Sunday Session: April 1, 2018

Lionel Loueke

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:

* Spring arts 2018: Meet musician Anthony Davis (San Diego Union Tribune)
* At 93, Roy Haynes Remains a Nuanced Drummer (DownBeat)
* Roxy Music: Legendary LA Shows Catch Zappa And The Mothers At Their Most Inventive (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* Mud Morganfield Honors the Past and Chases the Future (AmericanBluesScene.com)
* A Tom Waits Listening Primer (Bandcamp.com)
* Can One Company Catalog Every Record Ever Made? (Paste)
* How Wes Anderson Perfected the Music-Nerd Soundtrack (Pitchfork.com)
* Physical music outsold digital downloads in the US last year (FactMag.com)
* SXSW: Music Journalism Panel Illuminates Streaming’s Impact on Editorial Decisions (Variety)
* Sony Music Overhauls Legacy Label to Adapt to Streaming World (EXCLUSIVE) (Variety)
* The MPS Label Celebrates a Resurgence (DownBeat)
* Jazz's Bleeding Edge? You Can Find It, Briefly, In Eastern Tennessee (WBGO)
* Chad Lawson Wants To Revive Piano For The 'Spotify Generation' (NPR)
* Experimental music's reliance on Facebook is counterintuitive – but there are alternatives (The Guardian)
* Q&A with Guitarist Lionel Loueke: Signature Sound (DownBeat)
* 'It's like being a prizefighter': the busker who went viral on his new chance at fame (The Guardian)
* How Steinway's $133,000 Spirio self-playing piano engineered a symphonic turnaround (USA Today)
* Going to concerts helps you live longer, according to new research (The Independent)
* Jazz Legend Sonny Rollins Can No Longer Play His Horn, But He's Still Searching for His Sound (People)
* David Byrne on the Music That Made Him (Pitchfork.com)
* Musicians hit by 'management scam' (BBC)
* 'I'm 100 per cent myself': Fred Hersch's life is an open book (CBCMusic.ca)
* Cal Tjader: San Francisco to Portland with Seattle a Bust (Jazz Profiles)
* Braxton Issues 11-disc Rumination on Charlie Parker (DownBeat)
* iTunes Announces All Music Downloads Will Be Shut Down and It's Not a 'Black Mirror' Episode (BaebleMusic.com)
* Timeless New York Tribute As All-Star Line-Up Gathers In Celebration Of John Abercrombie (Jazzwise)
* The Roots Of Van Morrison's 'Astral Weeks' (WBUR)
* Learning Through Listening: Shabaka Hutchings Favourite LPs (TheQuietus.com)
* The Bad Plus: Goodbye, Hello (Jazz Times)
* Q&A with Matthew Shipp: ‘Out of Nothingness’ (DownBeat)
* Wynton Marsalis Reflects on 30 Years of Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (Billboard)
* Mere Virtuosity - Variations on a Slippery Idea (VQRonline.org)
* Organ Grinding - When the audience revolted at Carnegie Hall (The American Scholar)
* The Defiant Ones’ Jimmy Iovine on the future of streaming and “stepping back” from Apple Music (FactMag.com)
* Treasure unearthed from late Houston jazz legend (Houston Chronicle)

Sunday Session: November 19, 2017

Grover Washington Jr.

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

* How Roy DeCarava’s jazz photographs captured the soul of Harlem and influenced a generation (TheVinylFactory.com)
* Remembering, With Fondness, the ‘Worst Orchestra in the World’ (AtlasObscura.com)
* Legendary music venue My Father’s Place reopening on Long Island after 30 years (Newsday)
* Pay-Per-Beat: Inside the Underground Market Shaping Soundcloud Rap (Vice.com)
* Ron Lessard Is a Noise Music Hero (Vice.com)
* Renaissance Man: The Story of Hermeto Pascoal’s Great Lost Album, “Viajando Com O Som” (Bandcamp.com)
* ‘Whisperpop’: why stars are choosing breathy intensity over vocal paint-stripping (The Guardian)
* Spatial audio is the most exciting thing to happen to pop music since stereo (ArsTechnica.com)
* A Bottle In Front Of Me: The Strange World Of... Tom Waits (TheQuietus.com)
* Hide And Seek - For a while, hidden tracks were everywhere, especially during the CD era. But thanks to streaming music, there’s nowhere to put them. Is that good or bad? (Tedium.co)
* The concert was about unity; the message was all Russian (Washington Post)
* Hip Hop Named as the Most Popular Music Genre in the US (MagneticMag.com)
* The Body in Question: Herbie Hancock in Concert (CommonReader.WUSTL.edu)
* The New Golden Age Of Jazz (Lnwy.co)
* How Basin Street Records Has Been Giving New Orleans Jazz Music a Home For 20 Years (Billboard)
* Steve Winwood On World Cafe (NPR)
* Influential Jazz and Classical Label ECM Records Releasing Entire Catalogue to Streaming Outlets (SPIN)
* Free improvisation: still the ultimate in underground music? (The Guardian)
* Nicole Mitchell on the lasting legacies of AACM architect Muhal Richard Abrams (The Wire)
* An abandoned pre-WWII Hasidic synagogue gets a second life as a kosher jazz club (Times of Israel)
* With $70M from Alphabet, UnitedMasters replaces record labels (TechCrunch.com)
* How Grover Washington Jr. Defined And Transcended 'Smooth Jazz' (NPR)
* Bassist Ron Carter On His Life With Jazz (WNYC)
* Venezuela's Uprooted Musicians: Bands Struggle to Survive (Rolling Stone)
* The cosmic messenger: How Karlheinz Stockhausen shaped contemporary electronic music (TheVinylFactory.com)
* Field Notes: GoGo Penguin’s “Koyaanisqatsi” in Brooklyn (Jazz Times)
* Jazz and Classical Treasures from the Digitized Catalogue of ECM Records (The New Yorker)
* Ben Riley, a Jazz Drummer Who Made Accompaniment His Art, Has Died at 84 (WBGO)

