My column in May’s City Arts NY urges Adam Rudolph’s conducted Go: Organic Orchestra improvs and the Mixology Fest (both at Roulette) and the 14th annual Vision Festival as ways to break out of conventions and celebrate spring. (In order to read the column, you have to zoom in on “Jazz”). I should have also mentioned […]
JVC Jazz Fest-NY cancellation reported
No major, mainstream, corporate-supported jazz fest will occur in New York City this summer, according to today’s New York Times report confirming my posting of April 15. Festival Network principal Chris Shields, purchaser in 2007 of the production company headed by George Wein which staged June jazz concerts at major mid-town Manhattan venues for 37 […]
Julie Coryell, jazz author, manager, muse
Women in music behind-the-scenes deserve note — and Julie Coryell, who died May 10, was a force in as author of Jazz-Rock Fusion — The People, The Music, published in 1978, and as the inspiration of her then-husband guitarist Larry Coryell starting in the ’60s. Obituaries of Ms. Coryell call her a singer, actress and […]
What do women want (of jazz clubs)?
Why don’t women feel welcome as jazz listeners? My posting hit a nerve with Facebook “friends” and commentors including ArtsJournal’s Mind the Gap blog, which takes up the issue of “comfort when it comes to experiencing art” and rightly understands I was thinking more about “psychic comfort” than anything limited to the physical. What about […]
Life’s a pitch: Where are the women jazz listeners?
Amanda Ameer, blogger behind artjournal’s Life’s a Pitch, was bummed by the low number of women at pianist Brad Mehldau’s recent Village Vanguard performance (but glad about the audience’s wide age-spread). She cites jazz women instrumentalists as being rare, too. What’s up with this, she wants to know. Send her “the literature on this topic.” […]
Announcing 13th annual JJA Jazz Awards nominees and gala
The Jazz Journalists Association — of which I’m president — has announced finalist nominees in 42 categories of excellence in jazz music, recording, presenting and journalism at a new website, www.JazzJournalists.org — which also details who’s playing at the Jazz Standard (NYC) cocktail barbeque where winners will be announced on June 16, 3 – 6 […]
“Big Three” jazz guitarists extended to a couple dozen
In his article on the collaboration of Jim Hall and Bill Frisell in the April issue of Jazz Times, Evan Haga refers to the “Big Three” of current jazz guitarists: Frisell, John Scofield and John McLaughlin. Much as I dig them (and Hall), that designation is a rather typical journalistic foreshortening of a field, relegating to […]
McLaughlin-Corea Five Peace Band and a fan’s disappointment
The Five Peace Band — guitarist John McLaughlin, keyboardist Chick Corea, alto saxist Kenny Garrett, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade — opened the last leg of a multi-month tour with a three-night stand at Jazz at Lincoln Center last night. The players’ musicianship can’t be faulted, their energy was high and they looked […]
Manhattan jazz residencies (my new City Arts column)
The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra at the Village Vanguard on Monday night since 1967  The Mingus Big Band, Orchestra and Dynasty ensemble in regular rotation on Mondays at the Jazz Standard Guitarist Les Paul, at age 94 a genuine hipster, the Ben Franklin of American popular music, Monday nights at Iridium forever. These are a few of […]
Vision Festival, NYC’s sole surviving summer jazz big bang
With no news confirming — or denying — that there will be a mainstream New York City jazz festival next summer like those produced by George Wein since the late ’60s and for the past 25 years supported by the JVC Corporation of America, the artist-organized “avant-jazz” Vision Festival stands as the largest and longest concentrated […]
Guggenheim’s seven jazz-related winners
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation last week announced recipients in the U.S. and Canada of 180 fellowships from nearly 3000 applicants. Fellows in this 85th year of the program include seven who are jazz-related: composer-pianists Billy Childs (winner of two Grammies in 2006), Ryan Cohan (Chicago-based, in trumpeter Orbert Davis’s ensembles) and Chuck Owen (prof of jazz studies at University of […]
Al di Meola and the Fusion Wars pt 1
Guitarist Al di Meola, recently of Return to Forever’s reunion tour, takes me to task for not knowing his most recent recordings — during WNYC’s “Soundcheck Smackdown,” which pitted me “against” Will Layman (of PopMatters.com) regarding jazz fusion’s legacy, moderated by John Schaefer. Di Meola let it be known that he agrees that some of Return […]
Lose some, gain some
ASCAP’s longstanding Deems Taylor Awards recognizing excellence in music journalism has been suspended; no-charge online listening station Accujazz.com wants to be “the future of jazz radio.” Seismic shifts in the music media landscape continue.