Sunday Session: October 27, 2019

Billy Cobham

Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest:

* The strange revival of vinyl records (The Economist)
* A stroke of genius: Guitarist and Brookline native wins MacArthur fellowship (WickedLocal.com)
* Q&A: Herb Alpert (TheaterJones.com)
* Mingus’s Lost String Quartet (London Review of Books)
* In Reversal, WNYC Says New Sounds Will Stay On The Airwaves (Gothamist.com)
* Kinks 1969 epic chimes with Britain’s mood today, says singer Ray Davies (The Guardian)
* The Renaissance of Marilyn Crispell (DownBeat)
* The 2010s: Classical Music's Decade Of Reckoning (NPR)
* Adam Rudolph: The Matrix Reloaded (Jazz Times)
* When the Beatles Walked Offstage: Fifty Years of “Abbey Road” (The New Yorker)
* 'Fresh Air' Marks The Centenary Of The Birth Of Jazz Singer Anita O'Day (NPR)
* Shorter, Salvant and Benson Among DownBeat Readers Poll Winners (DownBeat)
* Come blow your horn: the glory days of Ronnie Scott's jazz club – in pictures (The Guardian)
* How Untitled Goose Game adapted Debussy for its dynamic soundtrack (TheVerge.com)
* The dorky recorder you had in school just got a futuristic remake (CDM.link)
* Billy Cobham: Blowin’ in the Crosswinds (Jazz Times)
* How ‘Moonlight Serenade’ Defined a Generation (Smithsonian)
* Uri Caine Pays Tribute to Octavius Catto (DownBeat)
* Summoning the ghosts of Record Row (Chicago Reader)
* Joe Lovano’s New Septet Echoes the Past, Looks to the Future (DownBeat)
* Jazz Foundation of America Honors Roy Haynes, Raises $475K at Annual Loft Party (DownBeat)
* The Long Journey of Charlie Parker’s Saxophone (Smithsonian)
* The Hissing of Vintage Tapes (Tedium.co)
* What Makes Music Enjoyable? It’s Complex, But Measurable (Forbes.com)
* Nubya Garcia in Full ‘Blume’ (DownBeat)
* How the Internet Archive is Digitizing LPs to Preserve Generations of Audio (Archive.org)
* The “cost of living” in Spotify streams (Alex.Leonard.ie)
* The Necessity of Musical Hallucinations (Nautil.us)
* The Rise and Fall of Hip-Hop's First Godmother: Sugar Hill Records' Sylvia Robinson (Billboard)

Sunday Session: October 20, 2019

Nat "King" Cole

Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest:

* Remembering the Weirdest Album Launch Stunts of the 2010s (Pitchfork.com)
* Frank Zappa Marks 50th Anniversary of ‘Hot Rats’ With Massive Reissue (Rolling Stone)
* Jazz legend John Surman on a well-travelled career and why he's angry about Brexit (Irish Examiner)
* “It Was Beyond My Wildest Dreams” Pianist Ahmad Jamal Recalls ‘At The Pershing’ (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* Percussionist Adam Rudolph Crafts a Tapestry of Sounds (DownBeat)
* Diverse Curation Sustains Belgrade Jazz Festival (DownBeat)
* Art Blakey: Praise the Messenger (Jazz Times)
* Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Reveals 2020 Nominees: Soundgarden, Whitney Houston & More (Billboard)
* Steve Miller cracked the code of 1970s radio. But he’s still raging against the music industry (Washington Post)
* Why Everything Is Getting Louder (The Atlantic)
* What will a music company look like in 2025? (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* INTERVIEW: Morton Subotnick And Lillevan (TheQuietus.com)
* Finalists Announced in 8th Annual Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Competition (DownBeat)
* Why MLK Believed Jazz Was the Perfect Soundtrack for Civil Rights (JStor.org)
* Before & After: Leon Parker (Jazz Times)
* Oscar nom, opera at the Met, a move to L.A.: New Orleans trumpeter Terence Blanchard's big year (NOLA.com)
* What lost photos of Blue Notes say about South Africa’s jazz history (TheConversation.com)
* How ‘Almost Famous’ Foretold the Future of Music Journalism (TheRinger.com)
* The Transformative Power of Nat ‘King’ Cole (DownBeat)
* An actual bear broke into a woman’s house and started playing piano (ClassicFM.com)
* Matana Roberts’s Memphis (ThisIsEarhart.com)
* The Tragic Story of America’s First Black Music Star (Smithsonian)
* ECM Records: Curating A New World Of Music (SFJAZZ.org)
* Ronnie Scott’s at 60 (TheBlueMoment.com)
* Humanity is Not an Algorithm: What We Lose with WNYC’s Cancellation of New Sounds (ICareIfYouListen.com)
* How Liverpool’s first girl band dubbed ‘the female Beatles’ had run-in with John Lennon (Express.co.uk)

