Posted in Shows on Aug 18th, 2008
Wayne Shorter, one of the great tenor saxophonists and composers of the modern jazz era, turns 75 on August 25. An enigmatic and searching musician and personality, Shorter was once labeled by jazz critic Larry Kart as “one of the most dangerous players to ever pick up a horn–a man whose solos were described by various critics as ‘quietly maniacal’ and ‘clinically precise,’ full of ‘abrupt changes of mood’ and ‘wild satanic humor.’”
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Posted in Shows on Jul 7th, 2008
Last year Night Lights began an annual Bastille Day-week salute to the convergence of all things French and jazz with Paris Noir, a program about post-World War II expatriate African-American musicians in France. This year our tribute show focuses on jazz interpretations of the many songs that have been written about the City of Light.
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…
Posted in Shows on Jun 2nd, 2008
Gil Evans, a Canadian-born pianist and composer, “enormously expanded the vocabulary of the jazz orchestra,” as writer Gene Lees pointed out, reducing the standard big-band instrumentation, restraining its vibrato, and adding flutes, oboes, English and French horns, and tubas. Self-taught as an arranger, he created a quietly dramatic, dark-hued sound-world that drew on a multiplicity of influences ranging from Spanish music and the French Impressionists to Duke Ellington and…
Posted in Jazz Notes on Feb 22nd, 2008
Teo Macero, a saxophonist, composer, and record producer who helped craft many of Miles Davis’ late-1960s and early-1970s electric-jazz records, has passed away at the age of 82. Though he was best-known for the meticulous editing work that he did on Davis LPs such as Bitches Brew, Macero was an interesting musician himself–check out…
Posted in WFIU Jazz Shows & Specials on Jan 2nd, 2008
Last Friday evening’s Afterglow program, featuring jazz and jazz-vocal interpretations of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s songs for the musical Show Boat, is now available for online listening…
Posted in Jazz Notes on Dec 31st, 2007
Take with the usual grain/caveat of subjectivity–that said, here are some titles from a year-for-the-ear in review…
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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