Hank Shteamer, writer-on-music at Time Out New York and blogger at Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches, writes “I am not a jazz journalist” in response to “The State of Jazz Journalism Now and Immediate Prospects” town hall meeting at the Jazz Journalists Association’s “New Media for New Jazz” conference yesterday (Jan 8). He doesn’t deny that […]
Do you jazz? Yes, eyeJAZZ!
A quick glimpse of a jazz club, a chat with fans going into or leaving the show, a word with a musician coming offstage or maybe at practice — these bits of real life can be captured today in high quality video and audio equipment that’s readily at hand — mobile phones and HD pocket […]
Big fun news: Santana weds Blackman, Herbie & Wayne play
The rare notable jazz wedding to celebrate: Beyond-jazz, rock & Latin guitarist Carlos Santana to drummer Cindy Blackman, who’s had a great recording year, issuing Another Lifetime, her smashing tribute to the late Tony Williams) and driving Organ Monk, Greg Lewis’s trio album that made my top 10. Santana’s best albums after the first one always have had a outward reach […]
Jazz conventions, conferences, celebrations, memorial Jan 6 – 11
The jazz world convenes in two U.S. cities this weekend, as high school and college bands + directors gather at the JEN Conference in New Orleans, jazz presenters focus themselves at the APAP convention in New York City and jazz journalists get together on topics vital to better and continued music coverage at the JJA’s […]
Last glance 2010: great performances and best beyond jazz
There’s not much time left, so here are three of my best memories of live music over this crazy year, and a couple handfuls of favorite recordings that promise to be listenable for quite a while forward —
Fighting history and myth re racial politics in jazz
I completely disagree with the point of Randall Sandke‘s bookWhere the Dark and the Light Folks Meet: Race and the Mythology, Politics, and Business of Jazz. Rather than celebrate a century of inter-racial collaboration modeling society’s progress on civil rights, instead Sandke proposes that a cabal of journalists, scholars and left-leaning “activist” producers exaggerated black musicians’ centrality […]
American Bandstand loved Captain Beefheart
In 1966, long before the original Hairspray, black and white teens danced together to the bass overdrive and deep croak of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. Today blues lovers, avant-gardists and fans of dada, surrealism and abstract expressionism mourn and celebrate the Captain, aka Don Van Vliet. If you don’t believe people jitterbuged to “Diddy Wah Diddy,” watch […]
James Moody, bop saxophonist, flutist, humorist: 3/25/25 – 12/9/10
Sad news: Jazz giant James Moody died of pancreatic cancer today, age 85. This is confirmed on Moody’s own website. A brilliant improviser who emerged from Dizzy Gillespie’s big band to join the young turks of bebop (Monk, Bags, Klook, Blakey) in the late 1940s, he became internationally admired for his tenor sax and flute mastery […]
Seasonal electricity: jazz “fusion” in NYC
Fusion, fission, energy and virtuosity reign supreme over coming holiday weeks as jazzers beyond genre constraints fill New York clubs. Starting tonight (Dec. 9) double-necked guitar madman Dave Fiuczynski fires up Iridium with ripping alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa and jam-band idol John Medeski on keybs; jazz sambas and tangos, ex-Milesian Mike Stern and smooth trumpeter […]
More on McFerrin, and the voices of New York
I already posted about Bobby McFerrin’s Jazz at Lincoln Center performance of VOCAbuLarieS, his uplifting choral suite co-composed by Roger Treece — but my new column in City Arts-New York goes further, noting other singers giving voice to Thanksgiving and other warm sentiments. And slightly belated happy birthday to Sheila Jordan, who recently celebrated her 82nd […]
Announcing eyeJAZZ.tv & Happy 45th b’day AACM
eyeJAZZ.tv, a wave of guerrilla video music-news clips being initiated by the Jazz Journalists Association, has posted its first example — my brief production from last week’s 45th birthday concert of the AACM featuring composer-saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, flutist and AACM chair Nicole Mitchell (no relation) and saxophonist Ari Brown, at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
Bobby McFerrin: Don’t worry, just sing
Vocalist extraordinaire Bobby McFerrin, composer-conductor Roger Treece and 40 voices including the Danish “rhythm choir” Vocal Line performed pieces from the album VOCAbuLarieS at Jazz at Lincoln Center Friday and Saturday night, establishing a high standard for contemporary vernacular choral music and breaking down the 4th wall between artists and audiences. It was a deeply satisfying, beautiful […]
Launch of the Jazz Forward Coalition
A new business-focused collaboration, the Jazz Forward Coalition, announces itself: An influential Midwestern jazz presenting organization, a jazz-speciality public relations firm, a major jazz website, a long-surviving independent record company and Pittsburgh-based strategic marketer firm joining forces to “raise jazz’s profile by enhancing it’s vitality and cultural relevance.” Well, that’s how musicians try to do it. […]