StLJN jazz site of the week: Night Lights

The StLJN jazz site of the week is Night Lights, the online companion to a radio program of the same name that airs Saturday evenings on WFIU (103.7 FM), a public radio station affiliated with Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.

The program's host David Brent Johnson uses the Night Lights Web site to provide access to archived audio and playlists for the previous week's program (posted each Monday morning); more important for our purposes, however, he also blogs entertainingly a couple of times a week about musicians and recordings, jazz-related news, and so on. Night Lights seems a good example of how radio and the Internet can complement each other, and is well worth a visit or a bookmark.

The StLJN jazz site of the week is, as the name implies, a weekly feature, created to call attention to Web sites that jazz enthusiasts may find useful, informative and/or entertaining. Do you have a favorite jazz- or creative music-related Web site or blog? If so, please feel free to make suggestions in the comments, or send an email with your recommendation to stljazznotes (at) yahoo (dot) com.

StLJN jazz site of the week: Jazz and Blues Music Reviews

The StLJN jazz site of the week is Jazz and Blues Music Reviews, described by proprietor Tim Niland as "a completely subjective blog of music reviews covering mostly jazz and blues but branching out into other genres as well."

True to to his word, Niland covers a variety of music, including new releases, reissues and older catalog albums. He's prolific, too, posting several times a week. While, as with any individual writer, critic, blogger, etc, one may disagree with Niland's opinions on a a given record or artist, his straightforward, concise style is always eminently readable. You'll find Jazz and Blues Music Reviews at http://jazzandblues.blogspot.com/

The StLJN jazz site of the week is, as the name implies, a weekly feature, created to call attention to Web sites that jazz enthusiasts may find useful, informative and/or entertaining. Having already featured many (but by no means all) of my personal favorites over the last several months, I'm looking for more worthy sites to include in the future. Do you have a favorite jazz- or creative music-related Web site or blog that's yet to be mentioned? If so, please feel free to make suggestions in the comments, or send an email with your recommendation to stljazznotes (at) yahoo (dot) com.

StLJN jazz site of the week: Downbeast

The StLJN jazz site of the week is Downbeast, a blog affiliated with the adventurous jazz indie label Cryptogramophone. As you'd expect, the site offers information and updates on the various musicians who record for Cryptogramophone, but there's lots more, too, including coverage of the jazz scene in Los Angeles and links to other interesting jazz-related content from around the Web.

The site has an attractive design and makes good use of photos, but more important, there's enough quality material there to make it more than just another record company promotional vehicle. Written in an informal style with an occasionally skewed sense of humor, Downbeast is an entertaining read that's definitely worth a visit and/or a bookmark.

StLJN jazz site of the week: Restructures

The StLJN jazz site of the week is Restructures, which offers as its primary attraction an extensive - some might even say exhaustive - collection of links related to free jazz, improvisation and creative music. Sure, there's a measure of content right there on the site, including discographies of a handful of avant-garde jazz players, but the real action is in what the site's proprietor Jason Guthartz calls the "link library".

Categories include artists, essays, calendars, magazines, broadcasts, labels, retailers and miscellaneous, and depending on the artist or topic, the links can include artists' or organizations' Web sites, audio files, interviews, critical essays, discographies and more. Though the site design is about as basic as it gets, it's a very well-thought-out and researched directory. If you have any interest in adventurous jazz or creative music post-1960, chances are you'll find Restructures to be a highly useful resource.

(Edited after posting to fix a typo.)

StLJN jazz site of the week: JazzCorner.com

StLJN's jazz site of the week is JazzCorner.com, which offers a couple of distinctive features - specifically, it serves as a convenient portal to the official sites of hundreds of jazz musicians and organizations, and it also includes one of the most active online message boards devoted to jazz, the "Speakeasy."

The site also has online jazz radio and video, a news section, podcasts featuring interviews with musicians, and more, presented with an mercifully uncluttered and easy-to-navigate design. The message board by itself makes JazzCorner.com worth a visit and/or a bookmark, but chances are that if you take some time to browse around the site, you'll find other content that's of interest as well.

StLJN jazz site of the week: JazzStandards.com

The StLJN jazz site of the week is Jazz Standards.com, a site " dedicated to the preservation of information for the musical compositions known as jazz standards," which are defined as compositions "held in continuing esteem and...commonly used as the basis of jazz arrangements and improvisations."

Compiling information from reference books and historical documents with commentary by jazz performers, historians, and musicologists, the site includes a list of the 1000 most-frequently recorded jazz standard compositions, detailed information on the top 100 jazz standards including origins, historical notes, musical analyses and CD suggestions, plus biographies of songwriters and performers, a historical timeline, and links to further references.

Whether you're looking for information on a specific song, or seeking to explore and learn more about jazz by studying its most enduring and popular compositions, JazzStandards.com is well worth a look and/or a bookmark.

