Posted in Jazz Notes on Apr 16th, 2008
Blue Note Records continues its long-running Connoisseur series with five more reissues on May 13:
Art Farmer, Brass Shout/The Aztec Suite
Bobby Hutcherson, Head On…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Apr 12th, 2008
Word is that we’ll probably see the following reissues from Nessa Records in several months: Roscoe Mitchell’s Nonaah (with bonus material), Charles Tyler’s Saga of the Outlaws, and…
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Posted in Shows on Mar 17th, 2008
In 1945 pianist, composer and arranger Mary Lou Williams debuted her first extended work, The Zodiac Suite, with musical movements for each sign of the zodiac. Williams was 35 years old, already a veteran of the swing era; she was playing regularly at New York City’s Café Society, hosting a weekly radio program, and had begun…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Oct 24th, 2007
Media pundits a-twitter about deadpan satirist Stephen Colbert’s leap into the 2008 primaries need only look to the jazz world for a precedent: trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie’s historic 1964 challenge to incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson and Republican nominee Barry Goldwater. And while the jury is still out on whether…
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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 Apr 28th, 2007
In the mid-to-late 1940s, as the sound of swing gave way to the rise of bebop, popular bandleaders found themselves trying to incorporate the new music’s more complex rhythms and harmonies into their dance-orchestra styles. Bebop was just one of several challenges the big bands faced after the end of World War II, but it inspired…
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Posted in Shows on Aug 27th, 2005
Several years ago an amazing audio find came to light–a June 1945 Town Hall concert in New York City featuring Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach–the rising stars of the then-revolutionary new music bebop–accompanied by Al Haig on piano and Curley Russell on bass. The performance, captured in sound that’s stellar by the era’s standards…
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Posted in Shows on Jul 9th, 2005
On this edition of Night Lights we’ll hear duets from Steve Lacy and Mal Waldron, Mal Waldron and Jeanne Lee, Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake, Ran Blake and Anthony Braxton, Anthony Braxton and Max Roach, and Max Roach and Dizzy Gillespie. The concept for this program was rather accidental…
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