Sunday Session: July 22, 2018

Chucho Valdés

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:

* Major Labels Are Upset That They Aren’t Getting More Songs Onto Spotify Playlists, Deutsche Bank Says (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* Classical Composers Have Been Inspired For Centuries By Insects (NPR)
* Montreal Jazz Fest Shapes Surrounding City—and Vice Versa (DownBeat)
* The Stone: An Oral History - Musicians and scenesters recount their experiences at John Zorn's storied NYC venue (Jazz Times)
* Guru’s ‘Jazzmatazz’ Uniquely Tied Together Jazz and Hip-Hop (DownBeat)
* In Tandem, the Morans Expand Notions of Art (DownBeat)
* Mary Halvorson: Reinventing the Identity of the Jazz Guitarist (Jazz Times)
* Joey DeFrancesco on Working With Van Morrison (Jazz Times)
* Vijay Iyer: 'We're all improvisers and we're all creative people making choices every step of the way.' (List.co.uk)
* Sound Matters: A History Of Legendary Recording Studios (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* The Perils Of A Cruise Ship Musician (FYIMusicNews.ca)
* Universal Music Group Is Making a Huge Move Into Nigeria (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* Billie Holiday: A Complex Woman, A Jazz Legend (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* Copenhagen Festival Spans Poetic Swing, Hard-Bop Themes (DownBeat)
* The Charles Lloyd Interview: Life of a Song (Jazz Times)
* George Wein: A Life and Legend in Jazz (AllAboutJazz.com)
* The scam industry: How the hip-hop boom sets hopefuls up for failure (AV Club)
* Asante Drum Language (Afropop.org)
* Chucho Valdés and Irakere: A Musical Revolution (SFJAZZ.org)
* Sun Ra in Sin City The origins of an outer-space empire (Lapham's Quarterly)
* The Music of Fred Rogers’ Neighborhood (Jazz Times)

Sunday Session: April 8, 2018

Cecil Taylor

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:

* Spotify Is Killing Song Titles (Medium.com)
* Branford Marsalis talks jazz, classical and playing with Miles Davis, Grateful Dead, Public Enemy (San Diego Union Tribune)
* Did Simon & Garfunkel Write The Jewish ‘Sgt. Pepper?’ (The Forward)
* Arcade Fire: 'People have lost the ability to even know what a joke is. It’s very Orwellian (The Guardian)
* You Can’t Find What You Don’t Look For: Spotify, Google, Pandora Can’t Find Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry–but what about Martha Stewart (MuscTechPolicy.com)
* The Festival Legend: George Wein – 64 Years Of Producing Festivals From Newport To New Orleans And Far Beyond (Pollstar.com)
* At Roulette, Admirers Gather To Honor John Abercrombie (DownBeat)
* The Lofty Optimism of Spotify and the Influence of the Streaming Revolution (The New Yorker)
* Instrumental Listens to 30,000 New Songs a Day to Find the Next Hit. So Why Do We Need A&R People, Again? (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* The sample legacy of Sly And The Family Stone (TheVinylFactory.com)
* The Day Herbie Hancock Met the Electric Piano (OZY.com)
* Q&A with Norma Winstone: The Consummate Voice (DownBeat)
* Stream a 144-Hour Discography of Classic Jazz Recordings from Blue Note Records: Miles Davis, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman & More (OpenCulture.com)
* How a Calypso Anthem Became the Surreal Centerpiece of Beetlejuice (Pitchfork)
* Inside Jimi Hendrix’s blood-spattered record collection (NME)
* Venture Beyond a Walking Bass Line with the All-American Walter Page, in Deep Dive (WBGO)
* Can Biomusic Offer Kids With Autism a New Way to Communicate? (Smithsonian)
* Love, London, and an enormous Moog: how Simon & Garfunkel made Bookends (The Telegraph)
* How much will artists get paid from the major labels’ Spotify profits? (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* Avant-Garde Pianist Cecil Taylor Dies at 89 (DownBeat)
* Cecil Taylor Dies at 89 - Piano titan pioneered the jazz avant-garde with an utterly unique sound, technique and approach to improvisation (Jazz Times)
* Cecil Taylor (1929 - 2018) (The Free Jazz Collective)
* Cecil Taylor, Jazz Icon Of The Avant-Garde, Dies At 89 (NPR)
* Cecil Taylor, Pianist Who Defied Jazz Orthodoxy, Is Dead at 89 (New York Times)
* How The #VinylRevival Is Paradoxically Threatening Record Shop Survival (TheQuietus.com)
* What’s Up Tiger Lily?: The wild story of the tax scam record label run by the notorious Morris Levy (DangerousMinds.net)