StLJN jazz site of the week: The Jazzcat

The StLJN jazz site of the week is The Jazzcat, the online home of California jazz radio personality and blogger LeRoy Downs. Downs' site offers audio files of interviews with noteworthy jazz performers musicians, as well as his photos of concert and club performances and news items related to jazz events in southern and central California. The audio and visual content on the site and Downs' obvious enthusiasm for the music and for his work make The Jazzcat definitely worth a click and/or a bookmark for anyone interested in what's going in jazz on the left coast.

StLJN jazz site of the week: Hard Bop Homepage

The StLJN jazz site of the week is Hard Bop Homepage, which, as the name implies, covers the swinging, soulful yet complex jazz style that first became popular in the 1950s and continues to be an important influence on many contemporary musicians. Though the site still retains a bit of that late-1990s early-WWW look, the content is extensive - there are critical appreciations and mini-biographies of key musicians, lists of important recordings from the hard bop canon, a links page, a blog (that, alas, seems to be updated very sporadically), and more.

As a primer on the genre, the HBHP is a useful reference - for example, if you're a jazz novice who has found yourself getting into the music of, say, Horace Silver or Art Blakey, and would like to find out more about others who have done similar work, the HBHP is definitely worth a look. And even veteran jazz fans will find food for thought and, perhaps, argument, in site creator Eric B. Olson's opinions of hard bop music and musicians both familiar and relatively obscure. If you want to know more about this important period in the ongoing evolution of jazz, check out the Hard Bop Homepage.

StLJN jazz site of the week: Jerry Jazz Musician

The StLJN jazz site of the week is Jerry Jazz Musician, a site that's somewhat hard to describe in just a few words.

Billed as "a website devoted to jazz and American civilization," JJM is a somewhat idiosyncratic online jazz magazine with all sorts of original material, including interviews with musicians and authors, critical essays, reviews, and original art and photos. It's been online since 1998, which makes it one of the longest-running continuously updated jazz sites on the Web, and it does have a somewhat retro look and navigation system that may be a little off-putting at first for some users.

However, there's definitely enough interesting content to justify spending some time digging around. JJM also has a monthly newsletter that highlights the new items on the site as it is updated. Jerry Jazz Musician has been nominated twice by the Jazz Journalists Association as "Best Web site focusing on jazz," and I'd agree that it's well worth a look and/or a bookmark.

StLJN jazz site of the week: Kosmigroov Konnection

The StLJN jazz site of the week is Kosmigroov Konnection, a site that pays tribute to a sound it defines as "a transgressive improvisational music which combines elements of psychedelia, spirituality, jazz, rock, soul, funk, and African, Latin, Brazilian, Indian and Asian influences culminating into an all encompassing cosmic groove."

Like last week's featured site Ear of the Behearer, Kosmigroov Konnection is mostly a place to list, analyze and discuss recordings, and, as with Behearer, music made during the 1970s and early 1980s gets serious attention and reconsideration.

As you might expect, the electric music of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and Weather Report and the avant-garde "arkestra" of Sun Ra figure prominently in the kosmigroov canon. However, the site also includes many older and newer recordings that somehow relate to the governing aesthetic, and stretches the definition far enough to include music by artists ranging from Cannonball Adderley to Frank Zappa.

Still, it all seems to hang together somehow, and though the site is showing its age a bit - it originally was created back in 1997 - Kosmigroov Konnection provides an interesting perspective that encourages thoughtful consideration, discussion, and further exploration of the music it documents.

StLJN jazz site of the week: Ear of the Behearer

The StLJN jazz site of the week is Ear of the Behearer, a site devoted to jazz and creative music recorded between 1970 and 1989. Spawned by discussions in the jazz blogosphere of the music of those years, EOTB uses a Wikipedia-style look and interface and offers year-by-year documentation of what it calls "one of the richest — most overlooked and underrated — eras" of jazz.

StLJN jazz site of the week: Jazz Discography Project

The StLJN jazz site of the week is the Jazz Discography Project, a true labor of love that includes detailed information on the recorded legacies of more than 50 of the most significant musicians in modern jazz, from Cannonball Adderley to Mal Waldron. Recordings are listed both by session date and location and by the name of the album or albums issued, and the site also includes information on the catalogs of a couple dozen of the most significant record labels of the post-World War II era.

If you're the sort of mildly (or even extremely) obsessive jazz fan who enjoys knowing stuff like the fact that Miles Davis' first-ever recording session was with Rubberlegs Williams and Herbie Fields' band at WOR Studios in NYC on April 24, 1945, you'll probably enjoy checking out the Jazz Discography Project.

(Edited 6/4/08 to fix a typo.)

StLJN jazz site of the week: Jazz Beyond Jazz

The StLJN jazz site of the week is Jazz Beyond Jazz, the blog of veteran jazz journalist Howard Mandel. A Chicago native and expert on that city's avant-garde musicians, Mandel is now based in New York, where he teaches at NYU, appears on National Public Radio, and serves as president of the Jazz Journalists Association.

