Sunday Session: October 18, 2020

Charles McPherson

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

* The Many Instruments of Stanley Crouch, Who Transformed the Entirety of Jazz and Cultural Criticism (Mother Jones)
* Wynton Marsalis Says Cultural Con Jobs Began Long Before Trump (The Daily Beast)
* Late night TV musicians push for parity in pay, health care and residuals (KCRW)
* Alone Together: A Q&A with Pianist Benny Green (SFJAZZ.org)
* Philly’s jazz community improvising to deal with COVID-19 (Philadelphia Inquirer)
* Visionary who turned down a gig with Miles Davis and pivoted to cardiology (among other pursuits) is subject of Philly ICA show (Philadelphia Inquirer)
* The company that has a monopoly on ice cream truck music (TheHustle.co)
* Charles McPherson Straddles The Artistic Fence (DownBeat)
* Stevie Wonder Releases First New Music in 15 Years (Rolling Stone)
* He Helps Folk Musicians Stay Alive (Ozy.com)
* Sheet music sales soar 25% as UK turns to piano practice during Covid lockdown (INews.co.uk)
* Theo Croker Exemplifies This Moment In Jazz (DownBeat)
* Mary Halvorson: New York City and the Pull of the Moon (BarryCleveland.com)
* The Spiritual Power of Pharoah Sanders (TheVinylFactory.com)
* Diana Krall Reflects on Her Creative Process, Her Late Producer, and an Emotive New Album (WBGO)
* 50 Years Ago B.B. King's 'Indianola Mississippi Seeds' Retooled R&B (PopMatters.com)
* An Oral History Of Tom Petty’s Landmark 1994 Album, ‘Wildflowers’ (Uproxx.com)
* Billy Childs Engages The Vastness Of Music (DownBeat)
* A Love Supreme: Carlos Santana and Cindy Blackman Santana on Coltrane, Miles and Making Music Together (Jazziz)
* Gearhead: Memories of the Guitorgan (Jazz Times)
* Field Studies: Manfred Eicher, Founder of ECM Records, Picks His Top Five Blue Note Albums (WBGO)
* Field Studies: Don Was, President of Blue Note Records, Picks His Top Five ECM Albums (WBGO)
* Are We Reaching Peak Streaming Subscriptions? (Billboard)
* Michael Cuscuna: In The Vault Playing God (AllAboutJazz.com)
* The Tragedy of Stanley Crouch (Counterpunch.org)
* Randy Brecker: Overdue Ovation (Jazz Times)
* “AngelHeaded Hipster”: Hal Willner Does T. Rex (The New Yorker)

Sunday Session: October 4, 2020

Dorothy Ashby

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

* The Stanley Crouch I Knew (New York Review of Books)
* Cecil Taylor and his Mendota Players – Snapshots. By Paul Ruppa (The Wire)
* Captain Beefheart’s ’10 commandments of guitar playing’ (FarOutMagazine.co.uk)
* Deep algebra for deep beats: The beautiful sounds of musical programming (Ars Technica)
* Wire Playlist: Musician-Owned Record Labels In Jazz In The 1970s (The Wire)
* Dorothy Ashby: Pioneering Jazz Harpist (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* The Death and Rebirth of the Rock Saxophone (TrebleZine.com)
* In Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company, An Overlooked Institution of Moog Music (Bandcamp.com)
* John Hollenbeck Takes Back Recordings And Forges Ahead (DownBeat)
* What It’s Like to Be Black in Indie Music (Pitchfork.com)
* New Dave Brubeck Releases in Fall Pipeline (Jazz Times)
* ‘The Story I’m Telling’: An Interview with Archie Shepp (New York Review of Books)
* Sharel Cassity Is ‘Fearless’ Amid Recovery (DownBeat)
* North Philly activist, poet, and musician Moor Mother on her free jazz musical, Afrofuturism, and Patti LaBelle (Philadelphia Inquirer)
* Antidote to Isolation - Vijay Iyer On How Music Reconnects Us In A Socially Distant World (Steinway.com)
* “This is more than an annoying blip.” Aaron Liddard’s perspective on the future of the music industry (London Jazz News)
* Arlo Guthrie on His Dad, Protesting, and “Alice’s Restaurant” (UnderTheRadarMag.com)
* Wire Playlist: Tashi Dorji (The Wire)
* The Futility of Rolling Stone’s Best-Albums List (The New Yorker)
* A Deep Dive into John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' by His Biographer, Lewis Porter (Pt. 3) (WBGO)
* Harlem of the West: San Francisco's Fillmore District (PleaseKillMe.com)
* Maria Schneider: A Tale Of Two Worlds (Jazz Times)
* The Canterbury Scene: How A Bunch of Bookish Bohemians Became The Monty Pythons of Prog (UDiscoverMusic.com) * JT Video Premiere: The Love Letter Sessions by Jimmy Heath (Jazz Times)
* The True Poet of Jazz (City-Journal.org)

