to-a-frame. The passion she's captured, however, is timeless. How she became alert to the precise moment of creative rapture, and intimate with the music beyond the musicians themselves, is a story she tells best herself, in her intro and slide show for the Indegogo campaign she's mounted to raise funds for printmaking, support of public presentations and archival preservation of … [Read more...]
Great new jazz photography: Geri Allen by Sánta István Csaba
Pianist-composer Geri Allen, at age 60 a cancer victim, was photographed several times recently by Sánta István Csaba. He caught glimpses of her spirit and mourns her deeply. "I saw her about five weeks ago here in Torino," Sánta writes from where he now lives, "and in April in Switzerland. She was in a good mood and smiling. So unbelievable." I was fortunate to have met Geri Allen in soon after she'd arrived to New York City in the early 1980s, having graduated from Howard University. I interviewed her for National … [Read more...]
Great new jazz photography #2: Lauren Deutsch’s Made in Chicago portfolio
"Made in Chicago" is true of the photography of Lauren Deutsch, and also the name of the four-day-long collaborative jazz festival she's organized in Poznan, Poland for the past 12 years as artistic director (formerly with Wojceich Juszcsak) on behalf of the Jazz Institute of Chicago. The theme of this year's fest was "Freedom." The photos here of Chicago-based musicians (click to enlarge), in which Deutsch tries to capture the sound of the music through camera movement, were taken in May … [Read more...]
Great new jazz photography: Marc PoKempner portfolio from New Orleans
Photos of musicians making music -- visualizations stirred in the photographers by watching sounds manifest -- are exciting, and as different in style as the photographers and musicians themselves. Marc PoKempner 's portfolio from New Orleans of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Cuban drummers at the Music Box Village, a non-profit community arts garden, is the first of a series of great new jazz photos I'll post over the next few days. Check back … [Read more...]
NEA supports jazz and US arts nationwide
The National Endowment of the Arts, arguably the most misunderstood and beleaguered doing-good office of the federal gov't (excluding the NEH, EPA, Consumer Financial Bureau, Civil Rights Division of the Justice Dept., and a few others) has issued its 2017 funding report, highlighting that its monies (monies from we US taxpayers) flow to communities in all 50 states and five territories. Included is support for 36 jazz-related projects, most generated in the usual cities but also to entities based in Baton Rouge LA; Hartford CT; Pinecrest … [Read more...]
Whatever happened to International Jazz Day?
April 30 -- yesterday -- was celebrated as the sixth annual International Jazz Day with a global webcast from Havana, hosted by Will Smith, headlined by pianist Herbie Hancock and including a couple of dozen top notch musicians from the U.S., Russia, Cameroon, France and Korea as well as Cuba. Did you know? Advance publicity and followup coverage has been but a dot on the attention focused on IJD last year, when President Barack Obama hosted a splendiferous Jazz Day in the White House. Considering the leader of the regime replacing Obama's … [Read more...]
How Charles Lloyd stays marvelous
During the 50 years since his breakthrough album Forest Flower (released in February 1967, recorded live at the Monterey Jazz Festival the summer before) -- comparable in some ways to The Epic success of Kamasi Washington -- saxophonist-flutist Charles Lloyd has been unusually popular for an adventurous jazzman. He showed how he's done that, accomplished a long career while expressing himself freely, with his on-tour Marvels at Chicago's Symphony Center Friday night (4/21), and it's worth unpacking. Lloyd, 79, and his empathic, considerably … [Read more...]
Butch Morris’s workbook for spontaneous composition published
The deathbed wish of composer-cornetist Lawrence Douglas "Butch" Morris (1947-2013) was that his detailed documentation of Conduction®, the method he devised to enable spontaneous composition for ensembles of literally any type employing codified hand-signals, be published in hardcover. This has come to pass. On April 24 and May 1, events in New York City will launch The Art of Conduction, an elegant workbook from art-world publisher Karma with photos of Morris and his text, making his innovative work available for use by anyone/everyone, … [Read more...]
Aretha Franklin’s got it at 75
I saw Aretha Franklin last night from the Chicago Theater's nosebleed seats, unable to make out her features but sure from the moment she first raised her voice that she's a national if not global treasure, as compelling at 75 -- her birthday was March 25 -- as half a century ago, in her breakthrough year 1967. Skinnier than she looked singing "The Star Spangled Banner" at the Lions-Viking game last year, wearing an above-the-knees, sleeveless, collarless dress of gauzy white, in a wig that fell like Michelle Obama's real hair, on gold heels … [Read more...]
Flyover country? Nonsense in jazz, politics, crime fiction
There's no such thing as "flyover country" -- except in the minds of careless or ignorant people who ought to know better. For instance: Jazz lives throughout the US and the world, not only in New York City; Illinois presidential race voters chose Hilary Clinton by a wide margin (due largely to Democratic bastion and jazz hub Chicago) although the man who beat her nationally does not seem to have much on-the-ground experience with anywhere except his own properties, and yes, the capital of the Midwest has crime fiction writers to … [Read more...]
Spring break with Budapest jazz, photos
I went to Budapest for spring break -- to introduce a photo exhibit by my Transylvanian-born friend Sánta István Csaba and help jury the 10th annual Müpa Budapest Jazz Showcase/Talent Exchange, held in the modernist musem and multi-theater complex on the east bank of the icy Danube Feb 3 - 5. As I wrote in my DownBeat article, the sound of the 12 sets I heard was jazz as we think of it now -- virtuosic horns, piano/keyboards and/or guitar, upright or electric basses and drums; vocalists singing standards, spicing up r&b grooves, … [Read more...]
Trump’s biggest first threat to the arts: Ending net neutrality
Terrible as it will be for the Trump administration to kill the National Endowments of the Arts and Humanities, gutting net neutrality seems to me an even more damaging attack on the arts, independent and upstart media and America's commons. By nominating as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission ex-Verizon lawyer and avowed net neutrality foe Ajit Pai, Trump will further commodify the internet we now all use for free, allowing biggies like Netflix and Comcast to pay for fastest service (meaning others get slower service) and … [Read more...]