Sunday Session: April 4, 2021

Sons of Kemet

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

* TONTO synth creator and Steve Wonder collaborator Malcolm Cecil has died, aged 84 (MusicRadar.com)
* Audio cassettes: despite being "a bit rubbish," sales have doubled during the pandemic — here’s why (Salon.com)
* Hardware Store With a Jazzy Past Prepares to End its 95-Year Run (WTTW)
* Sons of Kemet announces new album – Black to the Future (PlanetRadio.co.uk)
* The lavish Moog Sound Studio kits could bring modular synthesis to the masses: “just add headphones” (MusicRadar.com)
* The 100 Greatest Motown Songs (Rolling Stone)
* Stage on the water marks Montreux Jazz Festival's comeback (Reuters.com)
* Archie Shepp :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview (AquariumDrunkard.com)
* Highway Hi-Fi, the Revolutionary Vinyl-In-Your-Car Tech That Failed (AutoEvolution.com)
* Paul Simon Sells Song Catalog to Sony Music Publishing (Variety)
* How To Walk On Water - A Conversation With William Parker (TheQuietus.com)
* Music From Saturn (ImaginaryWorldPodcast.com)
* Chops: Teaching Adults to Play Jazz (Jazz Times)
* Live Music Is About to Get Its Grand Reopening (Medium.com)
* The story of Mahavishnu Orchestra: Devotional, dizzying, and downright revolutionary (LouderSound.com)
* Virtuosos, Voyagers & Visionaries: Five Artists Pushing Jazz Into The Future (Grammy.com)
* What a Wonderful World — the hit that was almost murdered at birth (Financial Times)
* A Beginner’s Guide to Can’s avant-garde rock (TrebleZine.com)
* Ambrose Akinmusire: The man with the horn (Bay State Banner)
* Symphony of a Thousand Millennia (LiteraryReview.co.uk)
* Inside the Barry Harris Method (Jazz Times)

Sunday Session: January 12, 2020

James "Blood" Ulmer

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

* ECM at 50 (The Blue Moment)
* How To Like Jazz, For The Uninitiated (NPR)
* Buenos Aires International Jazz Fest survives fiscal crisis (AllAboutJazz.com)
* Berklee Surveys 10 Careers In Music And How Much Money You Can Make (Hypebot.com)
* The Hacker History Of Music Technologies (HackADay.com)
* Chris Lightcap: Two Become One (Jazz Times)
* Seeing Terrence Malick films through his use of music. His composers share what they know (Los Angeles Times)
* Philadelphia's Sigma Sound: The Studio Where Bowie Found His Soul (PleaseKillMe.com)
* Bill Frisell: New Ideas in Old Songs (Stereophile)
* Doors drummer John Densmore: ‘It took me years to forgive Jim Morrison' (The Guardian)
* Mark Stryker, Author of 'Jazz From Detroit,' on a City "Punching Way Over Our Weight Class" (WBGO)
* Roots Amid Chaos: Darcy James Argue Speaks (JazzSpeaks.org)
* The Endless Potential Of The Pedal Steel Guitar, An Odd Duck By Any Measure (NPR)
* Guitar god James ‘Blood’ Ulmer recalls when Soho was a garment district (New York Post)
* Dr. Barry Harris to Receive Bruce Lundvall Visionary Award (Jazz Times)
* The Man Who’s Spending $1 Billion to Own Every Pop Song (Medium.com)
* End of an era: Pianist Ellis Marsalis retires from his 30-year gig at Snug Harbor (NOLA.com)
* How London’s Young Jazz Musicians Are Revitalizing the Artform (HypeBeast.com)
* “Chuck Berry lived to play live music. It was his absolute joy”: Charles Berry Jr on his father’s guitars, music and legacy (Guitar.com)
* Adam Rudolph: Ragmala and Prototypical Music (AllAboutJazz.com)
* How Music Copyright Lawsuits Are Scaring Away New Hits (Rolling Stone)
* Rush drummer Neil Peart dies at age 67 (Jazz.FM)
* Prince: Requiem for a bass hero (Guitar World)
* California’s new gig worker law is disrupting the music industry and threatening all performing arts (CalMatters.org)

Sunday Session: April 14, 2019

Amina Claudine Myers

Here's a roundup of various music-related items of interest that have shown up in one of StLJN's various inboxes or feeds over the past week:

