Movies, jazz and reading remain my favorite solitary diversions, and Fresh Air critic Kevin Whitehead enables immersion in all three with Play The Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film, his entertaining, provocative, deeply informed look at some 120 flicks and a handful of tv shows relating tales that mirror or inform American culture. From The Jazz Singer (1928), long cited as the first motion picture with sound (it wasn't exactly, but launched the form) to Bolden, a too-little distributed imagining of the first … [Read more...]
Four months of jazz adaptation, resilience, response to epidemic
In early March - only four months ago - I flew between two of the largest U.S. airports, O'Hare and JFK, to visit New York City. I stayed in an East Village apt. with my daughter and a nephew crashing on her couch. We ate barbecue at a well-attended Jazz Standard performance by drummer Dafnis Prieto's sextet, and the next day I went to a celebration of Ornette Coleman's birthday, his demise five years ago and his ongoing spirit, hosted by his son Denardo at the Coleman's midtown loft. Noted improvisers David Murray, Graham Haynes, … [Read more...]
A dip into Mexico City street music and avant-garde
Here's writing I worked hard on last year, published in slightly different form as a "Global Ear" column in The Wire (UK) December 2019. Rafael Arriaga's photos (unless credited otherwise) are a fit complement, as is Jazzamoart's painting, "El Bop de los Alebrijes." The Harmonipan players, khaki-uniformed men and women grinding away for spare change on out-of-tune, ill-repaired 100-year-old portable German organs in the midst of Mexico City's car-jammed boulevards, were the most surprising element of the soundscape on my recent quick … [Read more...]
Guitarist Kenny Burrell shouldn’t be in trouble. But he is.
Guitarist Kenny Burrell -- since the 1950s a prominent, popular and influential jazz innovator, recording ace, bandleader and esteemed educator (prof and director of Jazz Studies at UCLA) -- at age 87 is suffering grievous financial calamity due to health care costs and multiple frauds. His plight is candidly detailed by his wife Katherine at their GoFundMe campaign site, her story verified by The Jazz Foundation of America in its statement supporting the Burrells posted by JazzTimes magazine. Read that, then kick in, please, and demand to know … [Read more...]
Audio-video jazz improv: Mn’Jam Experiment, w/teens
What's really new in improvisational music? Where else can innovation go? Mn'JAM Experiment -- singer Melissa Oliveira and her visual/electronics/turntablist partner JAM -- are daring to mix high-tech audio-with-video media in live performance, and as they say, it's an experiment, in a direction that live performance seems sure to go. Grounded in jazz fundamentals (call and response, in-the-moment interactions, individualized expression, rhythmic drive, repertoire; she went to Berklee, he to New England Conservatory) they use screens, … [Read more...]
Extraordinary Popular Delusions, Chicago free improv all-stars
Keyboardist and synthesizer specialist Jim Baker has led the collective quartet Extraordinary Popular Delusions playing every Monday night in obscure Chicago venues for the past 13 years. My article on EPD, which features saxophonists Mars Williams and Edward Wilkerson Jr. (they switch off), multi-instrumentalist (bass, guitar, trumpet) Brian Sandstrom and percussionist/drummer Steve Hunt -- all of whom have extensive creative music experience -- was published today in the Chicago Reader -- which I last wrote for in the 1980s. Photos here … [Read more...]
Luminous PoKempner pix of Sun Ra’s celestial music
Marshall Allen, ageless 94, leads the Sun Ra Arkestra If you liked Black Panther, listen to the music that introduced and embodies Afro-Futurism. Photojournalist Marc PoKempner captured a bit of the celestial magic of the Sun Ra Arkestra (est. circa 1954) during its November touchdown in New Orleans's Music Box Village. This picturesque venue is an assembly of little houses which MPoK says "each has some sound producing capability - bells, chimes, horns, drums." (Above: Marshall Allen, Arkestra leader since 1995. All photos here Marc … [Read more...]
Chicago blues at 90
Guitarist Jimmy Johnson's birthday at Space - photos by Harvey Tillis Blues have been heard in Chicago for about 100 years -- and blues guitarist Jimmy Johnson has been alive for 90 of them. Johnson, born just four years after Papa Charlie Jackson was reported busking with his guitar on Maxwell Street, celebrated his entry to ninth decade last Wednesday night at Space in Evanston, and proved to be as powerful and thrilling a player/singer as he's been since the 1970s, when he played second to Otis Rush and Jimmy Dawkins. (All photos in … [Read more...]
Jazz and beyond projects with 2018 NEA funding support
Given all the noise, the National Endowment for the Arts' $25 mil for arts, literature and education announced Feb. 7 may have been overlooked. But these funds and the projects they support, nationwide, should be noted. From more than $3 million going to initiatives strictly labeled "Music" (exclusive of "Musical Theater" or "Opera") here's my subjective selection of 50 grants referencing "jazz" and beyond. The largest amounts among them go to Carnegie Hall to celebrate Philip Glass's 80th birthday ($85k and there's a second grant on … [Read more...]
Jazz Congress, Winter JazzFest, shape of jazz to come
The first Jazz Congress co-hosted by Jazz at Lincoln Center and JazzTimes magazine Jan 11 and 12, 2018 and the 14th annual Winter JazzFest Marathon produced in downtown Manhattan Jan 12 and 13, offered contrasts and prompted crosstalk. It wasn't like these were conventions of different parties, but different narratives were going down. The Congress's sessions included JALC managing and artistic director Wynton Marsalis speaking on race and jazz, women in jazz announcing "yes, we're here," and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar keynoting about his love of … [Read more...]
Women in jazz journalism on gender issues, in NYC MLK weekend
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. weekend '18 was a big one for jazz in NYC with the first Jazz Congress at Jazz at Lincoln Center, a glorious Winter Jazz Fest, artists showcases at the conference of APAP (the Association of Performing Arts Presenters) and diverse independent venues -- but not least of all the first ever (?!?) panel discussion of gender issues by four women who are professional jazz journalists (documented to vlogger Ms Michal Shapiro). Above, Jordannah Elizabeth Michelle Mercer, of NPR and DownBeat's Hotbox reviewing section, … [Read more...]
International Jazz RIPs, 2017
Photographer-writer-author Ken Franckling has painstakingly compiled a compendium of more than 400 jazz artists and associates from around the world who died in 2017, with links to obituaries of most of them. Posted at JJANews.org. It's a striking document and useful resource, though Franckling says, sadly, "The list seems to get depressingly longer each year." Maybe that's because jazz itself -- at least as so recorded and promoted -- is now more than 100 years old and the post-WWII generations that gave the art form its fervent … [Read more...]
Celebrating Chicago pianist Willie Pickens (1931-2017)
Pianist Willie Pickens, 86, a powerful, lyrical and generous modernist who performed, taught and mentored young musicians from Chicago starting in 1959, died of a heart attack on Dec. 12 while at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, readying himself to play at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola with 29-year-old trumpeter Marquis Hill. Having heard him often in the past three years, I can attest that Pickens was at the height of his creativity, and a warm, engaging presence in every public context. For instance, at the 40th anniversary party of … [Read more...]