Sunday Session: April 17, 2016

Cecil Taylor

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

* Steve Miller with Jimmie Vaughan: Live at JALC - Blues, roots and "Blue Skies" (Jazz Times)
* Tony Conrad: 1940–2016 (Frieze.com)
* Tony Conrad: 10 Essential Recordings From the Drone Pioneer (Rolling Stone)
* This Is How Much Summer Festival Players Earn -- From VIP Experience Valets to Main-Stage Bookers (Billboard)
* See Newly Discovered Photos Of Jazz Legends Playing In Portland (Oregon Public Broadcasting)
* Bill Evans Studio Album Unearthed (DownBeat)
* John Cage composition hidden for 38 years makes its debut in Los Angeles (The Guardian UK)
* Clarksdale Mississippi’s Juke Joint Festival Is Revitalizing the Birthplace of the Blues (AmericanBluesScene.com)
* Here’s why the music labels are furious at YouTube. Again. (Recode.net)
* What Are The Odds Of Landing A Pop Hit? (TheFader.com)
* Jazz Fest Producer Quint Davis on Surviving Katrina, the 'Economics of Creativity' and Making an Eclectic Lineup Work (Billboard)
* The Cleanest Recordings of 1920s Louis Armstrong Songs You’ll Ever Hear (OpenCulture.com)
* Moog’s DIY Kit Is a Fantastic Crash Course for Synth Noobs (Wired)
* Free, Open Spaces: Brian Eno's Favourite Records (The Quietus)
* Gordon Presents Original Film Score at Savannah Music Fest (DownBeat)
* Omnivore To Release Singer-Songwriter Box Set by Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg (DownBeat)
* Despite health problems, jazz legend Sonny Rollins, 85, vows to return to form (South China Morning Post)
* Even Superlungs has to pay the pawn shop (Washington Post)
* The Unoriginal Originality of Led Zeppelin (The New Yorker)
* The 28 best jazz films (The Telegraph UK)
* Sounds of the Future: A Historical Primer on Synths in Sci-Fi Movies (Soundfly.com)
* The Untold History of Aretha Franklin's Irrevocable "Respect" (Elle)
* Review: Cecil Taylor at the Whitney Museum - Episodic and reactive, a series of unfolding events (Jazz Times)
* Cecil Taylor review – double helping of magic from free jazz pioneer (The Guardian UK)
* Q&A With Stefon Harris: A Manifestation of Artistry (DownBeat)
* Tom Waits Makes a List of His Top 20 Favorite Albums of All Time (OpenCulture.com)

Coming attractions for St. Louis include Alyse Black, Garaj Mahal, Tom Waits and Manhattan Transfer

The past couple of days have brought announcements of several concerts coming to St. Louis that may be of potential interest to jazz fans:

* Singer, songwriter and guitarist Alyse Black, who won first place in the Jazz category of Billboard magazine's 2007 World Song Contest for her song "Stood for Stand for," is coming to St. Louis next Friday, May 16 to perform at The Gramophone. Black, who's from Seattle but is now based in Austin, calls her music "indie-pop-jazz," and has drawn comparisons to artists ranging from Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor and Fiest to Billie Holiday, Maria Muldaur and Norah Jones.

* Jazz-influenced jam band Garaj Mahal has scheduled a show in St. Louis on Wednesday, July 2 at Lucas School House. The group includes guitarist Fareed Haque, bassist Kai Eckhardt, keyboardist Eric Levy and drummer Alan Hertz.

* Singer-songwriter Tom Waits (pictured) will make St. Louis the midpoint of his 13-city summer tour, stopping in our town on Thursday, June 26 to play the Fox Theatre. Waits' early music had a distinct jazz influence, incorporating walking bass lines, woozy horns, barroom piano and Beat-influenced lyrics, while some of his later compositions, with their unusual instrumentation and Nino-Rota-meets-Harry-Partch-at-the-circus arrangements, almost certainly must meet someone's criteria for experimental music.

* Last but not least, Pollstar has added a listing indicating that the famed vocal group Manhattan Transfer will be returning to the Touhill Performing Arts Center on Friday, December 19 with what must surely will be a reprise of their popular touring holiday show. As always, Pollstar listings should be considered tentative until confirmed by the venue, but given that the Transfer has been a solid draw at the TouPAC since the venue first opened, this one seems like a lock.