Destination Guadeloupe Festival

Far downtown weekend adventures

Far out improv, high concept contemporary composition, new jazz scholarship and “cut loose” music from Guadeloupe flood Lowest Manhattan (all the way to Staten Island) this weekend.Â The folks who bring us the Vision Festival stageÂ 28 hours of multidisciplinary improvisationÂ starting tonight (Friday) at 6 p.m. at Clemente Soso Velez Cultural Center;Â Mode Records throws itself aÂ benefit marathon […]

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…