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Interview: Cyrille Aimée
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Born and raised in France, Cyrille Aimée is a jazz singer who now lives in New Orleans. She won the Montreux Jazz Festival Competition in 2007, was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 2010 and won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Competition in 2012. She has recorded 13 albums, including Move On, an album of songs by the late Stephen Sondheim recorded in 2019, and her newest, Petite Fleur (Storyville), recorded with Adonis Rose and the ...
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Interview: Joe La Barbera on Bill Evans
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
There's much to say about the final Bill Evans Trio. Formed in early 1979, with Marc Johnson on bass and Joe La Barbera on drums, the trio was at times stormy, brooding and always deeply passionate. Many of their live recordings were strong and revealing, particularly performances in Buenos Aires and Paris and at Iowa's Maintenance Shop and New York's Village Vanguard. As Evans sailed slowly and purposefully toward his final days in September 1980, Marc and Joe were in ...
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Interview: 'Ronnie Singer Was My Brother'
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
At the end of September, I posted on guitarist Jimmy Gourley. In that post I wrote about Gourley's friend, a Chicago guitarist named Ronnie Singer. According to those who heard Singer, he was on par with Jimmy Raney. Whether that's true or not is beside the point. Let's just say Singer was exceptional. Born June 9, 1928, Singer played bebop in Chicago in the late-1940s. Singer, like a significant number of jazz musicians at the time, was addicted to heroin. ...
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The Beatles: Let It Be
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
In May 1970, the Beatles released Let It Be a month after they disbanded. I remember hearing it for the first time at age 13 on the driveway of my next-door neighbor in the suburbs. The neighbor was on his bike, I was on my green Schwinn Sting-Ray and two other friends were on theirs. His older sister was in her room with her boyfriend and they were blasting Get Back. The four of us listened and exchanged glances until one ...
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Brigitte Berman on Bix Beiderbecke
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Yesterday, I provided you with a link and password to watch Oscar-winning director Brigitte Berman's newly restored documentary, Bix: Ain't None of Them Play Like Him Yet (1981) for free. Brigitte generously made this possible. To recap, you can watch by going here and typing in this password: Solnicki. Don't forget to clear the existing password that's there now before typing in or pasting in the password provided. This password is good only until Friday at 10 p.m. (ET), so ...
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Lady Gaga on Tony Bennett
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
At the end of September, I interviewed Lady Gaga for a half hour by phone for The Wall Street Journal. We talked about Love for Sale—her new duet album with Tony Bennett—as well as a range of other subjects. My resulting piece went up online on Friday and the print version is in the paper's arts section today. The last time I interviewed Lady was in 2014, just before her first album with Tony, Cheek to Cheek, was released. A ...
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Interview: Lorraine Feather
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Lyricist and singer Lorraine Feather is the daughter of Leonard Feather, the jazz pianist, composer, producer, author and journalist who died in 1994. If not for Feather and other driven and talented communicators and promoters in the 1940s such as Norman Granz, Gene Norman, Symphony Sid Torin, Barry Ulanov, Fred Robins, photographers William P. Gottlieb and Herman Leonard, to name a few, post-war modern jazz may have come and gone without recognition. As I wrote in my 2012 book, Why ...
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Interview: Renee Rosnes
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
I've always loved Renee Rosnes's piano—on albums and in concert. She appears on stage, politely recognizes the audience and then disappears into a stormy world of musical energy, complex originality and passion. So it was gratifying to have the opportunity recently to interview and write about her new album for The Wall Street Journal's Arts in Review section. I've known Renee's husband, Bill Charlap, for years and have huge admiration for him. He's a gorgeous, exceptional jazz player and accompanist. ...
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