Sunday Session: June 11, 2017

Roscoe Mitchell

Here are some interesting music-related items that have landed in StLJN's inbox over the past week:

* Jazz Pioneer Roscoe Mitchell Marked for Dismissal at Mills College (KQED)
* Aretha Franklin Says Detroit Music Weekend May Mark Last Concert (Patch.com)
* Rodney Bingenheimer says farewell to 'Rodney on the ROQ' after 40 years — but he certainly isn't retiring (Los Angeles Times)
* In $43 Million Settlement, Spotify Forced To Confront A Persistent Problem (NPR)
* The Beatles 'A Day In The Life' Is A Landmark In Sound Engineering 50 Years After It Was Recorded (Forbes)
* How Gregg Allman and Cher stunned Canisius High 'assembly' in 1976 (Buffalo News)
* Edison vs. Scott (LaphamsQuarterly.org)
* How to Destroy YouTube & Save the Music Industry (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* Jimmy Webb on Auto-Tune, lying to keep John Lennon from being deported and how cocaine changed music (Los Angeles Times)
* The Bird in my hand: my journey to Charlie Parker (The Guardian)
* Sony Merges RED Into The Orchard: What the Music Giant's Latest Consolidation Means for Indie Labels (Billboard)
* Chops: The Art of the Slap - Poncho Sanchez and Adam Rudolph on transitioning from the drum kit to the conga (Jazz Times)
* Ambrose Akinmusire: Upholding Tradition & Breaking Decorum (Jazz Times)
* NYPL’s Schomburg Center Acquires Sonny Rollins Archive (Jazz Times)
* The Beatles’ iconic Sgt Pepper album returns to the top on its 50th birthday (OfficialCharts.com)
* New Album Narrates Charlie Parker’s Life in Song - Peyroux, Porter, Elling and others create vocal versions of Bird classics to tell his story (Jazz Times)
* The Earth Harp turns an L.A. skyscraper into world's longest stringed instrument (Los Angeles Times)
* Hear Bob Dylan Recite His Nobel Prize in Literature Lecture (Rolling Stone)
* ‘The value of creative assets is systematically being taken away from artists and music companies’ (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* Ken Vandermark’s Indefatigable Drive and Avant-Garde Vision (Bandcamp.com)
* FMP Records’ Free Jazz Legacy is Alive and Well at Destination: OUT (Bandcamp.com)
* Why Are Frenchmen Street Musicians Undervalued? (Offbeat)
* “In Search of the Lost Chord”: Danny Goldberg’s new book on 1967 and the “Hippie Idea” (NightFlight.com)
* Vision Festival Promotes Message of Freedom through Creative Music (DownBeat)
* Woodstock Festival Location Becomes Official Historic Site (Rolling Stone)
* Gary Burton: Retiring The Mallets (NPR)
* This Is What Extinction Sounds Like (Vice.com)
* Inside the Making of 'Sgt. Pepper' (Rolling Stone)

Hamid Drake & Adam Rudolph to perform Thursday, April 21 at Joe's Cafe

Percussionists Hamid Drake and Adam Rudolph (pictured) are bringing their duo project Karuna to St. Louis to perform at 8:00 p.m. Thursday, April 21 at Joe's Cafe, 6010 Kingsbury Ave.

Though this is their first tour as a duo, the two Chicagoans have known each other since they were teenagers, and have been playing music together for more than 40 years.

In combination, they've worked with the tenor saxophonist and Chicago jazz patriarch Fred Anderson, Foday Musa Suso and Mandingo Griot Society, Don Cherry, Yusef Lateef, Pharaoh Sanders, Hassan Hakmoun, and Rudolph’s groups Hu: Vibrational and Moving Pictures.

Individually, their credits span an equally impressive range of jazz, free improv and creative music artists. Rudolph has released more than 30 recordings under his own name, and also has worked with musicians such as Sam Rivers, Muhal Richard Abrams, Shankar, Wadada Leo Smith, Philip Glass, Jon Hassel, and Omar Sosa.

Drake's projects as a bandleader include the groups Bindu and Bindu Reggaeology, and he's played with Peter Brotzmann, William Parker, David Murray, Misha Mengelberg, Bill Laswell, Archie Shepp, Ken Vandermark, Nicole Mitchell, Cooper-Moore, and many others.

Karuna features Rudolph primarily on hand drums and Drake mostly on the drum set, though both will play many different instruments over the course of a show. The name "reflects Drake and Rudolph’s ongoing research and dialogues into the connection of the inner life to musical expression. Karuna speaks to the idea of creative action as a gesture of compassion."

Tickets for Karuna with Hamid Drake and Adam Rudolph are $20 for general admission, $15 for students, and can be purchased now from show presenter Josh Weinstein (of KDHX's "All Soul, No Borders") online at http://paypal.me/JoshuaWeinstein/20.