Boston-based poet Gordon Marshall has published 12 collections of his works, and is currently blogging on The Flash: jazz, noise, psych from the house scene in Boston. There he writes prose. All his poetry is musical, whether directly about music or not. See also my report about Boston doubling down on jazz. Different Colors The silence […]
Boston doubles down on jazz
Boston — historically stuffy but blue-blood liberal, devoted to higher education, high finance and professional sports — is now doubling down on itself as a world-class jazz city. Berklee College of Music, nearly 4500 students strong and  an economic engine onto itself, is generating energy that enlivens Boston’s  neighborhoods, drawing in general audiences with such outreach events as the Beantown […]
Chicago Jazz Festival ’13, in Marc PoKempner’s photos
Photo-journalist Marc PoKempner, a long-time collaborator and one of my bffs, has a clear eye as well as a sharp ear for music. He captured some of the diversity and vigor of the 35th annual Chicago Jazz Festival, August 28 – Sept 1 Â 2013. Click on these photos for the better, enlarged view. […]
New Orleans’ post-modern piano professor Jon Batiste and his “harmoniboard”
Jon Batiste and his band Stay Human were among the emerging young charismatics vying to revitalize jazz at the 2013 Newport Jazz Festival, August 10th and 11th, and as a post-modern New Orleans piano professor  of “social music” he approached his art from many directions. A scion of five-generation Louisianan musical royalty, 26-year-old Batiste can […]
Bluesman Buddy Guy @ 77 years young
“People don’t know the blues,” guitarist/singer/songwriter Buddy Guy, who turned 77 today, told a packed house at Iridium Jazz Club  in NYC last night. The show was video-taped, presumably for a PBS showing next fall. “They say the blues is sad, but when B.B. King sings ‘I got a sweet little angel, I love the […]
My BBC Newshour riff on Cecil Taylor, Kyoto Award winner
Last night I improvised a profile of Cecil Taylor for BBC Newshour (June 21, “Severe Flooding in India“), on the announcement that the great pianist/composer/improviser has been honored with the prestigious, $500,000 Kyoto Award. My triptych Miles Ornette Cecil – Jazz Beyond Jazz, of course, includes a lot of my writing/thinking on Cecil — who I aver is […]
Kyoto prize to pianist/improviser Cecil Taylor
Cecil Taylor, whose intense, lengthy and complex piano improvisations have redefined jazz and redesigned his instrument, has been awarded the 2013 Kyoto Prize for “Arts and Philosophy: Music.” Former recipients include Olivier Messiaen, John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, György Ligeti, Pierre Boulez, Witold Lutoslawski and Nikolaus Harnoncourt — all musicians/composers of Western European classical lineage. Prizes for individuals who […]
New portraits of late, great jazz pianist Mulgrew Miller
Some places news still travels slowly: Photographer Sánta István Csaba, based in Budapest, just learned of the untimely death on May 29 of  pianist and educator Mulgrew Miller, and sent three portraits of the highly regarded, largely beloved man that Mulgrew’s people will want to see: Santá […]
Delmark Records turns 60 — deep in the catalog’s classics
Congrats to Bob Koester, indie owner and producer of Chicago’s Delmark Records, on the label’s 60th anniversary, which it celebrated over the weekend — and lucky are listeners to jazz beyond jazz for the broad yet niche-like taste that has informed his Quixotic efforts from the start. Not that I was there in 1953. No […]
The localization of International Jazz Day
I’m just thrilled UNESCO partnered with the Monk Institute to produce the second International Jazz Day, April 30 — the culmination of Jazz Appreciation Month (so designated by the Smithsonian Institute) and what the Jazz Journalists Assoc., over which I preside, called JazzApril. The rest of this post might be considered self-promoting, ’cause I’m going […]
Jazz Day reasons to be cheerful
On the second International Jazz Day, let’s celebrate — 1) A glorious legacy of enduring music; 2) The dedication to the art form of musicians and their supporters now, worldwide; 3) The recognition by government officials and institutions of jazz as an entity that will not be silenced or co-opted; 4) Access as never before, via […]
Jazz composers @ the Buffalo Philharmonic Orch – JazzApril week 4
Five jazz-associated composers took on the heady task of writing eight-minute works for full symphonic forces, introduced to the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and worked up for performance by conductor Matt Kraemer on Tuesday and Wednesday this past week, thanks to Earshot /Jazz Composers Orchestra Initiative, organized by American Composers Orchestra. As an “embedded journalist” (along with […]
Jazz videos for troubled times, JazzApril week 3
Is it hard to sustain four weeks of Jazz Appreciation Month? With the defeat of gun-control measures, bombings in Boston, ricin attacks on the President, fertilizer explosions in Texas — promotion of jazz as a positive cultural entity might have seemed less than relevant. But when I addressed students at New York University’s Tisch School of the […]