* In conjunction with the release earlier this year of the Miles Davis set The Complete Birth Of The Cool, UDiscoverMusic.com gathered a panel in Los Angeles for a discussion of the album's impact, legacy and lasting influence; working with the master tapes to produce the new reissue; and Davis' fight for African-American rights. You can hear highlights from the discussion here.
* Drummer Dave Weckl (pictured), who was back home here last month to play at rthe Chesterfield Jazz & Wine Festival, has added a new 2.5 hour drum recording course to his online school at daveweckl.teachable.com.
* Radio station WSIE and its general manager Jason Church were the subjects of a feature story in the Alton-area news site Riverbender.com
* Saxophonist Carlos Brown Jr. was interviewed about his gig this weekend at Jazz St. Louis by the Post-Dispatch's Kevin Johnson. (Link is paywalled.)
* As reported by the St. Louis American's Kenya Vaughn, multi-instrumentalist and singer Tonina Saputo is one of three local musicians featured in Nature of Sound, a new short film produced and directed by St. Louisan Jon Alexander.
* Nearly a decade after ending their first attempt at podcasting, Jazz St. Louis is trying again with a podcast called "Jazz Happens," with production outsourced to Konfluenz Studios, a St. Louis based company that produces several other podcasts, none music-related.
Unfortunately, while the format is on point - interviews with touring musicians who are in town to play gigs at the Bistro - and the production values are solid enough, the podcast's hosts* seem to know very little about jazz, or even the basics of how to conduct an interview. Even worse, they seem to have done very little to no research about their subjects.
The results, as sampled in brief snippets of various episodes by yr. humble editor, range from insipid to awkward to downright cringeworthy, as in the interview with Anat Cohen, which begins with one of hosts asking her if she still lives in Tel Aviv (her hometown).
Cohen, clearly not amused, replied that, no, she's lived in the USA for more than 20 years - a fact both essential to her current career, since it was her move here in 1996 to study at Berklee that set up her subsequent accomplishments, and easily gleaned from the bio on her website, most of the interviews and feature stories published about her, or her Wikipedia page.
To sum up, while StLJN's journalistic mission compels us to inform you of this podcast's existence, it is not recommended that you listen to it. If you must, the eight episodes produced to date are archived on the Jazz St. Louis website.
* The hosts are identified by their first names only - perhaps to preserve some semblance of deniability? - but a couple of minutes searching online turned up their full names and day jobs, which are at a local advertising firm and a financial services company. From the info available on their company sites and personal pages, neither seems to have any relevant experience in jazz, journalism, or interviewing musicians.
In the interest of not piling on, they won't be named here. But should they, or anyone from Jazz St. Louis management, happen to read this, I would tell them: Subject matter expertise is an actual thing, and interviewing is an actual skill. If you're going to keep producing these podcasts, at least take the time to do research on your subjects, and while you're at it, maybe read a couple of books on interviewing techniques.
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