If all “jazz” shares a single trait, it’s that nothing will stifle it. Adjusting to covid-19 strictures, Chicago (just for instance) in the past two months has been site of: A stellar Hyde Park Jazz Festival; Herbie Hancock’s homecoming concert at Symphony Center; audiences happily (for the most part – no reported incidents otherwise) observing […]
Jazz best lists of 2009
Chicago Trib cultural critic Julia Keller decries year-end “best of” lists for their “chilly, retrospective nature,”for their by-definition 12-month perspectives trumping spontaneous enthusiasm, and for their reinforcement of consensus. Nonsense. Here are three opportunities to see what jazz critics are recommending as 2009’s hot recordings, and there’s some consistency, but most of the choices are […]
Trouble — or transition — at Jazz.com?
Stepping down from presiding over Jazz.com two years after its launch, editor, author and pianist Ted Gioia isn’t saying much about what’s up with the site that has become a major web resource and destination. Naturally, this leads to wondering what has become of the promise and potential of jazz on the web.
Mr. Teachout gets the word: Jazz’s Swing Era popularity past
Biographer of H L. Mencken and (coming soon) Louis Armstrong, ArtsJournal blogger and scribe for the Wall Street Journal Terry Teachout has raised a fuss by pointing to the National Endowment for the Arts‘ study citing declines in jazz audiences from 2002 to 2008 (and indeed from 1982 to 2008). That this data was released in June […]