Posted in Shows on Oct 13th, 2008
As a musician and a man, Thelonious Monk must have provided easy inspiration for the title-namer of his 1956 Riverside album, The Unique Thelonious Monk. His singular sound on the piano, his inability to perform in New York City for several years (due to NYC’s cabaret laws), and his unorthodox compositions that sounded like urban spirituals filtered through stride and bop, nodding at some strange deity of cool, all contributed to a relatively low profile until the late 1950s, when his star suddenly began to ascend into a wider popular culture. Monk’s style was so strong that it’s not surprising that he rarely performed as a sideman…
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Posted in Shows on Oct 1st, 2007
As a musician and a man, Thelonious Monk must have provided easy inspiration for the title-namer of his 1956 Riverside album, The Unique Thelonious Monk. His singular sound on the piano, his inability to perform in New York City for several years (due to NYC’s cabaret laws), and his unorthodox compositions that sounded like urban spirituals filtered through stride and bop, nodding at some strange deity of cool, all contributed to a relatively low profile until the late 1950s, when his star suddenly began to ascend into a wider popular culture. Monk’s style was so strong that it’s not surprising that he rarely performed as a sideman–as pianist Ran Blake noted, “There’s never any doubt who’s at the keyboard…it may be a delayed attack on a chord…
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Posted in Shows on Aug 6th, 2007
Benny Carter led an extraordinarily long life in jazz; as one writer pointed out, he was probably the only musician who both recorded into an acoustic horn and surfed his own website. Big-band veteran and arranger, author of jazz standards such as “When Lights Are Low” and “Blues in My Heart,” pioneer for black composers in Hollywood…
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Posted in Shows on Dec 23rd, 2006
Our annual holiday program, with cool yule jazz from Mal Waldron, Elvin Jones, Bill Evans and Jim Hall, Booker Ervin, Coleman Hawkins, surprise holiday sounds, and a special Christmas reading from Louis Armstrong.
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Posted in Shows on Sep 9th, 2006
Jazz impresario Norman Granz, who started the popular Jazz at the Philharmonic concert tour series in the 1940s as well as the record label that came to be known as Verve, also produced a lavish package of jazz recordings…
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Posted in Shows on Oct 29th, 2005
In 1960 Prestige’s Bob Weinstock launched a new series of records called Moodsville, as a response to the popularity of 1950s “mood music” albums, ushered in to a large extent by Jackie Gleason’s Capitol LPs featuring trumpeter Bobby Hackett. Prestige attempted to stake a somewhat higher aesthetic ground…
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Posted in Shows on Nov 20th, 2004
The Hawk Heads Home: Coleman Hawkins in the Early 1960s” was broadcast in honor of the Hawkins centenary on Sunday, Nov. 21, 2004. The early 1960s were Hawkins’ last great period, and this program features music from his Today and Now lp, his bossa nova effort (Desafinado), and his collaborations with Duke Ellington…
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