Jazz and the Net
Bret Primack offers his thoughts on the issues facing Jazz and the Internet...
Artificial Intelligence and All About Jazz? DIG 9000 jams with ChatGPT
by Kurt Ellenberger
As the internet's oldest jazz resource, All About Jazz (AAJ) has always been on the cutting edge of using new technologies in the promotion of jazz and jazz musicians. This commitment continues to this day with the new technology that has emerged in recent months, namely, the so- called “Artificial Intelligence" (AI) known as “ChatGPT" that has created such a stir in the media and in education in particular. AAJ has experimented with AI for content creation and ...
read moreA Virtual Community for Jazz on Mastodon
by Ken Laster
Mastodon is a social network that has been around since 2016, but has recently seen a surge in membership and notoriety due to the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk. Since that event occurred, changes in policies and politics have spurred a Twitter Exodus by tens of thousands to other platforms. Mastodon has been the largest beneficiary of that exodus. Those fleeing the bird site seem to be of a certain ilk. Journalists, artists, scientists and many jazz lovers make ...
read moreBeing Avant Garde: How to Pull Off the Creative Life
by Jeff Winke
Some appear to live the creative life effortlessly. Everything appears to contribute and help define an aesthetic that reflects a life lived as art. Everything is simple, beautiful, and just right for the moment. The cover from an unwanted fashion catalog gets absentmindedly folded into a square before being tossed into the recycling bin. But the folded square becomes a coaster for a freshly mixed mojito randomly poured into a Mason jar topped by a fresh sprig of ...
read moreThe Grand Unified Field Of Harmony Part 1
by Catrina Daimon Lee
A Wordy Introduction A “Grand Unification" type of harmonic theory, to be useful, has to be transportable over the entire terrain of authentic musical activity, covering as many stylizations and idioms as in existence. It must be diagnostic, generative and predictive. All harmonic and melodic systems past and present are idiomatically bound to one or a very few stylistic areas, and are proven to be of limited usability, except within their stylistic purview. I discovered ...
read moreSonny Rollins is My Rabbi
by Bret Primack
I remember, quite well, the first time I met Sonny Rollins. It was in the fall of 1978, when I was writing for Down Beat. For a cover story, I traveled to his upstate New York home for an interview with the Saxophone Colossus. Over the years, I'd heard his music, both on recordings, and some remarkable performances. I'd also read all about this fellow and the more dramatic episodes of his life. Although he had a reputation ...
read moreSummer Heat from Bird/Diz, and Sonny Rollins
by Bret Primack
A newly discovered live performance with fine acoustics, Dizzy Gillespie/Charlie Parker at Town Hall in 1945, and, Sonny Rollins' great new CD, recorded live at Berklee on September 15, 2001, have been instrumental in my survival this summer. Since I returned from a three week New York excursion in June (video to follow), it's been at least one hundred degrees every day here in Tucson. Of course the discomfort of a brutal summer in the desert pales in comparison with ...
read moreInternet Television
by Bret Primack
That pretty sounds cool, right? It certainly has to be better than regular television. During the fifth season of the Sopranos, I had digital cable, access to hundreds of channels, and most of time, nothing of interest. I don't like sports or shopping so that immediately cuts out a lot of channels. And in Arizona, where there are few African Americans, the local PBS station airs old Lawrence Welk programs every Saturday night. What do I like that ...
read moreAll Saxophonists Will Be Shot On Sight
by Bret Primack
I once wrote a play set in the near future, when a one world government decrees that musicians must play “the song." No other music is allowed. Everything else has been destroyed, except for the memories of certain musicians. In this petrified, angst ridden nether land, improvisation is banned and bebop is forbidden--any musician who disobeys is either shot on sight, or sent to a government re-education camp. In 1992, when I wrote this for a Jazz Theatre Workshop project ...
read moreBits and Pieces
by Bret Primack
Dr. Billy Taylor: An American Classic As a teenager, forty years ago, living in a New York suburb, I first heard Billy Taylor on WNEW-AM. He played great music, and was so cool and informative that he proved to be the catalyst for even greater exploration in my increasing fascination with Jazz. When I finally moved to Manhattan several years later, he became a regular part of my day on WLIB. Over the past ...
read moreFantasy Records: An Archive of Many Lifetimes
by Bret Primack
During a recent trip to the Bay area, at the invitation of publicist extraordinaire Terri Hinte, I made my first visit to Fantasy Records, in Berkeley. For the last quarter century, I have been listening, intently, to Fantasy releases. As their website explains, the Fantasy story is “actually the story of a number of outstanding record labels which, over the last quarter century, have happened to find themselves under one roof."?My first Fantasy releases, back in the 60s, ...
read more
Giveaway
Days remaining: 11
