A talker and listener, actor-dj-writer-oral historian, good humored realist and pragmatic idealist, Studs Terkel (1912 – 2008) stands as an American cultural patriot, who enjoyed as rich if not untroubled a life as genuinely democratic artist might hope for over the course of the 20th century — earning Roger Ebert’s thumbs up as greatest Chicagoan. Studs […]
Archives for October 2008
Globalism in the Azores
Globalism held its head high at the tenth annual Ponta Delgada Jazz Festival last week. Five nights of concerts performed by an international coterie of improvisers in the superb acoustics of a nicely modernized old center-city theater for a stylish, educated audience didn’t seem a cultural far cry, though they were held in the capital […]
Jazz masters in the Azores
My focus shifts to the mid-Atlantic: for the next week I’ll be hearing newly honored NEA Jazz Master Lee Konitz, pianist Joachim Kuhn, the Hot Club of Portugal Septet, reedist Marty Ehrlich’s Rites Quartet and a band led by NYC multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter at the 10th annual Festival de Jazz de Ponta Delagada — where […]
Colbert & Coleman: Name that tune
A reader asks: “Could you please post the name of the [Ornette] Coleman song sampled for that sketch” on Steven Colbert’s Comedy Central show of October 9? Colbert pulled one of his trademark reverses, ridiculing the vast emptiness of smug superiority by goofing on a 10-second snatch of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musician’s live recording Sound Grammar. […]
Live in New York, it’s jazz beyond jazz
Presentations of jazz that break all sorts of bounds, pushing far beyond stale conventions — jazz beyond jazz — are so prevalent in Manhattan that the energy expended just being on the scene can leave me too drained to report on the good stuff. Five shows in the past month –Â Dee Dee Bridgewater’s Mali project […]
Colbert’s tin ear
Steven Colbert plays a pointed dance on the funny-bone, but misled his “nation” unintentionally at least once  last night in the segment “Who’s Not Honoring Me Now.” At 12 minutes into the show, he sniffed at the MacArthur Foundation’s award of a $500,000 fellowship to saxophonist Miguel Zenon, tongue-in-cheeking “Never give money to a jazz musician — they’ll […]
Jazz time-out of the year?
A major international jazz festival right now in Washington D.C.? How odd: Is it the End of Times? Are we fiddlin’ while Rome burns? Or could it be a new beginning? Ignore the credit crisis, the vp debates, end-game positioning by the One and the Other, Rosh Hashanah and Eid, Cubs and White Sox both […]
Alaska Airlines to the rescue: Portland Jazz Fest revived
The Portland Jazz Festival, pronounced dead on September 8 due to the pullout of Seattle-based title sponsor Qwest Communications, now rises from its ashes on the wings of Alaska Airlines and an advisory board of local businesses and individuals. According to a press release issued today by PDX Jazz, the fest’s umbrella organization, “the 6th […]