“Everywhere I’ve been in in the past couple of years – and I’ve been everywhere — young people have put aside their indigenous musics and adopted jazz and blues as their Esperanto,” said Quincy Jones, most famous of the 2008 NEA Jazz Masters at the 35th annual International Association for Jazz Education conference in Toronto […]

Education is one aspect of the jazz world in evident ascent; Down Beat last spring listed some 180 North American schools offering degrees in the music born a century ago in taverns and brothels. The 35th annual International Association for Jazz Education conference, in Toronto this weekend, suggests how far swinging blues have come.

From a JBJ reader — and a surprise listening encounter: Writes Paul Botts, first quoting another commenter on my earlier posting: ” ‘He was a jazz pianist for those who don’t really like jazz.’ Oh for…is it really necessary to regurgitate now the same nonsense that Peterson heard for 50 years? His having a grudge […]

All due respect to the formidable pianist, dead at age 82 — Oscar Peterson’s jazz has never been my personal cup of tea. A consolidator and conservator rather than a explorer and originator, the man mastered jazz conventions established by the generation before him, and found joy in spinning endless variations that celebrated rather than […]

Notable happenings and turning points:

Rumor is the scene is gone — but “downtown” improvisers persist: “free” music/art vs. real estate and what-have-you . . .

Richarda Abrams calls the names of performers at concerts produced by the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians-New York in a proudly stentorian voice, and Friday’s concert season-ender of saxophonist Mantana Roberts’ quartet and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith’s trio was typically earnest, iconoclastic and rousing. But it’s almost a cry in the wilderness. More […]

In a remarkable response to protest from this website (and ok, perhaps some others), New York State governor Elliott Spitzer “believes that now is not the right time to be increasing sales taxes on New Yorkers” and “has directed the Department of Tax and Finance to pull back its interpretation that would require some Internet […]

Bad news for those of us budget-pinched creators — bloggers, authors, musicians, artists, etc.– trying to tap a bit more revenue by offering links to such online stores as Amazon.com from our own websites.

Elizabeth Currid’s The Warhol Economy — “How Fashion, Art & Music Drive New York” — argues that the creative capital conjured by artists and their ilk is more significant to the success of modern metropoli than more prosaic, dependably lucrative industries. So, she says, NYC ought to support nightlife and other semi-social structures that bring […]

I may burn at the stake for political incorrectness, but it’s the truth: I have an intense aversion to gospel music. My distaste dates to a haunting childhood vision in which an overwhelming Mahalia Jackson is routed by a malevolent clown.

Jazz at Lincoln Center opened its canon to Swing Era guitar heroes Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian last week, while John Scofield, one of the instrument’s current avatars, disappointed in performance of This Meets That with his trio + Scohorns. Where does the six-string ax belong, and what’s it to do?