Sunday Session: December 29, 2019

Red Garland

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

* Blue Note’s Tone Poet Vinyl Reissue Series Will Continue in 2020 (Jazz Times)
* Free jazz veteran Yosuke Yamashita marks 50 years of his trio's 'reckless' playing (Japan Times)
* Frank Sinatra: A Son of Immigrants Sings America's Heart (AllAboutJazz.com)
* Vince Gill: "I reached the point where I said, ‘I’m just going to play what’s necessary’" (Guitar World)
* Artistry, Inc.: Jazzmeia Horn’s Personal Creativity Corporation (Jazz Times)
* The Jazz Magi of Carnegie Hall (The-American-Interest.com)
* Fifty Years of Worship at the Church of John Coltrane (The New Yorker)
* Local Drummer ‘Stateside Mouthpiece’ for New Buddy Rich Bio (Jewish Exponent)
* 'Jazz Night In America' Remembers Artists We Lost In 2019 (NPR)
* Arturo O’Farrill – Family, Jazz and the Music of Cuba, Revisited (JazzWithAnAccent.com)
* The Banjo: An unusual voice in the story of New Orleans music (Offbeat)
* James Carter, Dave Liebman and The Westerlies on Uncommon Ensembles (DownBeat)
* 'An Einstein among Neanderthals': the tragic prince of LA counterculture (The Guardian)
* Red Garland: Graceful and Bluesy (Jazz Profiles)
* To everything there is a season (8tracks.com)
* What Makes a Junius Paul-ism? (Chicago)
* Music City DC- Remembering ‘Jazz Samba’: The birth of the Brazilian cool (Fairfax County Times)

Sunday Session: November 3, 2019

Matana Roberts

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

* Andy Bey At 80: A Love Letter To A Jazz Legend (NPR)
* Exploring St Petersburg’s cosy jazz dens (Jazz Journal)
* The Grammys organizer is giving artists a metadata gold mine to credit unrecognized music workers (TheVerge.com)
* Tighter and looser with Mary Halvorson (ToneMadison.com)
* The average guitarist will spend $10,000 on gear over their lifetime (Guitar)
* Three British Labels are Deep in Dialogue with the American Jazz Tradition (DownBeat)
* David Sánchez and the African Tinge (Jazz Times)
* Bill Bruford on His Ups and Downs With Yes and King Crimson, Life After Retirement (Rolling Stone)
* Fred Taylor, Boston’s Beloved Jazz Impresario, Dies at 90 (Jazz Times)
* Chicago Trumpeter Jaimie Branch Delivers A Political Message On 'FLY or DIE II' (NPR)
* One of New York City’s Oldest Jazz Clubs Re-Opens (Forbes.com)
* Pi Recordings: A Home For Musicians Pushing Jazz Forward (Bandcamp.com)
* A Brief History of Witchcraft in Music (FloodMagazine.com)
* Crosscurrents Trio Brings Together Singular Musical Personalities (DownBeat)
* Marquis Hill Celebrates the Enduring Rhythms of Love (DownBeat)
* James Taylor: Artist in Residence (American Songwriter)
* A duel with Van Morrison: 'Is this a psychiatric examination? It sounds like one' (The Guardian)
* Manfred Eicher: "You Can't Record Everybody" (Stereophile)
* Myra Melford: Freedom and Form (New Music Box)
* The First Angel of the Future: Sun Ra's Heliocentric Poetics for After the End of the World (PoetryFoundation.org)
* Marvin Gaye: Live in Amsterdam 1976 (Oxford American)
* Matana Roberts’ ‘Coin Coin’ Project is a Sonic Patchwork of American History (DownBeat)
* Gearbox Records to release final Buddy Rich recording (Jazz in Europe)
* John Scofield and Bobo Stenson Engage Big Bands at Umeå Fest (DownBeat)
* Always Creating: Pianist Vijay Iyer Reflects on a Key Directive From His Elders, on The Checkout (WBGO)
* Change Comes to Pitt with Nicole Mitchell as New Jazz Chair (Jazz Times)
* Ronnie Scott’s 60th Anniversary Gala at the Royal Albert Hall (London Jazz News)
* Your Brain Can Recognize a Song in Just 100 Milliseconds (Newsweek)

Sunday Session: December 10, 2017

Sunny Murray

Here's the roundup of various music-related items of interest that have appeared in StLJN's inbox over the past week:

* Who can fill the role of Tom Lehrer today? (The Economist)
* Pete Escovedo: Rhythms of Life (Jazz Times)
* Paul McCartney’s Lost Experimental Christmas Album That He Made For The Beatles Has Surfaced Online (Uproxx.com)
* Spotify Attorney Estimates the Service Infringed 300,000 Songs in Settlement Hearing (SPIN)
* Why Sun Ra Matters (Philadephia Jazz Project)
* The Problem with Muzak - Spotify’s bid to remodel an industry (The Baffler)
* The Chief of Entertainers - Trumpet virtuoso Dizzy Gillespie was a jazz prophet, a musical genius, and a scatterbrained whirlwind (TheAmericanScholar.org)
* Electrifying Photos of Cuba's Thriving Music Scene (Vice.com)
* Louis Armstrong’s home in Queens is now a museum (Curbed.com)
* Historic Austin Music Venue Is Being Sold on eBay (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* Lloyd Price's Personality: Long Live The Real King! (JazzWeekly.com)
* David Bowie Sang For Devo, and Mark Mothersbaugh Might Have the Tapes (BedfordAndBowery.com)
* How I Got 10,000 Spotify Plays For a Totally Fake Song (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* Last.fm Was the Only Music Social Network That Made Sense (Vice.com)
* Jazz Legend Sonny Rollins on Retiring His Sax, His Legacy, and the Secret to Life (Vulture.com)
* Quincy Jones is about to launch the 'Netflix of jazz' (Mashable.com)
* Next Wave Forever: John Cale at Seventy-Five (The New Yorker)
* New Jimi Hendrix LP Unearths 10 Previously Unheard Recordings (Rolling Stone)
* Inside the Shady World of the Musical Hologram (Vice.com)
* The Legacy of Buddy Rich (Jazz Times)
* This Kenyan drummer is fighting to make more space for women in percussion (TED.com)
* Eric Clapton Talks Addiction, Cream's Brilliance, the Future of the Guitar (Rolling Stone)
* RIP: Sunny Murray, pioneering free jazz drummer (TinyMixTapes.com)
* Drummer Sunny Murray Dies at 81 (Jazz Times)
* Enacting Change in the Performing Arts World Begins with Changing the Conservatory Culture (AmericansForTheArts.org)
* David Sedaris: Songs for My Father - A conversation with the best-selling author and humorist on his lifelong love of jazz (Jazz Times)

