Megaphone

As I write this, I am sitting in the Gran Hotel Havana in beautiful Barcelona, Spain. My friend Joan Cararach, Artistic Director of the Barcelona International Jazz Festival, and the festival promoter Tito Ramoneda asked me to join them in a collaboration to cross-promote our festivals. CareFusion Newport Jazz Festival (Aug. 6th-8th) and Voll-Damm Barcelona International ...

When Clean Feed first started I never imagined that we would have almost 200 releases after nine years. I guessed that we would put out about two or three records every year and have a hundred CDs released after a lifetime.

I think one of the reasons for this thinking was the fact that we were ...

Growing up in an Iraqi-American household in Chicago, I was exposed to many musical influences from an early age: first Louis Armstrong, then Lutheran Hymns, then the Beatles, then Hendrix, then Miles. Arabic music, though constantly playing in the background during family gatherings, did not capture my attention until I was in my mid-teens and my ...

You know that party game where you present people with a forced choice that's actually a litmus test for distinguishing between two kinds of people? Here, let's play--pick one (and only one): Matisse or Picasso? Federer or Nadal? The Daily Show or The Colbert Report?

Since I am a “jazz composer" by training and self-identification, it ...

Toward the end of last year, the National Endowment for the Arts published results of its study on Public Participation in the Arts. One finding is that over a six-year period, less than 8% of Americans attended jazz events. So annually, out of some 300 million Americans, less than 2,500,000 attend jazz clubs, concerts and festivals ...

By Bobby Matos Well-informed historians and critics have stated that they believe jazz is America's only art form or its most important art form. Obviously, to music scholars and experts, most pop music derives from jazz, including R&B, rock, hiphop and other subgenres.

One of jazz music's most important styles, however, is often ignored or not ...

Like many other jazz musicians, I am fortunate enough to travel all over the globe and present this wonderful music. While I haven't been playing professionally for an extremely long time--only about 15 years--during those years I have seen quite a bit of change in the world and on the jazz scene. Not that it compares ...

By Randy Sandke We've all heard the saying that “Jazz is America's classical music." Implicit in this notion is the belief that jazz is equally worthy of respect, admiration and support as any 'serious' music. Over the past few decades, jazz has indeed found a greater degree of prestige, academic interest and corporate sponsorship than at ...

As a guitarist whose love for jazz music began in the '70s, I was understandably excited to hear a few months ago, from a most reliable source, that Thelonious Monk really dug guitarist George Benson! Benson was probably the most popular jazz guitarist of the '70s and those who know about the place of the guitar ...

Often times just being in the right place at the right time will provide us with moments that inspire us for a lifetime. We should all be grateful for the moments where someone has done or said something that leaves a mark on our lives. Here are five “leave a mark" moments in my musical life ...

By Gerry Hemingway

I am writing to offer my insights about the experience of listening from the perspective of being a musician. The art of listening is, of course, a somewhat open-ended topic that, for the sake of this article, will concentrate primarily on a few points of what I have observed and can articulate verbally ...

When I think about the radical move I made 14 years ago, switching from the tenor to the soprano saxophone, I sometimes ask myself: “What in the hell were you thinking?" Even though in hindsight I look back on my decision with amazement and disbelief, I'm happy to say that it's one I've never regretted. Becoming ...

As a child I imagined myself playing guitar. I didn't actually have a guitar, but a tennis racket sort of looked like one and that was enough. When I did finally get my hands on a guitar for the first time, I figured out that, using only the open strings (luckily it was tuned), I could ...

By Marshall Allen

It feels good to be receiving this Lifetime Achievement Award at the Vision Festival this month. Whenever somebody achieves something worthy, it's great to be recognized for it. The musicians who have received this award in the past include people that I have performed with, know and respect. I have received things like ...