* Nenette Evans: My Life With Bill (AllAboutJazz.com)
* The Eclectic Mr. Klein (Jazz Times)
* Harold Danko: His Own Sound, His Own Time (AllAboutJazz.com)
* ECM @ 50 (AllAboutJazz.com)* “The most in depth concert in over 35 years”: Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck to reunite on stage (NME.com)
* Ed Palermo Enjoys a ‘Lousy Day’ with New Album (DownBeat)
* Alan Lomax’s Massive Music Archive Is Online: Features 17,000 Historic Blues & Folk Recordings (OpenCulture.com)
* Interview: Pianist Amina Claudine Myers (JazzRightNow.com)
* Knocking on doors in search of Philadelphia’s jazz history (WHYY)
* Jazz Heavyweights Herbie Hancock And Kamasi Washington Announce Joint Tour (NPR)
* Keystone Korner Club Revived in Baltimore (Jazz Times)
* Emmet Cohen Wins American Pianists Association Competition (DownBeat)
* Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks Dig Deep (DownBeat)
* George Benson talks back (Offbeat)
* Inside the Barry Harris Method (Jazz Times)
* Ambient in Outer Space: Seven Artists Exploring the Final Frontier (Bandcamp.com)
* Works of Wadada Leo Smith Celebrated at Third CREATE Festival (DownBeat)
* Four-year legal battle over estate of legendary blues musician Muddy Waters continues in DuPage courtroom (Chicago Tribune)
* AIM’s Gee Davy on the future of generative Artificial Intelligence in music (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* Angel of Harlem: How a patron saint to a forgotten generation of musicians came to face her greatest challenge yet (ABC News)
* Space for the Wrong: An Interview with Frederic Rzewski (Atavist.com)
* Jazzman Dave Douglas finds inspiration in Dizzy Gillespie (Houston Chronicle)
* Hi-Fi Cocktail Bars Aren’t Just for Tokyo Anymore (Bloomberg.com)
* Holographic Frank Zappa Plays Guitar Solo in New Tour Promo (Rolling Stone)
* Berklee's Institute Of Jazz And Gender Justice Aims To Combat Sexism In Jazz (WBUR)
* The Songsmiths of Sesame Street (The Atlantic)
* Spotify, the Decline of Playlists and the Rise of Podcasts (Music Industry Blog)

Music Education Monday: Jazz theory with Barry Harris

Today for Music Education Monday, here are some lessons in piano and jazz theory from the veteran pianist Barry Harris, via a series of short videos produced by the Jazz Academy program of Jazz at Lincoln Center in NYC.

The first of these four clips was part of a previous post here with some other piano-related material, but now that the whole series is online, it seemed worth sharing again along with the companion videos.

With regard to Harris, we refer once again to that previous post, which said:

A native of Detroit, Harris (pictured) has run the gamut from swing to bop to modern jazz in his 85 years, performing with major musicians including Sonny Stitt, Illinois Jacquet, Coleman Hawkins, Dexter Gordon, Lee Morgan, Charles McPherson, Max Roach, and many more. He's also been heavily involved in jazz education, giving master classes at colleges and universities all over the world.

These lessons were recorded in September, 2013, and feature Harris talking with fellow pianist Eli Yamin, who helps him discuss and demonstrate various points. You can see a playlist with all four videos in the embedded window below.

For some additional free educational resources about jazz theory, take a look at Jazz Theory, a downloadable book in PDF format written by Stuart Smith, professor emeritus in the department of music at University of Massachusetts Lowell.

For a breakdown of similar material in smaller, "bite-size" pieces, there's what amounts to a step-by-step tutorial at the website Jazclass, and also some handy reference pages pertaining to jazz theory at TheJazzResource.com

Music Education Monday: Jazz piano lessons from Mike Wolff and Barry Harris

Today for "Music Education Monday," we've got some video lessons that nominally are intended for jazz pianists, but also contain information that may be of interest to jazz improvisors in general.

Pianist Mike Wolff is know for his early work with Cal Tjader, Cannonball Adderly and Nancy Wilson, for leading the house band on the original Arsenio Hall Show in the 1990s, and more recently, for film scoring work and collaborations including the Wolff & Clark Expedition with former Headhunters drummer Mike Clark.

Today's first video is an hour-long master class that Wolff gave back in 2011 for students at Loyola University in New Orleans, in which he touches on a variety of topics, from how his career developed to playing outside the changes to how he got fired by Jean-Luc Ponty, and much more.

Below that, there are three shorter video featuring pianist Barry Harris. A native of Detroit, Harris (pictured) has run the gamut from swing to bop to modern jazz in his 85 years, performing with major musicians including Sonny Stitt, Illinois Jacquet, Coleman Hawkins, Dexter Gordon, Lee Morgan, Charles McPherson, Max Roach, and many more. He's also been heavily involved in jazz education, giving master classes at colleges and universities all over the world.

Harris also worked with NYC's Jazz at Lincoln Center last year to produce a video for their "Jazz Academy" series, in which he discusses some of his concepts of jazz theory and harmony.

After that, you can see two clips that are part of a series of videos of Harris recorded by Dutch piano player and educator Frans Elsen between 1989 and 1998 at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. In the first, Harris discusses his affinity for the 6th diminished scale, and how to use it in accompaniment and improvisation; in the second, he breaks down his approach to the famously challenging John Coltrane composition "Giant Steps."

You can see today's videos after the jump...