Sunday Session: June 13, 2021

Terence Blanchard

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

* Tulsa Race Massacre: How The Gap Band Was a Tribute to the Former ‘Black Wall Street’ (TheWrap.com)
* JazzTimes 10: Essential Horace Silver Recordings (Jazz Times)
* A “Phenomenal Concept,” and A Mega Synth Studio Goes Minimalist (SonicScoop.com)
* Five Months Later, Only 31 of 13,619 Music Venues Have Gotten Their Grants Approved (Rolling Stone)
* ‘This sounds like a human synthesiser’: the evolution of rap, one verse at a time (The Guardian)
* A Guide to the Early Work of Sonny Rollins on Prestige Records (Bandcamp.com)
* The Strange World Of… Don Cherry (TheQuietus.com)
* Floating Along In Uncertainty With Vijay Iyer (NPR)
* The Sound of Joy (SPIN)
* ‘Perry Mason’ composer Terence Blanchard: ‘It was a huge honor’ to remix the iconic theme of the original series (GoldDerby.com)
* U.S. Jazz Venues Announce Reopening (Jazz Times)
* Ray Charles’ ‘True Genius’ Box Set to Feature Previously Unreleased Live Tracks (Rolling Stone via Yahoo News)
* Tone Glow 067: George Lewis (ToneGlow.Substack.com)
* Jazz vs. Classical Funding (AllAboutJazz.com)
* Uncovering the Rich History of Spanish Experimental Music (Bandcamp.com)
* Rolling Stones, Tom Jones and more join campaign for law change on streaming (The Guardian)
* Just a Lego robot strumming a ukulele (AVClub.com)
* Chronology: Freddie Redd Steps Out of the Shadows (Jazz Times)
* Larry Goldings Reaches New Audience as Comedian (Jazz Times)
* Julian Lage: “I bought a stethoscope and taped it to the back of the Telecaster. I could only handle it for about a day and thought, ‘This is abusive!’“ (MusicRadar.com)
* Live music is back, but for roadies and crews, the pandemic’s toll may be irreversible (Los Angeles Times)
* In historic move, Sony Music is disregarding unrecouped balances for heritage catalog artists (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* Overdue Ovation: Steve Slagle Remains Optimistic with New Album (Jazz Times)

Sunday Session: May 26, 2019

Aretha Franklin

Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest, drawn from StLJN's inboxes, newsfeeds, and assorted other sources:

* "Over the Rainbow" Composer Seeks Pot of Gold from Apple (Forbes.com)
* ‘Fake Artists’ Have Billions of Streams on Spotify. Is Sony Now Playing the Service at Its Own Game? (Rolling Stone)
* Doris Day: Her Jazziest Moment (Jazz Times)
* Aretha in church (TheBlueMoment.com)
* Blue Note boss Don Was: 'Jazz can't become synonymous with pop again' (The Guardian)
* Burnt Sugar Applying Heat for 20 Years (DownBeat)
* Ray Charles - Confessin’ The Blues (FYIMusicNews.ca)
* Scientists create the loudest possible sound (NewAtlas.com)
* Wire Playlist: Free Jazz In Japan, Sounds From The First Decade (The Wire)
* Idagio—the Spotify for Classical Music—Has Changed My Life (Vogue)
* National Endowment for the Arts Announces 2020 NEA Jazz Masters (Arts.gov)
* Kamasi Washington: 'Right now it feels like people are really open to jazz, the freedoms, the abstract side of it' (List.co.uk)
* How Nashville plans to save Music Row, a threatened cultural treasure (Curbed.com)
* The Borderless Music of Antonio Sánchez (DownBeat)
* Pacific Ocean coup: how Ronald Reagan helped bury a Beach Boy at sea (The Guardian)
* How Panic! at the Disco Cornered the Market on Trumpet-Heavy Hits (Variety)
* Flashback: Ornette Coleman Sums Up Solitude on ‘Lonely Woman’ (Rolling Stone)
* Pianist gives concert from vertical piano hanging from construction crane (WPXI)
* 20 Questions for New Artists Sidebar: The Economic Reality of Streaming (MusicTechPolicy.com)
* Repair Of Iconic ’60s Era Synthesizer Turns Into Long, Strange Trip For Engineer (SanFrancisco.CBSLocal.com)
* Resonance Records’ Further Exploration of Wes Montgomery (DownBeat)
* The Shed Attempts to Inject Culture Into Hudson Yards (The New Yorker)
* Flying Lotus and His Grandmother Talk Being in a Family Bound by Music (Pitchfork.com)
* Sofar Sounds house concerts raises $25M, but bands get just $100 (TechCrunch.com)
* ECM At Big Ears: A Boundless Label Meets A Broadminded Festival (NPR)
* Frantic, Distorted, Defiant: When Punk Jazz Upended the Underground (Jazz Times)
* How synthesizer pioneer Bob Moog brought electronic music to the masses (Fast Company)

