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 […]
Archives for February 2011
NEA ends Jazz, Folk, Opera awards for “full range of American artists”
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 […]
NEA wants to end Jazz Masters program
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 […]
Esperanza who? Grammy’s Best New Artist (and more)
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 […]
Black History Month Post-?-Racial String Bands
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.
Tragedy of bike-riding cabaret activist Mary Cleere Haran
Cabaret is a forum for the classic American pop song — and the death of singer Mary Cleere Haran, hit by a car coming out of a driveway while she was riding her bike in Deerfield Beach, Fla., robs the world of an activist who interpreted, updated and preserved those brilliant, melodious standards. The genre and […]