Gowanus, a Brooklyn neighborhood so unlovely it's been named an EPA superfund site, is Ground Zero now for music lofts, as reported in my new City Arts-New York column. In a half dozen or so artist-run spaces -- including IBeam, Douglas Street Collective, Littlefield, the Brooklyn Lyceum and Issue Project Room -- available for presentation and rehearsal of hard-core experimental sounds, dance, video and performance art, the programming is typically spiky, ambitious and unsentimental. … [Read more...]
NEA ends Jazz, Folk, Opera awards for “full range of American artists”
February 16, 2011 by
National Endowment for the Arts' FY-12 budget eliminates a 30-year-old Jazz Masters Awards program, and special recognition with National Heritage Fellowships and Opera honors, in favor of Artist of the Year Awards available for the entire spectrum of performing artists (all forms of music and theater as one). Here's the NEA's statement, issued through a spokesperson, regarding its "modification of honorifics," in response to some issues I alluded to yesterday, which seem sure to reverberate with diverse effects throughout the U.S.'s far-flung … [Read more...]
NEA wants to end Jazz Masters program
February 15, 2011 by
The National Endowment of the Arts' FY-12 Appropriations Request has just been posted, and cuts $21 million to return to its 2008 funding level. Among program "modifications": the establishment of "American Artists of the Year awards," which will "remove specific reference to Jazz, Folk, and Opera" and give discipline awards annually in two categories:Performing Arts: Dance/Music/Opera/Musical Theater/Theater Visual Arts: Design/Media Arts/Museums/Visual Arts (including crafts)This evidently means the end of the Jazz Masters Fellowships, … [Read more...]
Esperanza who? Grammy’s Best New Artist (and more)
February 14, 2011 by
Best New Artist of the Year, according to the Grammys, is Esperanza Spalding, a 26-year-old jazz bassist and singer whose most recent album is titled Chamber Music Society. What!? or should the question be, How?! Full congrats, she's as bright a rising star as has emerged from jazz by virtue of her charm and chops since 2006 -- when Junjo, her first CD, was released. She beat out some kid named Justin Bieber, whose fans are enraged. … [Read more...]
Black History Month Post-?-Racial String Bands
February 9, 2011 by
The Carolina Chocolate Drops are at least as entertaining as the 19th minstrel shows they cop songs and style from -- and just as confounding to any strict analysis of American attitudes about what's called "race" -- as noted in my new column in City Arts - New York. … [Read more...]
