The AACM — Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians — continues after 45 years to encourage highly original, edgy and exciting artists — as I detail in my new City Arts column. Examples in New York City: reedist/composer Henry Threadgill’s Zooid performs tonight and tomorrow at Roulette; trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith’s 22-piece Silver Orchestra and the […]
CareFusion drops jazz fest sponsorships
CareFusion, a global corp. specializing in hospital equipment, has ended its two-year sponsorship of George Wein’s New York Jazz Festival and Newport Jazz Festival, and the Chicago Jazz Festival, a day after reporting the retirement of its Chairman and CEO David L. Schlotterbeck, and the first quarter financials of its 2010 fiscal year. The company announced […]
Randy Weston, Giant Standing
Pianist, composer, ensemble leader, now autobiographer — at age 84, Randy Weston is a huge and undiminished presence. Read my column in City Arts New York about how he’s just published African Rhythms, his life story, is signing it at Tribecca Performing Arts Center (NYC) Oct. 30, and leads his 22-piece orchestra at that same venue in a 50th anniversary […]
Surprises and stalwarts in an NYC jazz weekend
Five acts, all jazz headliners, in 3 hours at the Jazz Foundation of America’s Loft Jazz Party, plus Chicago drummer-composer Mike Reed’s thrilling People, Places & Things quartet and alto saxist Darius Jones’ trio at Drom in the East Village — bountiful blues, soul, swing, groove, creativity, tradition, big names and newcomers in NYC on […]
Jason Moran: Genius and/or very hard worker
The MacArthur Fellowship to pianist/composer/bandleader Jason Moran follows from that Foundation’s ongoing trend to give $500,000 no-strings-attached to musicians who’ve demonstrated accomplishment and seem to promise more. Here’s my City Arts-New York column re what Moran’s done and how things have changed since Monk, Bird, Dizzy et al brought modernism to jazz, without any dream of […]
Manhattan music “loft” Roulette takes big chance on Brooklyn
Roulette, since 1978 a formerly humble Manhattan-based presenter of avant-garde “intermedia,” has signed a 20-year lease on a former YWCA art deco 600-seat theater in Brooklyn. This Next weekend (Oct. 7, 8, 9) is the space’s three-night benefit “Easy Not Easy,” assigning emerging (read: little known) artists presumably simple scores by such its longtime stalwarts as […]
Jazz elders cast giant shadows
Why isn’t the amazing current generation of creative (jazz) musicians better known? Maybe because major artists of the not-so-distant past are practicing the art form at splendid peaks, overturning clichés about dwindling powers of octogenarians. Read my column in City Arts New York for a report that touches on Sonny Rollins, Roy Haynes and Muhal […]
If videos of Sonny are removed, will the legend grow?
Gone from Youtube are two brief but vivid excerpts from Sonny Rollins’ 80th birthday concert at the Beacon Theater on Sept. 10 — one showing the great tenor saxophonist in duet with percussionist Sammy Figueroa, the second documenting the surprise, climactic contributions of Ornette Coleman to the set, and Rollins’ inspired improvised responses. What a […]
Video for fans of Sonny Rollins & harmolodics
Too good to not post: Ornette Coleman was surprise guest with Sonny Rollins at his fast-become-famous Beacon Theater 80th birthday party on September 10 (backstage there was birthday cake shaped like a saxophone, made of marzipan). Note SR’s quote at about 10 minutes in of “I’ll Take Manhattan,” which he certainly did. [[As of 9/15/2010 […]
Sonny @ Beacon bootlegged video clip
A bootlegged video excerpt of Sonny Rollins at the Beacon Theater, 9/10/2010 is available on youtube — the sound doesn’t do him justice, and I don’t intend to encourage unauthorized video, but it is out there to give the world a brief idea of last night’s concert. On the other hand, Bret Primack, the Jazz […]
Sonny the sax king
At age 80, Sonny Rollins is indisputably the greatest living jazz tenor saxophonist, proved last night throughout a 2-hour set at New York’s sold-out Beacon Theater in which harmolodic sage Ornette Coleman sat in, backed by drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Christian McBride, on “Tenor Madness.” “Sonnymoon For Two”. Rollins was hunched and hobbled when he […]
Daley bad for Windy City’s music?
Contrary to my paean to Richard M. Daley’s support of Chicago’s music and arts, Chicago Tribune rock-crit Greg Kot writes of the Mayor’s treatment of the local music scene as a “second class citizen.” It’s true the City has messed with club venues — Marguerite Horberg of established the multi-genre Hot House years back and now […]
Mayor Daley’s music and arts
Shocking news from Chicago: Richard Daley won’t be mayor for life. Yet he’s the Windy City’s most significant patron of culture, leaving a legacy that ought to — that is, should, and might — survive him. Which was unexpected when he succeeded Mayor Harold Washington in 1989, but clear from my visit to Labor Day […]