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Interview

How to Handle Yourself in a Media Interview

Source: We All Make Music
May 13, 2011

You've spent months planning, researching, distributing, networking, and pitching your latest record, and it's finally landed you your first batch of media interviews. Congratulations! But wait! Before you sit back and relax, you need to prepare. Being prepared for an interview is not about media manipulation or being someone or something you're not. It's about communicating who you are confidently and effectively. This is why preparation is vital. Here are a few tips that will help you maximize on any ...

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Interview

Interview: Booker T. Jones

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
May 13, 2011

Not sure who Booker T. Jones is? If I took away “Jones," would that help? Yep, he's that Booker T. In today's Wall Street Journal (go here), I interview Booker T. of Booker T. & the M.G.'s about his new solo album, The Road From Memphis, as well as a range of other topics. [Photo by Jason Thrasher] Booker T. & the M.G.s was an integrated Memphis quartet that performed double-duty for the Stax and Volt record lables in the ...

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Interview

UYS: Myra Melford interview

Source: underyourskin
May 12, 2011

Interview

Something Else! Interview: Steve Lukather, of Toto

Source: Something Else!
May 12, 2011

Steve Lukather was gearing up for a summer tour in Europe when he got the news: Rare recognition had arrived for him, not just as a co-founder of the often-overlooked band Toto but—and this is rarer still—as a sideman. Lukather was recently honored by Gibson.com, the legendary guitar-maker's official Web site, as one of the Top 10 session players of all time—a diverse list that included Steve Cropper, Jeff “Skunk" Baxter and Chet Atkins, among others. So, we asked him ...

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Interview

Requiem for Zim Ngqawana (1959-2011)

Source: Chris Rich
May 11, 2011

By Thomas Rome From profoundest loss I struggle to speak of the passing of one of the jazz world's most significant personalities of his generation. South African saxophonist Zim Ngqawana, 51, left us far too early last night at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, victim of a stroke. Nowhere do the strikingly parallel cultural identities of South Africa and the United States (our parallel racial ethos, if you like) speak to us more intriguingly than through jazz. If, following the ...

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Interview

A Clifford Jordan Revival

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
May 11, 2011

Rifftides reader Debra Kinzler's notice that a quartet of Clifford Jordan's admirers will revive his Glass Bead Games prompts me to post a slightly revised version of a 2007 piece about a landmark recording that became unavailable for too long. Ms. Kinzler informs us that tenor saxophonist Seamus Blake, pianist Eric Reed, drummer Billy Drummond and bassist Dezron Douglas will perform Jordan's work in an engagement May 17-22 at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola in New York. She describes the 1974 album ...

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Interview

Face of the Bass: The Atlas of Jazz

Source: Don Mopsick
May 10, 2011

The great Milt Hinton often said that the bass is the “Atlas of jazz" because its role in the jazz band is to “carry the other instruments on its shoulders." “Bass" is often misspelled as “base" but the meaning is very similar in music, that of “foundation." In early jazz bands, bassists played the bass fiddle, the tuba, or the bass saxophone. The typical bassist of the 1920s, if he played tuba or bass sax, was expected to “double" on ...

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Interview

A Love Letter to New Orleans - An Interview with Irvin Mayfield

Source: Groove Notes
May 10, 2011

I spoke by phone today with New Orleans trumpeter and educator Irvin Mayfield about his beautiful new book, “A Love Letter To New Orleans." Mr. Mayfield talks about the beauty of being influenced by the film Mo Better Blues, musical and cultural similarities between NOLA and places like Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, and the beauty of New Orleans and the people of the city. Click below to listen to the interview, and find a link at the bottom of the page ...

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