On September 17,New York kicks off a fall season more highly charged with new creative energies than any in memory. An army of mostly young, skilled, ambitious and devoted musicians is making itself heard in the East Village, Soho, Brooklyn, on the Lower West Side and in the clubs -- while benevolence is cast by the first ever performance -- at last -- of Ornette Coleman at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Sept. 26. … [Read more...]
Life’s a pitch: Where are the women jazz listeners?
Amanda Ameer, blogger behind artjournal's Life's a Pitch, was bummed by the low number of women at pianist Brad Mehldau's recent Village Vanguard performance (but glad about the audience's wide age-spread). She cites jazz women instrumentalists as being rare, too. What's up with this, she wants to know. Send her "the literature on this topic." Well, there isn't any -- jazz commentators have to depend upon anecdotal experience and personal observation as basis for their speculations and analysis about jazz audiences, as so many other … [Read more...]