Michael Jackson

Digging Our Roots videos, speakers inspire engagement

Musicians and journos with insights into historic hits can offer curious audiences low-cost interactive experiences that bond most everybody present, like any successful performance.

Chi jazz fest 2016, details in photos and words

My DownBeat overview of the 38th annual Chicago Jazz Festival, comprehensive as I could make it, didn’tÂ go into depth on any of the couple dozen performances I heard from Sept 1 through 4 in downtown Millennium Park and the CulturalÂ Center.Â So here, with imagery by my photojournalist colleaguesÂ and friends Marc PoKempner and Michael Jackson (whose photo […]

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…