Sunday Session: February 24, 2019

Billie Holiday

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:

* Ken Nordine, Chicago creator of 'word jazz' who had a voice that 'could give you the chills,' dies at 98 (Chicago Tribune)
* What happens when you create a fake music record label and upload bad music to Spotify (Salon.com)
* Jazz Musician And Subject Of Iconic Photo Revisits 'A Great Day In Harlem' (NPR)
* Italian town takes vow of silence for digital recording of centuries-old violins (The Telegraph)
* Cultural evolution of music (Nature)
* How streaming music could be harming the planet (BBC)
* Mandatory Music Surcharges Could Pay Musicians More (Offbeat)
* PBS to Air Nat ‘King’ Cole Special, Marking Centennial (DownBeat)
* PledgeMusic's Failed Promise Leaves Artists in Limbo and the Future of Music Crowdfunding in Jeopardy (Billboard)
* Judge Rules Against Both Parties In Lawsuit Over Kansas City's Mutual Musicians Foundation (KCUR)
* Ryan Adams and the Perils of the Rock-Genius Myth (The New Yorker)
* Ethel Ennis, Sophisticated Singer Who Reigned As Baltimore's First Lady of Jazz, Dies at 86 (WBGO)
* Whither “Musicologist”? (MusicologyNow.AMS.net)
* Rough Around the Edges: The Raw Yet Refined Art of Myra Melford (Jazziz)
* For Promotional Use Only (RockAndRollGlobe.com)
* More Than 50 Years In, Mavis Staples Is Still Delivering Messages Of Hope And Justice (NPR)
* Fans of Max Roach drumming up support to rename Bed-Stuy street after genre-busting jazz great (New York Daily News)
* Billie Holiday Documentary in the Works Featuring New Interviews With Contemporaries (Hollywood Reporter)
* McVouty! (Chisler.org)
* “Hearing” the Hammond Organ (New Music Box)
* Folk and Blues: The Tribulations of The Old Town School (NewCity.com)
* Monkees Singer and Bassist Peter Tork Dead at 77 (Rolling Stone)
* Bill Frisell: The ‘favourite guitarist of many people who agree on little else’ (Irish Times)
*''We Need a Jazz Band, but They All Have to Be Foreigners": The Discrimination Faced by Asian Musicians (The Beijinger.com)
* Peter Erskine: Up Front, In Time, and On Call (AllAboutJazz.com)
* Three-Disc Set Documents Ben Sidran’s Voyage (DownBeat)
* The strange truth behind the Amy Winehouse hologram tour (GQ)
* Debunking Green Book: Jazz Greats on What It Was Really Like to Tour During Jim Crow (Pitchfork.com)
* The Uncertain Future of KMHD and Jazz Radio in Portland (Portland Mercury)
* Save JAZZ.FM91 May Just Do It! (FYIMusicNews.ca)
* The Man Who Wasn’t Gershwin (Commentary)
* Jazz City (KCET)
* The Invisible Village - Sasha Frere-Jones on the Music of John Zorn (Art Forum)
* Ray Charles and Country’s Color Barrier (Rolling Stone)
* On the Road with Esperanza Spalding (Mother Jones)

Sunday Session: April 29, 2018

Charles Neville

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:

