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…
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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…
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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…
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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 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 Jazz Notes, Videos on Oct 5th, 2007
It just wouldn’t be a Sony/Legacy Miles Davis box-set without some strange, inexplicable delay. In the meantime, the Village Voice has a review up…
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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 Jazz Notes on Sep 26th, 2007