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 Shows on Nov 26th, 2007
Trumpeter Don Ellis is best-known today for the big bands he led during the late 1960s and early 1970s that made use of odd time signatures, but he made his first impact on the jazz world at the beginning of the 1960s, leading several progressive small-group dates that drew both praise and criticism from the jazz media. Ellis made himself available for the fray, joining roundtable discussions and firing off a three-page riposte in response to a bad review from…
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Posted in Shows on Jan 28th, 2006
This week on Night Lights it’s “Piano Noir: Ran Blake”. Pianist and composer Ran Blake has earned an international reputation with his recordings and with his work as a Third Stream educator at the New England Conservatory of Music. His music has been strongly influenced by the genre of film noir; in this…
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Posted in Shows on Jul 23rd, 2005
In the early 1950s vibraphonist Teddy Charles made a series of records with Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre, and others, that still escapes easy definition today–was it Third Stream? Was it West Coast? Was it cool jazz? We’ll hear selections from his albums…
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Posted in Shows on Sep 18th, 2004
This week on Night Lights we feature the early music of Charles Mingus, taken from an Uptown Records CD entitled “Charles ‘Baron’ Mingus: West Coast Recordings, 1945-49.” Musicologist Stefano Zenni has an interesting website devoted to this little-heard period of Mingus’ music, which includes jump blues, Ellingtonian ballads…
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