Even after all these years, we still, as the saying goes,
love him madly: the incomparable Duke Ellington
Welcome back my friends, to the linkfest that never ends, we're so glad you could attend....aw, the heck with it. This is the more-or-less weekly feature in which StLJN presents a round-up of brief items concerning St. Louis musicians past and present, as well as any other jazz-related news of interest that's come across the desktop.
An unusually high percentage of these posts seem to start out with items about Miles Davis, and I see no reason to break the streak at this point. So, from the video clip site YouTube.com, check out this footage from 1958 of Miles Davis and John Coltrane performing "So What"...Also on the Miles tip, blogger Greg Kline of Mr. Greg's Musings, right up the road in Champaign, IL, had a couple of good posts last week about Miles' electric music...Long before he became a world famous improvisor, composer, record label owner, etc., saxophonist John Zorn studied at Webster University in St. Louis. Now Zorn has a new performance space in NYC called The Stone and U. City native Marty Ehrlich is among the musicians performing there...Read an "extended analysis" of Vignettes in the Spirit of Ellington, the latest CD from James "Jabbo" Ware, here. Another former St. Louisan, J.D. Parran, is among the performers supporting Ware on the CD.
Speaking of Duke Ellington, it looks like Morgan Freeman will portray the legendary pianist, composer and bandleader in The Jazz Ambassadors, a spy thriller based on real events surrounding Ellington's 1963 tour of Iraq during a CIA-led coup there...And speaking of being on the road: Imani Winds, who will appear at Washington University's Edison Theater this spring, have a new CD; Maynard Ferguson will be in Belleville next Monday, and gets a blurb from the News-Democrat; and the 30th annual Central Illinois Jazz Festival held last week in Decatur included such St. Louis-based groups as Jean Kitrell's Rivermen and Cornet Chop Suey.
Articles worth reading: The February edition of Terry Perkins' "Gateway Grooves" column is now online at All About Jazz.com...The era of digital downloading is leading to big changes in the retailing of recorded music, as recounted in this article from the Rocky Mountain News...Working jazz musicians and the owners of small indie jazz labels have to hustle to make a living, and this piece from PopMatters.com's Will Layman does a good job of conveying the day-to-day reality facing one NYC saxophonist and one small label owner...Meanwhile, musicians in New Orleans - and those trying to get back there - have it even tougher than the average jazz player, facing economic and environmental issues that some fear may prove intractable, at least in the short term...Despite those challenges and many more, jazz musicians are still prized for their creativity by at least some in our society. For example, R. Keith Sawyer, Ph.D., Washington University associate professor of education and of psychology, both in Arts & Sciences, cites jazz musicians in talking about his new book Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation: "You can't be creative without knowing a lot about what you are trying to be creative in," Sawyer says. "You can't just decide to be creative in something. Really creative people spend a lot of time in preparation. For example, it takes a long time to become a good jazz musician. It's not something you do on your first try. If you try to sit in with a band before you're ready, you'll get booed off in a hurry. It's like that with nearly every creative domain."
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