Posted in Books, Jazz Notes on May 20th, 2008
Brian Morton, co-author (along with the late Richard Cook) of numerous editions of the Penguin Guide to Jazz, will be publishing a biography of multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy in June 2009. Dolphy died from diabetic complications at the age of 36 in Berlin in 1964; as well as being an invaluable part of groups led by Chico Hamilton, John Coltrane…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Nov 2nd, 2007
This week on Night Lights I’ll be playing jazz from a new Miles Davis concert release–MONTEREY ‘63, featuring the then-new rhythm section of Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams…along with Mosaic Records reissues of classic hardbop J.J. Johnson/Kai Winding and Art Blakey albums… the never-before-released Ella Fitzgerald LOVE LETTERS, featuring the singer in small-group settings, with big bands, and with the London Symphony Orchestra…and much, much more. And I’ll be broadcasting live, because this is the beginning of…
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Posted in Shows on Sep 24th, 2007
Bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik played with pianists Randy Weston and Thelonious Monk in the 1950s before going on to make a handful of dates that helped forge a path for the fusion of jazz with world music. “American jazz is dull,” he told Metronome in 1958. “‘The Man I Love’ things have all been said before… now is the time to transfuse new blood–foreign scales, foreign melodic lines, the Oriental flavor.” His ensuing albums such as East Meets West, Jazz Sahara, and The Music Of Ahmed Abdul-Malik and Sounds of Africa (combined on the CD reissue Jazz Sounds of Africa employed both ethnic musicians and hardbop greats like Johnny Griffin and Lee Morgan…
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Posted in Shows on May 27th, 2006
This Memorial Day weekend on Night Lights we present a sequel to last May’s program, “Turn Out the Stars,” with more jazz elegies written or performed for musicians who passed away. This year’s broadcast includes Albert Ayler’s appearance at John Coltrane’s 1967 funeral, a teenaged Lee Morgan’s recording…
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Posted in Shows on Feb 19th, 2005
On this edition of Night Lights it’s “Meet the Jazztet,” a program of recordings taken from the recent Mosaic collection of Benny Golson and Art Farmer’s work for the Argo and Mercury labels between 1960 and 1962. Some of the players who passed through the Jazztet included McCoy Tyner, Harold Mabern, Cedar Walton…
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