Sunday Session: September 20, 2020

Tomeka Reid

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

* Hawaii Passes the ‘Truth in Music Advertising Act’ to Prevent ‘Imposter Performers’ That Claim to Be Classic Bands (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* Book Review: Crime and Espionage — to the Sounds of Jazz (ArtsFuse.org)
* Discovering—and Preserving—the Earliest Known Stereo Recordings (Pro Sound News)
* Chick Corea bonus Q&A: What he learned playing with Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Stan Getz and others (San Diego Union Tribune)
* New Billie Holiday Documentary to Open in November (VIDEO) (Jazz Times)
* Why the struggle of small venues will affect the entire music industry (MidiaResearch.com)
* LJ Talks to Ricky Riccardi, Author of "Heart Full of Rhythm: The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong" (Library Journal)
* 55 Years Ago: Otis Redding Sets a New Standard With ‘Otis Blue’ (UltimateClassicRock.com)
* Visa fees for foreign artists touring the US to increase by over 50% (NME.com)
* The Thrills and Frustrations of a Rediscovered Thelonious Monk Recording (The New Yorker)
* Remembering Bassist Gary Peacock, with a Recent Conversation on The Checkout (WBGO)
* Fridays at Five: A Look Behind the Scenes (SFJAZZ.org)
* Stanley Crouch, Towering Jazz Critic, Dead At 74 (NPR)
* Bootsy Collins Collaborates With George Benson, Branford Marsalis And More On ‘The Power Of The One’ (DownBeat)
* Is Richard Wagner Simultaneously the Most Controversial and Influential Composer Ever? (Pitchfork.com)
* How South Africa’s Blue Notes Helped Invent European Free Jazz (Bandcamp.com)
* Stanley Crouch 1945–2020 (Jazz Times)
* Musicians Are Surviving the Pandemic by Giving (and Receiving) Virtual Lessons (Pitchfork.com)
* Vinyl frontier: The story behind one of the rarest records in the universe (TheVinylFactory.com)
* I saw a different side of Stanley Crouch (TheUndefeated.com)
* Late Night TV Show Musicians Sign Open Letter to Networks Asking for "Economic Parity" (Hollywood Reporter)
* Jazz cellist Tomeka Reid to make debut as Mills professor with virtual show (San Francisco Chronicle)
* Toto, ELO, Queen ... why hits from happier times top Covid lockdown playlists (The Guardian)
* The Sheer Force Of Artemis (DownBeat)
* The Greenwich Village jazz scene is scrambling to stay alive (Time Out New York)
* Beyond High Concept, Beyond Algorithms: Classical Recording Artists Go “Off the Leash” (WQXR)
* Retired Victoria broadcaster finds long-lost tapes of Joni Mitchell recording session (Victoria Times Colonist)
* Meet the NEA Jazz Masters, Class of 2020 (NPR)

Miles on Monday: Looking back at the electric music of Miles Davis

When Miles Davis went electric in the late 1960s, his new direction sparked discussion and controversy that persist into the present day. The trumpeter's electric music has been the subject of an uncountable number of conversations, reviews and critical essays, as well as a couple of books that supplement their examinations of the topic with websites offering a lot of additional material to consider.

Miles Beyond: The Electric Explorations of Miles Davis 1967-1991, written by Paul Tingen and published in 2001, is based on interviews with musicians who worked with Davis. The accompanying web site offers samples from the book, as well as news updates, photographs, memorabilia, and 50,000 additional words of articles.

The Last Miles is a 2005 book by George Cole that focuses specifically on Davis' final decade from 1981 to 1991. It's based on interviews with band members (from that time period and before), producers, engineers, members of Miles’ road crew, photographers, and video directors who worked with Davis. As with Miles Beyond, the book's website includes samples from the text as well as lots of supplemental material that's been added since publication, adding up to hours worth of reading.

For another perspective on Davis' electric music from someone who was a participant in it, check out the discussion in the embedded video windows below. It's a debate that took place in 2010 at the Amistad Center for Art & Culture in Hartford, CT between James "Mtume" Forman, the percussionist and producer who worked with Davis in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and author and critic Stanley Crouch, who remains skeptical of the trumpeter's work after 1967.