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Timely announcements covering new album releases, tours, concert series, special events, job postings, crowdfunding campaigns and more. You can find more news by searching our website, viewing our news stream, seeing what's trending or reading our blog posts. Subscribe to our news RSS feed and/or embed AAJ news content on your website or blog. Learn about our news service here. Submit news here.

Festival

Angel City Jazz Festival Kicks Off 2 Weeks Of Music

Source: Chuck Koton
September 16, 2014

This weekend the 7th Annual Angel City Jazz Festival opens in Los Angeles. Rocco Somazzi founded the festival in order to present non-commercial jazz to an LA audience which had scant exposure to music from the more adventurous end of the jazz spectrum. Back in 2008, 13 different bands, highlighted by the inimitable alto saxophonist, Arthur Blythe, performed on 2 stages, all in one day. The following year, Jeff Gauthier, founder of Cryptogramophone Records, violinist extraordinaire and leader of his ...

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Event

Kenny Burrell Big Band Tribute Concert Benefits The World Stage, South LA's Home For Jazz And Their Education Programs

Source: Chuck Koton
August 12, 2013

Los Angeles, CA: The big band tribute concert honoring guitar legend Kenny Burrell at the Ford Amphitheatre on August 18 will benefit The World Stage Performance Gallery, South LA’s home for jazz, and their incredible jazz education programs. With music direction by John Beasley, the benefit will be an evening of contemporary large ensemble sounds from Burrell’s Los Angeles Jazz Orchestra Unlimited and Beasley’s MONK’estra. Legendary guitarist Lee Ritenour and singers Gretchen Parlato, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Dwight Trible are ...

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Advocacy

Help Arthur Blythe Fund Event

Source: Chuck Koton
July 12, 2013

On June the 3rd, 2013, Arthur went into the USC Keck Center to have a large benign tumor removed from his right Kidney. The operation was serious, as Arthur spent one week after the procedure in an induced coma in their ICU unit. His health has been a challenge for him for several years now. The Parkinson's (Arthur has been living with Parkinson's for 8 years) has developed more rapidly and at this time he is in a rehabilitation center ...

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Music Industry

The Passing of Another Great Jazz Venue: Charlie O's Closes Its Doors

Source: Chuck Koton
September 2, 2011

More bad news for the Los Angeles jazz scene. Jo-Ann Ottaviano announced that due to the sluggish economy(not to mention the sluggish Angeleno), after 11 years, she has closed the doors to Charlie O's. The jazz club, located in the San Fernando Valley town of Van Nuys, had been a favorite “hang" for jazz lovers and musicians alike. Charlie “O" Ottaviano, who ran the club until his untimely death in 2008, had always dreamed of opening a jazz club, and, ...

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Radio

Jazz it Up: New Webcast Debuts This Sunday June 26th

Source: Chuck Koton
June 27, 2011

In spite of its hallowed historical role as America's only original art form, jazz has often been criticized for “living in the past." For many contemporary listeners, jazz has been “trapped in amber," content to recycle the popular musical forms of a half-century ago. While there may be an element of truth in this observation, often times the “fresher" music these critics embrace involves nothing more than a “rock" component. Hardly ground-breaking stuff! What is more relevant for the jazz ...

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Festival

2011 Playboy Jazz Line-Up Announced

Source: Chuck Koton
February 11, 2011

By Chuck Koton There are many reasons for Americans to express their collective gratitude to Hugh Hefner. He played a fundamental role in sophisticating society's senses in the1950s. And there are the women. There is the ground breaking path Hef carved in transcending the puritanical sexual mores of the Eisenhower era. And there are the women. There is the provocative forum for intellectual debate Playboy magazine offered its readers. And there are the women. And there is the jazz. Since ...

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Music Industry

Good News For LA's Jazz Community

Source: Chuck Koton
January 26, 2011

The jazz community has, too often, endured bad news. This sad reality recently manifested in the deaths of legends James Moody, Lena Horne, Billy Taylor and Buddy Collette, among others. The loss of the music's great instrumentalists and vocalists to the ravages of time and disease is, of course, inevitable, though no less painful. Like these beautiful and talented human beings, night clubs and jazz radio stations, too, have come and gone. The Three Deuces, Birdland, the Village Gate, the ...

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