Pianist and NPR “Piano Jazz” host Marian McPartland, age 93, has found a worthy successor to her post interviewing and duetting with musicians — Jon Weber, an extraordinarily fluent keyboard artist with encyclopedia depth on many of the earliest styles of American improvised music. Though rather under-recorded, Jon excels at the most intricate (and […]
Bennie Maupin talks to me
Reedist Bennie Maupin, whom I interviewed in the Jazz Talk Tent at the Detroit Jazz Festival in 2006, says “One thing about Detroit, you learn how to make money.” Another thing he recalls from his youth: “There’s a lot of noise here because of the factories, and early on I listened to things that were basically […]
MC to stars @ Jazz Foundation Loft Party benefit
MC JazzMandel: At the Jazz Foundation of America’s Benefit Loft Party tonight (Oct. 29), 7 pm to midnight, Manhattan, my room has — Tom Harrell‘s Quintet, pianist Marc Marc Cary, preeminent bassist Ron Carter with fine guitarist Gene Bertoncini, turbanated organist Dr. Lonnie Smith with alto sax/Mardi Gras Indian Donald Harrison and N.O. drummer Herlin Riley (yeah!), magisterial Randy Weston’s African Rhythm Quintet, […]
Marilyn Crispell’s “private” solo piano web-tv concert
Marilyn Crispell is an improvising pianist of deep concentration and beautiful touch, who at 7:30 pm EDT tonight (Thursday, Oct 27) offers at modest cost a “private” solo concert, the webcast of a three-camera shoot, from a soundstage near her residence in Woodstock NY. This is the first I’ve heard of a jazz-related performer performing […]
Surprise: Birth and re-birth of jazz journalism outlets
Double-barrelled rare upbeat jazz news: The husband-wife team behind publicists Improvised Communications (plus a couple helpers) launch JazzDIY.com, an online “trade journal for jazz” And a composer-improviser from Oregon saves Cadence magazine, founded in 1976, from demise. Scott Menhinick and his wife Jennifer Peabody are doin’ it themselves and hoping to share information on jazz […]
Don’t laugh at Harry Belafonte (laugh with him)
Don’t laugh at Harry Belafonte, the incomparable American/world roots folk musician and popularizer, for being caught on tv asleep or meditating last week. Laugh with him during his appearance with Steven Colbert which he amazingly turns into a genuinely musical  and touching duet on “Jamaican Sunrise.” Even Colbert gives it up to Belafonte, whose wit is quick. Indeed, at age 84 the […]
Jazz Audience Initiative study posted, webinar set
The Jazz Audience Initiative, a 21-month research project of Columbus, Ohio’s Jazz Arts Group, has posted its final reports and scheduled a webinar for October 21 (free registration available) to discuss them. Among the main points: Musical tastes are socially transmitted. Jazz has relatively diverse audiences. People pay to hear specific artists. Local programming shapes […]
Jim O’Neal, Living Blues founder, ill and uninsured
Jim O’Neal, founder in 1970 of Living Blues magazine and a serious independent researcher into American roots music, is among the 59 million Americans without health insurance, and has lymph cancer. A series of benefit concerts are scheduled to raise funds for his treatments and a fund has been set up at Commerce Bank in […]
Braxton on NPR
My NPR profile of Anthony Braxton, composer-performer-philosopher-educator, aired on Weekend Saturday Edition this morning — and he says some wonderful things. Braxton offers a free sampler of his music with very different examples from across the decades of his career. I have a lot of interesting material on Braxton from an interview during a visit […]
Funky freqs and other blues derivations in NYC
There’s not enough hard-core blues ‘n’ funk in New York City — that’s the premise of my new City-Arts column, prompted by the Free Form Funky Freqs (Vernon Reid, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, G. Calvin Weston) performing at the Stone two Fridays ago. If this kind of power trio (or quartet — whatever) is happening somewhere I […]
Occupy Wall Street Blues
Videographer Michal Shapiro sings a blues Occupy Wall Street protesters and so many other Americans will relate to — with guitarist Arnett Brewster (aka Bruce Arnold) and Woodrow T. Greenwich (aka Dr. David Schroeder, director of NYU’s Jazz Studies program) accompanying. See and hear “Up the Spout” — Complete disclosure: I wrote liner notes to […]
Anthony Braxton’s new music at Wesleyan & Roulette
Mentoring women musicians as well as men distinguishes Anthony Braxton among avant-garde composer-performers. That’s not the only unusual aspect of the career of Braxton, a 66-year-old composer, improviser, philosopher, educator and multi-instrumentalist who just celebrated a four-night festival overview of his work at Roulette music and dance space, new to Brooklyn. But it’s a significant […]
Roulette: “old” new music/dance space moves to central Brooklyn
My new column at CityArts-New York is about Roulette, the new music/new dance performance space, started in downtown Manhattan but moved to a coolly refurbished theater near a major Brooklyn transportation hub. Roulette’s in first season in this new home is thick with Chicago-born, -raised  and -emigrated “creative musicians” — Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, George E. […]