Performance / Tour News

For Louis: Birdland, April 14, 2010

Source: Jazz Lives by Michael Steinman
April 16, 2010

Its very simple.  For just about ten years, David Ostwald (tubaist-raconteur) has organized regular Wednesday jazz sessions at Birdland in midtown Manhattan, getting congenial friends together to honor Louis Armstrong.  Depending on the phase of the moon, the band is called either the GULLY LOW JAZZ BAND or the LOUIS ARMSTRONG CENTENNIAL BAND.  Names dont matter much GULLY LOW BLUES was one of Louiss most stirring recordings of 1927, and the CENTENNIAL BAND plays music associated with The Master.

David ...

Continue Reading...

Upcoming Tour Dates for Bassist/Composer Michael Janisch

Source: Two for the Show Media
April 16, 2010

Bassist and Composer Michael Janisch hits the road again this month with a nationwide (UK) sextet tour promoting the release of his critically acclaimed album “Purpose Built." On these dates he has arranged his music to feature the saxophone team of Joel Frahm matched with two of England's top reedsmen: Alex Garnett and Nigel Hitchcock. The tour spans over a dozen dates including 2 at London's Pizza Express as part of Janisch's monthly creative jazz residency, which will feature the ...

Continue Reading...

Baaba Maal from Senegal to Royce Hall

Source: Michael Ricci
April 17, 2010

Musical inspiration can strike Baaba Maal in any place, at any time. It might happen on the Paris Metro, where he sometimes hears echoes of African drum beats in the rumbling of the train cars. Or he could be in his native environs, on the banks of the Senegal River, listening for hidden melodies in the sound of the wind and the rain. “Just silently in my head I sing songs, on the top of rhythm," said the 56-year-old vocalist-guitarist. ...

Continue Reading...

Cameron Carpenter's Organic Cool

Source: Michael Ricci
April 17, 2010

Cameron Carpenter brings his organist showmanship to L.A.'s First Congregational Church on Sunday

The player with a flair for dramatic performances and glitzy outfits gives a prelude to his Disney Hall debut next season. The pipe organ's massive physical dimensions and its potential for earthshaking sonorities make it an instrument like no other. But those who play its multiple keyboards, pump its many pedals and pull its multifarious stops are another matter. Popularly regarded as repressed or freakish (think Simon ...

Continue Reading...

Whitney Houston Bombs British Comeback

Source: All About Jazz
April 16, 2010

Whitney Houston's Birmingham performance panned by critics, fans. Word across the pond is that Whitney Houston just can't hack it. The latest problem to plague the iconic pop singer: rotten tomato reviews of her return to Britain, where she performed last night for the first time in 11 years. “Houston, we still have a problem" quipped British tabloid The Sun in its review of the 46-year-old diva's concert in Birmingham, adding, “It was not the performance fans were hoping for." ...

Continue Reading...

Dave Douglas Ticket Giveaway ~ World Premiere Performance

Source: Michael Ricci
April 15, 2010

Continue Reading...

Mike Keneally Band & Bryan Beller Band Set to Launch Northeast Tour in Early May

Source: Michael Ricci
April 15, 2010

Musician in Frank Zappa's last touring band and Dethklok hits the road NEW YORK, NY (March 17, 2010) - World-renowned virtuoso guitarist and multi-instrumentalist / composer Mike Keneally is set to launch his first full-band tour in nearly five years, bringing his ever-evolving, remarkably inventive musical vision to the Northeast US in early May for five shows in support of his latest Exowax Recordings release, Scambot 1.

From Keneally's well-documented recorded work as a guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist in Frank Zappa's last touring ...

Continue Reading...

Jazz Tinged with Sorrow as Well as Somber Beauty

Source: Michael Ricci
April 15, 2010

Melancholia comes naturally to the Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko. Over the last decade, especially, during a late-career renaissance--Mr. Stanko, a pioneering figure in European jazz, is now 67--he has distilled his art into a tersely controlled expression of sorrow. His dark-hued trumpet tone reveals itself in murmurs; he often begins a note with sibilant shooshes of air. He can make a straightforward melody feel confidential, guarded. His lyricism inhabits a haunting calm and produces a somber beauty. So one question, ...

Continue Reading...