Sunday Session: October 9, 2016

Dexter Gordon

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

* Watch Bill Clinton, Carlos Santana Praise John Coltrane in Doc Promo; Sonny Rollins, Common, Kamasi Washington also appear in preview of 'Chasing Trane" (Rolling Stone)
* Jerry Seinfeld and the Buddy Rich tapes (Jazz in Pop Culture)
* Art or music? The National Gallery of Art provokes ears and thoughts (Washington Post)
* Musician Wants to Make Taking the A Train Easier on the Ears (Wall Street Journal)
* Bob Koester opens new record store after Jazz Record Mart closes (Chicago Tribune)
* Q&A with Ibrahim Maalouf: Synthesizing East & West (DownBeat)
* The demise of rock ’n’ roll nostalgia (Macleans)
* The 14 pieces of software that shaped modern music (FactMag.com)
* Classical Reimagined (M-Magazine.co.uk)
* Blow, Mr. Dexter: A Look Back at Round Midnight, 30 Years Later (Mediander.com)
* The Best of Festival Season - Standout photos from this summer's major jazz events (Jazz Times)
* Donny McCaslin on David Bowie: 'We had this amazing connection, then he was gone' (The Guardian UK)
* The Musicians Behind Luke Cage on Creating a ‘Timeless’ Sound and the Lack of Opportunities for Black Composers (Vulture.com)
* Guitar Wizard John McLaughlin Announces Final U.S. Tour (DownBeat)
* The Giant Legacy of Rudy Van Gelder (AllAboutJazz.com)
* A Brief History of Jazz in Hip-Hop: Tribe, De La Soul, Digable Planets (HowlAndEchoes.com)
* 'Thriller' Songwriter Rod Temperton Dies At 66 (NPR)
* Rod Temperton: the effortless orchestrator of the perfect pop illusion (The Guardian UK)
* Q&A with Drummer Nate Smith: From Many Voices, One Sound (DownBeat)
* The new cool: how Kamasi, Kendrick and co gave jazz a new groove (The Guardian UK)
* Danny Fields Is the Music Industry Wild Man You’ve Never Heard Of (Vice.com)
* ‘Are we there yet?’: on the road with Beach Boy Brian Wilson (The Guardian UK)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Jazz Film Festival Summer 2013

It's summer vacation time, and today we take a respite from the usual routine of previewing upcoming jazz shows in St. Louis to present our own little online jazz film festival.

Up above, A Great Day in Harlem is a 1994 documentary film that tells the story behind one of the most famous photos in the history of jazz: the 1958 B&W group portrait of 57 notable jazz musicians photographed by Art Kane, a freelancer for Esquire magazine, in front of a brownstone at 17 E. 126 Street in Harlem. The photo has remained an important object in the study of the history of jazz, and the film was nominated in 1995 for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature.

Down below is The Swing Thing, a 2008 BBC documentary on swing music and dancing that spotlights some of the most popular groups and singers of the big band era.

Below that is another BBC film, 1959: The Year that Changed Jazz which uses four classic albums - Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, Dave Brubeck's Time Out, Charles Mingus' Mingus Ah Um and Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come - as a lens through which to examine "the seismic year jazz broke away from complex bebop music to new forms, allowing soloists unprecedented freedom to explore and express."

We close out with three films profiling famous jazz musicians: Buddy Rich - Jazz Legend '17 - '70, a biographical documentary on the great drummer; A Night in Havana: Dizzy Gillespie in Cuba, which looks at the legendary trumpeter's trip to the island nation for a mid-1980s music festival; and My Name Is Albert Ayler, a 2007 biography of the free jazz saxophonist.

Win a free Buddy Rich drum set from DW and Jazz Times

Ever wish you could play Buddy Rich's drums? Well, the acerbic master percussionist and bandleader may be yelling at his sidemen on that Great Band Bus In The Sky, but Drum Workshop has a new Buddy Rich signature kit coming to market, and they're giving one away free as part of a promotion with Jazz Times magazine.

When I saw Rich play in the mid-1970s, I think he was endorsing and playing Slingerland drums at the time. Cosmetically, this new drum set looks remarkably like the one Rich used at that concert (and the ones I've seen subsequently in various photos), though presumably there have been some advancements in materials and manufacturing since back in the day.

The Jazz Times prize package includes the five–piece DW Buddy Rich Signature Set, a six–piece Armand Zildjian Series cymbal set-up, plus limited edition bag, and a DW hardware and pedal package. As usual with these sorts of things, you've got to give your contact info to enter the drawing, but assuming that's not a problem for you, you can register online here.