At the National Endowment for the Arts party last week announcing the 2008 of Jazz Masters at least one celebrant was hoping the award would kick-start a professional cycle. “You know,” said the 80-year-old trombonist/composer, paraphrasing the sequence of recognition he said Fernando Lamas had once applied to his career arc: “Who is Tom McIntosh? […]

More than three dozen pundits and several hundred devotees of “jazz” old and new, free-form and familiarly-structured, abstract and/or pure blue — writers, broadcasters, editors, photographers, new media specialists and teachers (most of whom fulfill several of those roles simultaneously) — from some 20 countries — pondered the big picture – “Jazz in the Global […]

“Jazz in the Global Imagination: Music, Journalism and Culture,” the day-long, public and free symposium at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism auditorium on Saturday, Sept. 29, is evidently the first international conference of jazz journalists to take place in the U.S. Why did we wait so long? Even if there’s been one before, […]

Zawinul (1932-2007) is a world-renowned keyboardist-composer who considered himself in the lineage of classic musicians emerging from his birthplace, Vienna, Austria. Once backstage after a performance circa 1980 he stormed at Down Beat editors who’d come at his command to “discuss” a bad review of Weather Report’s just-released album 8:30 — “You do not give […]

Guelph, Canada – a pleasant university town nestled in the forrested low meander of the mis-aptly named “Speed River” is invigorated by its weeklong jazz festival, scholars’ colloquium, and $4 million research grant from Canadian governmental forces, devoted to study of music improvisation’s relation to social change and community-sustenance.

Since such last gasps of New York’s summer jazz convocations as the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival — my trip to the Chicago Jazz Festival — this week’s colloquium at University of Guelph titled “People Get Ready: The Future of Jazz is Now!” coinciding with the 14th annual Guelph Jazz Festival — and the first international […]

Drummer Max Roach, (Jan 1, 1924 – Aug. 16, 2007), personified the jazz-beyond-jazz ethos: mastering the complex, nuanced art that preceded him, plunging in to create new work based on his own ideas, never abandoning that path. He was a man of social engagement as well as aesthetic convictions.

“So Long Eric”, a 5:29 jazz video break, giving one pause: Wither small group ideas now? Charles Mingus with saxophonists Eric Dolphy & Clifford Jordan, pianist Jaki Byard, drummer Dannie Richmond, Belgium 1964 — heroes, living. (Music comes up first– raucous “Fables of Faubus” — click “Watch Videos” at bottom of page)

Sky Blue — a web-based “fan-funded” recording project — garners the Grammy-winning jazz orchestra leader better than half her recording (over)budget, three weeks after release. News, plus my author’s edit of Down Beat‘s July cover story.

Used to be jazz musicians were U.S.’s best ambassadors. Pianist Keith Jarrett’s prickly reaction to ardent fans’ cellphone photography as his trio walks onstage at the Umbria Jazz Festival — see it on Youtube.com (56 secs) — reverts to another type: ugly American.

Introducing an occasional series about the challenges (and satisfactions?) of freelancing on the arts — An exchange with Dr. Lewis Porter, jazz pianist, professor of music at Rutgers University (NJ) and founder/director of that school’s Master’s in Jazz History and Research Program (also biographer of John Coltrane, on book advances, academic vs.commercial publishers, working cheap […]

Great day in the mail! On The Corner, the most outre project of American master Miles Davis, is restored” in a 6-cd boxed set.This recommendation is completely unsolicited, but I’m tellin’ you: his all-star jam-band stills sounds prophetic after 35 years, and even unedited it’s energies are razor sharp, infinitely more exciting than most of […]

Lourdes Delgado, photographer of the series “Jazz in New York: A Community of Visions”, has launched a new line — or should that be “cube”? “Geographic Portraits,” collages of large format negatives, with strong reference to the Cubism of Picasso (beloved in her hometown Barcelona) and George Braques. Her first such image is on display […]