jazz-beyond-jazz fans (that’s yours truly!) exult in Ornette Coleman, Myra Melford’s Be Bread, the Bad Plus and the overall Portland Jazz Festival
Rivers’ win: Bad for jazz?
Listeners who like their music strong, fresh, mysterious, challenging might share pride in pianist Herbie Hancock’s Grammy Award for River: The Joni Letters — but some snipe it celebrates moderation more than creativity. What’s your take?
Top 10 2008 — to date
The commercial record industry may be in free-fall, but fresh cds continue to arrive in hopes of review, in undaunted quantity. From the year’s first month, these get my attention.
Splendors of Brooklyn
The move-to borough’s expanding scene: on a Saturday night the “creative music community” has a choice of alluring concerts.
Composing and/or improvising, Caine is able
Uri Caine is a musician, period — writing it down or making it up on keyboards as he goes along, as the gig or commission demands.
Me in The Wire online
Rare articles on John Coltrane, Charles Gayle and Matt Shipp — by me — have just been posted online by The Wire, an always-worth-reading UK publication that covers jazz beyond jazz and some music beyond even that.
howardmandel.com
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Cultural convergence in America
Primaries, Mardi Gras and Chinese New Year align — look who’s coming to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage fest!
Jazz beyond jazz in Philly, for instance
A day in Philadelphia demonstrated hard-core support for music stretching genres thrives, and a young audience seems ripe for such attractions.
Chi-town beyond jazz
It’s uniquely Chicago culture – the “can-do” attitude of a committed hardcore jazz community encouraging new music now. The independent nonprofit Jazz Institute of Chicago throws an absolutely free and musically world-class one day Jazz Fair in the depths of frosty January.
Windy city, jazz response
Chicagoans won’t be deterred — like other northerners, they shrug off January and find meaning by escaping their caves. At least, I hope so, heading into my hometown for the Jazz Institute of Chicago’s annual winter Jazz Fair at the beautiful Cultural Center.
Refurbished hall, piano on-and-on
Merkin Concert Hall nipped and tucked, 14 pianists astride keyboard genres drew an overflow audience from 2 pm to 9 on Martin Luther King Day — free of charge, and this jewel-box holds only 450, but the acoustics are swell, and so was some of the music.
International Jazz at IAJE
“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 last week.
Jazz Ed-Beyond-Jazz? 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.