Night Lights Classic Jazz Radio Program and Jazz Blog with David Brent Johnson

Night Lights is a weekly one-hour radio program of classic jazz hosted by David Brent Johnson and produced by WFIU Public Radio. Night Lights airs on WFIU HD1 Saturday at 11:05 p.m.

The Avant-Garde Plays the Great American Songbook

GASThe jazz pioneers of the 1960s–artists such as Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and others–all came up in the entertainment world of the 1940s and 50s, when what we know now as the Great American Songbook was taking hold in the musical canon.

Although we think of these musicians today as groundbreaking innovators who abandoned traditional song form, they all knew it, respected it, and in many cases genuinely liked it.

In this program we’ll hear Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, and Arthur Schwartz as interpreted by the above players and Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, and Sonny Rollins.

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