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Shimon Israel
Member Since: 2017 | Location: San Antonio | Page Views: 1,674 
About Me
Lifetime jazz lover; inherited my taste from my father.
Growing up in [what is now] Zimbabwe, we only had limited jazz releases in the stores. My earliest recollection is my dad's copy of Benny Goodman's Carnegie Hall concert. The concert was distilled into one LP at that time but I knew every note of it and still do, even at 74 years old. In my early teens, I also developed a lifelong love of Bossa Nova and Brazilian Jazz in particular. When I visited New York in 1977, I felt as if I'd come home. I blissed out on multiple jazz events and returned in 1979 (from Cape Town) to live in permanently in NYC. I discovered Latin Jazz and Salsa from listening to WBGO; so today, small combo jazz (think Ahmad Jamal and his trio), big band (think Basie, Ellington, Lincoln Jazz Center Orchestra), Latin and Brazilian are my favorite listening genres. At least once a month, I watch a video of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. performed by a full orchestra. YouTube is an incredible resource for those performances, as it is for music in general. I record music from YouTube, CDs, and radio, storing MP3 and FLAC files on a network storage device so I can play music from the library on my phone, tablet, PCs, etc. I do spend a lot of time curating - tagging the files with the artists, composers, dates, etc. All that information is hard to find without physical LPs. Discogs is a very good source. AllAboutJazz is a phenomenal resource and Michael Ricci is doing music a phenomenal service.
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This page was last updated on 2026-06-25.
