Interview News

How I Got Here: From music student to jazz master

Source: Michael Ricci
July 18, 2010

How I Got Here" is a series of conversations with newsmakers about the path they took to their present place In America.

(CNN)--Jason Moran is a jazz musician who has one foot in the past, one in the future and a career grounded in the present. From the past, Moran has built on the tradition of Thelonious Monk and other jazz greats. For the future, Moran looks to a new crop of musicians, teaching the next group of performers. In ...

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The Argentine Invasion, PT. 2: Richard Nant

Source: Inverted Garden by Eric Benson
July 17, 2010

When Guillermo Klein plays the Village Vanguard next month, his old friend and collaborator Richard Nant will be coming along. The trumpeter/percussionist Nant has been a fixture in Klein's flagship group, Los Guachos, for as long as its been in existence; and he's also a crucial contributor to Base de Nave, the band the Vanguard will host this time around.

In Buenos Aires, Nant leads his own ensemble, Argentos—a vigorous unit that deploys its horns in an intricate, constantly shifting ...

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Finally, Myspace Rolls out Redesigned Profiles

Source: HypeBot
July 17, 2010

MySpace has long been criticized for poor design and as part of a turnaround effort, the struggling social networker has finally done something about it.  The new profiles are not available throughout the site, but Sean Percival, MySpace's VP of Online Marketing, tweeted about his own “clean new" profile early on Friday.

“We're testing a new look and feel of our site among users and the response so far has been positive," according to a MySpace spokesperson. “As always, we're ...

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The Case for Hubert Laws

Source: The Independent Ear by Willard Jenkins
July 17, 2010

The 2011 class of National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters, the highest honor this country bestows on living jazz artists and advocates, is not without controversy. There's been much conversation about the unprecedented elevation of the entire Marsalis Family; and just the other day while doing some research at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University's Newark campus, I overheard two musicians debating the merits of Johnny Mandel being named a NEA Jazz Master to represent the composer/arranger's ...

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He Just Keeps Gettin' Up: Pianist/Composer/Bandleader Orrin Evans

Source: The Independent Ear by Willard Jenkins
July 17, 2010

Last Tuesday evening at the Jazz Standard, fortified by a plate of succulent ribs and amidst an appreciative audience, sonic rewards were plentiful from pianist Orrin Evans once again offering ample evidence that his arc continues on the rise. That evening and the next at the agreeable East Side joint, Evans piloted a rough & ready quartet with Eric Revis on bass, that Buddah of zest-for-life drumming Ralph Peterson, and the too often overlooked, ever-dapper tenor man Tim Warfield. Casually ...

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Interview: Paul Bacon (Part 4)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
July 17, 2010

I should have told you this from the start but Paul Bacon has had a second career that has been even bigger than his first. Paul is perhaps best known today not as an LP-cover art director but as the inventor of book jacket design as we know it. Starting in the late 1950s, he has designed more than 7,000 covers, many of which were bestsellers, including Catch-22, Portnoy's Complaint, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Andromeda Strain and ...

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"Pay Attention!" Celebrating Jake Hanna (August 8, 2010)

Source: Jazz Lives by Michael Steinman
July 17, 2010

The greatest artists have a way of making us comfortable. We see them, unannounced, come on the stage, and we relax and get ready to be delighted. “This is going to be wonderful!" we think, before the first note has been played. Hank Jones and Milt Hinton and Ruby Braff and Vic Dickenson and another dozen others always evoked that feeling. And Jake Hanna.

Jake lifted up every session with his beautiful sound, his floating, encouraging time, his own delight ...

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Mike Durham's Brilliant Idea (Another One!)

Source: Jazz Lives by Michael Steinman
July 17, 2010

Mike Durham is not only a fine trumpet player and soulful man. He's also the embodiment of musical generosity--with his wife Patti (herself inimitable) he has given the world twenty Whitley Bay International Jazz Festivals. The 2010 one was announced as the final one, and I think all the musicians and listeners had their joy tinged by a certain melancholy: to paraphrase Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar, “Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Whitley Bay?"

Yes and ...

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