Posted in Jazz Notes on Jul 8th, 2008
A few items of interest from around the online jazz world over the long holiday weekend:
*More on the Rene Marie national anthem controversy:
NPR story (includes an interview with Marie)
Marie’s website statement.
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Posted in Shows on Jun 9th, 2008
The Birth of the Cool was a milestone in modern jazz—a handful of arrangements, compositions, recording sessions, and performances that, as historian Ted Gioia notes, “turned the jazz idiom on its head.” It extended the idea of what a jazz combo could sound like, and it provided an aesthetic head of steam for several of its creators. Recorded at the end of the 1940s by a group led by Miles Davis, these sides were obscure at first…
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Posted in Shows on Apr 28th, 2008
In the 1950s and 60s the Dave Brubeck Quartet became one of the most popular jazz acts in the world–one of the reasons why the group ended up doing a State Department tour in 1958 at the height of the Cold War that took them to countries such as India, Poland, and Iraq. The music inspired by this and other international forays came out on albums…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Apr 26th, 2008
Jimmy Giuffre–a clarinetist, saxophonist, and composer-arranger who made significant musical contributions to late-1940s big band, 1950s West Coast and cool jazz, and the early-1960s avant-garde–has passed away at the age of 86. Giuffre was…
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