He also is the author of several books - the most recent being Miles Ornette Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz - and has written for all the major jazz publications as well as many general interest magazines and newspapers. You can check out Mandel's online musings at www.artsjournal.com/jazzbeyonjazz/.

StLJN jazz site of the week: Do The Math

The StLJN jazz site of the week is Do The Math, the official blog of the NYC-based trio The Bad Plus. In addition to the expected news updates on the group's live gigs and recordings, DTM also features occasional essays on some of the band members' favorite musicians - there's a tribute to pianist Geri Allen on the front page right now - and assorted musings on more general jazz- and music-related topics. Posts are less frequent these days than a year ago, but the quality level generally remains high. If you like The Bad Plus, then by all means, you should check it out - but even if you're not a huge fan of their music, Do The Math is worth a look and/or a bookmark.

StLJN jazz site of the week: Rifftides

StLJN's jazz site of the week is Rifftides, the online home of veteran journalist Doug Ramsey. The author of an award-winning biography of alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, Ramsey writes clearly and well about a variety of musicians, posting several times a week and showing a particular interest in straightahead swing, bop, and the Great American Songbook. His "Doug's Picks" sidebar spotlights current favorite CDs and books, and the site also sports a fairly extensive list of links to other worthy jazz-related sites, as well as occasional guest posts and reviews from other writers. If you've got an interest in "mainstream" jazz, be sure to check out Rifftides.

StLJN jazz site of the week: Avant Music News

If you're interested in music that is "challenging, interesting, different, progressive, introspective, or just plain weird," check out Avant Music News, which is StLJN's site of the week.

AMN covers avant-garde and free jazz, improvisation, contemporary classical, electronic and experimental music, and many other variant genres and sub-genres, offering links to reviews, concert schedules, CD release information and more from musicians and venues all around the world. There's usually not much in the way of commentary or annotation, but the scope and volume of the links provided definitely makes Avant Music News worth a look and/or a bookmark for fans of adventurous sounds.

StLJN jazz site of the week: Casa Valdez Studios

The StLJN jazz site of the week is Casa Valdez Studios, the blog of David Valdez, a working jazz saxophonist in Portland, Oregon. The site includes a mix of local and national jazz news; Valdez' original interviews; opinion pieces on various musicians, recordings and live shows; and a lot of jazz education content, with plenty of links to useful online resources such as free downloads of fake books, sheet music and recordings.

Valdez has a clear, straightforward writing style that's easy to follow, and though his posting schedule is a bit irregular, he offers quality information when he does post. His site is a good read for anyone interested in jazz, and music students will find Casa Valdez Studios to be an especially useful resource.

StLJN jazz site of the week: The Big Bands Database

The StLJN jazz site of the week is The Big Bands Database, which is described on its main page as "an ongoing project dedicated to Bands, Jazz, and Popular Music History -- the music now known to the world as 'American Popular Song'." It's definitely another handy site to have bookmarked if you have interest in older jazz styles.

Though the site design is a bit dated, with that late-1990s, early-World Wide Web look, it still functions perfectly well, allowing you to search "by band, musician, song, or keyword to learn about the big band era in this country and abroad; study chords; find out about Dixieland, jazz, the Harlem scene, swing,and Latin bands; learn dances; see the charts; find working bands; and lots more." Whether you're a longtime fan doing research on some old favorites; a relative novice seeking to learn more about the historic importance of big bands to American music; or just somebody who enjoys the sound of fifteen or twenty musicians swinging together, there's certainly lots of useful information to be found at The Big Bands Database.

StLJN jazz site of the week: Point of Departure

The StLJN jazz site of the week is Point of Departure, the "online music journal" published by veteran jazz writer and editor Bill Shoemaker. POD is set up like a magazine, with new content coming online once a month in regular categories that include a review section, columns, a roundtable discussion and more. It is especially strong in its coverage of more adventurous and/or experimental artists in the U.S. and Europe, so if you have an interest in those aspects of the contemporary jazz scene, you'll definitely want to check it out.

(Edited 4/9/08 to ungarble the last sentence.)

StLJN jazz site of the week: The Red Hot Jazz Archive

The first three sites touted here so far as "jazz sites of the week" have all fallen into the general category of blogs, but obviously there also are many useful jazz reference sites, histories, educational resources and more out there on the Net. And so, beginning with this, our fourth installment of this feature, I'll occasionally attempt to point out some of those as well, starting with this week's StLJN jazz site of the week, the Red Hot Jazz Archive.

The Red Hot Jazz Archive provides a very handy and thorough overview of early jazz before 1930, with biographies and photos of key musicians, both famous and relatively obscure, plus an extensive collection of audio clips and recordings that let you actually hear them play. Although the clips are presented in Real Audio format, which has drawbacks in terms of both fidelity and usability, it's great to be able to access such a wealth of material for free, and this feature really helps make the site stand out.

If you're at all interested in the early years of jazz, or any of the specific musicians from that era, the Red Hot Jazz Archive is an excellent starting point to learn more and well worth a visit and/or bookmark.