Home » Jazz News
Interview News
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.
Interview: Steve Knopper of Rolling Stone and Appetite for Self-Destruction (PT. 3)
Source:
HypeBot
Read Part 1, Read Part 2 Recently, I spoke with Steve Knopper, who is a Rolling Stone contributing editor and author of last year's book Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age. His great tome is now available in paperback. This interview is first in a series that I conducted for an essay of mine titled “Chaos We Can Stand" and Knopper was kind enough to share his perspectives on some of the ...
Continue Reading
My Weekend with Elvis
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Last week over lunch, my editor at the Wall Street Journal asked me to travel to Memphis for the weekend to cover Elvis Week. I've long wanted to attend the event marking the anniversary of the rocker's passing. I was never a big Elvis fan beyond the 30 # 1 Hits CD. I had always assumed there was something oddly Gothic and sticky about the whole obsession. But I was curious. The more my editor and I talked, the more ...
Continue Reading
Seca and Lucas Cutaia: The Thelonious Mystique
Source:
Inverted Garden by Eric Benson
There are no jazz club owners in New York like Seca and Lucas Cutaia, the brother-proprietors of Thelonious. They're good businessmen; they're chummy with nearly every player on the scene; and they moonlight as rock musicians. One could be forgiven for initially mistaking them for too-hip-by-half DJ-impresarios, but the truth is that they're far more interested in the music than the scene, and they're fiercely committed to their club, not the search for the next hot spot. The brothers hail ...
Continue Reading
Richard Nant: Berklee and the Group Concept
Source:
Inverted Garden by Eric Benson
Trumpeter and percussionist Richard Nant grew up in the mountainous province of Cordoba, studied at Berklee with Guillermo Klein and Juan Cruz de Urquiza, and leads one of Buenos Aires's best and longest-running jazz groups, Argentos. Eric Benson: When did this jazz movement start? Richard Nant: It's hard to find the point of departure. There was a point of departure for me. Guillermo had another. But at some point our paths met. That was in Boston at Berklee. EB: You ...
Continue Reading
Juan Cruz de Urquiza: Quinteto Urbano and Beyond
Source:
Inverted Garden by Eric Benson
In the late 90s and early aughts, trumpeter Juan Cruz de Urquiza led Quinteto Urbano, one of the bands that inaugurated the new Argentine jazz. He remains one of the most prominent players in Buenos Aires. Eric Benson: What's changed in Argentine jazz over the last ten years? Juan Cruz de Urquiza: A new kind of musician has appeared who's concerned not only with being a good improviser and a good craftsman, but also with composition, with exploration, with searching ...
Continue Reading
Pipi Piazzolla: Rhythm Class
Source:
Inverted Garden by Eric Benson
Pipi Piazzolla is the leader of the band Escalandrúm, a damn fine drummer, and probably the most omnipresent musician on the Buenos Aires scene. Want to find Pipi? Go to Thelonious and he'll probably being playing, regardless of which band is on stage. Eric Benson: Escalandrúm changed its sound in the early 2000s. What was the change? And why did you decide to undertake it? Pipi Piazzolla: I'd been playing with Guillermo Klein for two years, and we'd been making ...
Continue Reading
Pipi Piazzolla: How the Crisis Changed Argentine Jazz
Source:
Inverted Garden by Eric Benson
A lot of Argentine jazz musicians have told me about the profound effect the economic crisis of 2001-2002 had on their lives. Pipi Piazzolla, however, was the man who seemed to most fully grasp the crisis's economic and cultural impact. After hearing Piazzolla allude to the legacy of the crisis during one of Escalandrúm's shows, I asked him to more fully unpack the history for me. EB: How did the economic crisis change the Buenos Aires jazz scene? PP: Before ...
Continue Reading
Guillermo Klein and the New Argentine Jazz: Radio Documentary and Interviews
Source:
Inverted Garden by Eric Benson
My radio documentary, “Sounds of Upheaval: Guillermo Klein and the new Argentine jazz" debuts tonight on The Checkout. Listeners in the New York area can catch it on WBGO 88.3 FM. (Or streaming live everywhere!) The Checkout airs at 6:30 p.m. My segment will likely start around 6:39. (I'll post a link as soon as it's online.) I didn't move to Buenos Aires expecting to find jazz. I'd grown up in New York, the jazz capital of the world, and ...
Continue Reading