* Revisit the Historic Night When Dizzy Gillespie Opened for Ray Charles in 1970 (Paste)
* Council’s measures present two paths for American Jazz Museum (Kansas City Business Journal)
* Terence Blanchard Talks New Album 'Live,' Gun Violence & Working With Spike Lee (Billboard)
* NEA Jazz Masters Concert Honors Titans (DownBeat)
* The unit structures of Cecil Taylor (The Wire)
* Photographer Spends 10 Years Tracking Down The Original Locations Of Vinyl Covers (Demilked.com)
* Entertainment lawyer Jay B. Ross fought for the people who made the music he loved (Chicago Reader)
* The Quest to Teach AI to Write Pop Songs (Gizmodo)
* Entire music album to be stored on DNA (ETHZ.ch)
* Steve Miller talks back (Offbeat)
* 'We're on Life Support': Is Streaming Music the Final Note for Professional Songwriters? (Pacific Standard)
* Portland Label Unearths Lost Sun Ra Concert (OPB.org)
* Jazz Foundation Honors Greats, Calls for Assistance (DownBeat)
* Live Review: 2018 NEA Jazz Masters Tribute Concert (Jazz Times)
* “Now That’s What I Call Music!” will be mankind's greatest relic (QZ.com)
* This amazing ring allows people to play instruments using hand gestures (BT.com)
* The Fifth Era of Recorded Music (CopyrightAndTechnology.com)
* The 7 people you see at Jazz Fest in New Orleans (NOLA.com)
* My Country Needs Me: on Sons Of Kemet’s Your Queen Is A Reptile (TheQuietus.com)
* Why Terence Blanchard’s “Live” Matters (Village Voice)
* Music Modernization Act Passes U.S. House Unanimously (Hypebot.com)
* Neville Brothers saxophonist Charles Neville has died at age 79 (New Orleans Advocate)
* Charles Neville Of The Neville Brothers Dies At 79 (NPR)
* Four radical and radically original pieces of music that blew up the modernist status quo in 1968 (Los Angeles Times)
* Professor Longhair at 100: New Orleans Jazz Fest, new DVD celebrate piano legend's legacy (New Orleans Advocate)
* State and Mainstream: The Jazz Ambassadors and the U.S. State Department (AllAboutJazz.com)

Happy Independence Day!

Since July 4 is a major holiday in the USA, yr. StLJN editor is taking the day off, and so are "Music Education Monday" and "Miles On Monday."

Both features will be back next week. So as not to leave you completely without relevant content for the day, here are some videos of one of my favorite Americans, Ray Charles, singing two seasonally appropriate songs, "America the Beautiful" and "Lift Every Voice And Sing":

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Summer 2014 jazz film festival, part 2

This week, we are once again in vacation mode, with a second installment of our summer jazz "film festival" offering a whole day's worth of online jazz videos for your viewing and listening enjoyment. In part one a couple of weeks ago, we served up a half-dozen documentary films about jazz greats.

In part two, the theme is simple: "editor's picks, in concert." And so, without further preamble, we present today's selections, starting up above with a full set by Miles Davis, recorded on November 16, 1971 in Turin, Italy with a band including Gary Bartz (alto, soprano saxes), Keith Jarrett (electric piano, organ), Michael Henderson (bass), Ndugu Leon Chancler (drums), and Don Alias and James "Mtume" Foreman (percussion).

After the jump, you'll find a solo concert by Duke Ellington, recorded for Australian television, date unknown; a performance by the Count Basie Orchestra, recorded in 1981 in Paris; and a complete performance by Herbie Hancock and an all-star band at the 1997 Montreux Jazz Festival.

The fifth video features a full concert by Ray Charles from 1975 in Madrid, and we wrap up with a complete show by Weather Report, recorded on September 28, 1978 in Offenbach, Germany and featuring Wayne Shorter (saxophones), Joe Zawinul (keyboards), Jaco Pastorius (bass) and Peter Erskine (drums).

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

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Merry Christmas, Baby!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Saturday video programming to bring you these musical messages from Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra & Bing Crosby, Nat "King" Cole, and St. Louis' own Funky Butt Brass Band. The StLJN Saturday Video Showcase will return next week with part three of the winter/spring 2012 jazz preview. Happy holidays!

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Ray Charles sings "America The Beautiful"

Absent any major breaking news, yr. humble StLJN editor will be on a brief vacation from posting this holiday weekend.

Should you find yourself jonesing badly for fresh content over the next two days, remember that the StLJN sidebar - that's the column over on the right-hand side, for those who don't speak bloggish - has a new Daily Download and feature stories from AllAboutJazz.com every day, plus an extensive list of links to many other noteworthy jazz sites. You can also check out our Bloglines page for a bunch of continuously updated jazz-related news feeds, or visit StLJN's sibling site Heliocentric Worlds and take in some of the hundreds of cool music videos there.

Here's hoping you have a safe and enjoyable Independence Day weekend...