My CityArts – New York column is about the Creative Music Symposium, organized by Karl Berger, pianist/vibist with his wife Ingrid Sertso, who cofounded with free-thinking Ornette Coleman of the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock NY (1972-1984). The symposium at Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies (directed by trombonist and digital music innovator George E. Lewis, once a […]
Archives for 2011
Vionlinist Billy Bang on being a “tunnel rat” in Viet Nam
Violinist Billy Bang, died at age 63 on April 11 of cancer, was a composer of enduring, affecting music based on his military service in Viet Nam. Prayer for Peace, Vietnam: Reflections and Vietnam: The Aftermath deal directly, bravely and beautifully with Bang’s thoughts and feelings about having been a tunnel rat — a small […]
Central Brooklyn Jazz Fest reiterates jazz/race divide
The Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival, during what the Smithsonian Institution promotes as Jazz Appreciation Month, is a powerful statement of hard core, grass-roots support for the music Congress has ratified as “a rare and valuable American national treasure.” My City Arts column reports on how the fest and other Brooklyn jazz activities, despite best intentions, reprise the […]
Subotnick, Lillevan, Unsound make Lincoln Center an electric circus
Morton Subotnick re-mixes original materials of his prophetic and unprecedented late ’60s  electronic music classic “Silver Apples of the Moon” with kinetic imagery by video artist Lillevan tonight (April 7) at the Rubenstein atrium of Lincoln Center – as detailed in my column in City Arts – New York. It’s free as part of the 11-day Unsound Festival, an extraordinary schedule of new and […]
Jazz, blues & beyond in Amman: Pops, Bird, Diz, Lady Day @ UJordan
I spoke on jazz and blues at the University of Jordan, a modern 45,000-student institution, in an event sponsored by the American Embassy while in Amman on family matters a couple weeks ago. About 50 avid students of music, arts and literature and their informed faculty watched videos of Louis Armstrong at age 32 doing […]
Beyond jazz, in and to Jordan
Jordan’s capitol Amman isn’t an obvious hot spot for jazz, yet I found interest, knowledge and exciting players during my visit there a couple weeks ago — from which I’m barely recovered. A couple of postings and I hope a video of bass guitarist Yacoub Abu Ghosh‘s band from its weekly Tuesday night gig at Canvas […]
UNsafe concert: Threadgill, La Barbara, ACO dare to fail
“Playing It UNsafe” is how the American Composers Orchestra characterizes tonight’s concert of works by Henry Threadgill, Joan La Barbara, Sean Friar and Laura Schwendinger at Zankel Hall, NYC. Afraid of classical musicians improvising? Multi-layered “sound paintings” of multi-tracked voice, electronic ambiance and instrumentalists sitting in the audience? Symphonic and light collaborations? Then walk on the wild side […]
President Obama digs Sonny Rollins
President Barack Obama paid beautiful lip service to great American artists and arts yesterday, conferring the 2010 National Medal of Arts and Humanities on heroes including Sonny Rollins, age 80. “I speak personally here,” said the president at 3 minutes, 30 seconds into his address, alluding to authors, poets, historians, “because there are people here […]
Toxic Gowanus, Brooklyn neighb of new music lofts
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 […]
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.