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A Holiday Gift, Delivered 50 Years After Its Creation
Source:
Ken Franckling's Jazz Notes
A couple of months before his death on July 6, 1971, beloved jazz trumpeter and popular entertainer Louis Armstrong made what turned out to be his final recording. It's never been heard by the public until now Armstrong turned on the reel-to-reel tape recorded in his home in the Corona section of Queens NY recorded a nostalgic spoken-word version of the classic Samuel Clement Moore poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” Nobody is certain of his motivation. As a busy, ...
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The Beatles: 'Revolver' Reissue
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Revolver was recorded between April and June in 1966 and released that August 5th. I was 9 when Revolver came out but the album never wound up in my hands. I'm not sure why. The omission might have had to do with my gift-giving extended family's disapproval of an album named for a gun. Or maybe it was because I was in day camp that July. Or perhaps it was the confusion created by the minuscule gap between Yesterday and ...
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Ramsey Lewis Celebrates The Music Of The Fab Four With Posthumous CD 'The Beatles Songbook,' His First Solo Piano Recording, Due Jan. 6
Source:
Terri Hinte Publicity
The late, legendary pianist Ramsey Lewis offers an intimate, familiar affair with his solo piano recording The Beatles Songbook: The Saturday Salon Series, Volume One, to be released January 6 on Steele Records. This selection of tunes by the iconic songwriting duo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, approved for release by Lewis, is also a surprising DIY project, created during livestreamed sessions in Lewis’s own Chicago home. Lewis, of course, is no stranger to covering of postwar pop music. ...
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Backgrounder: Milt Bucker's 'Block Chords Parade'
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
What are block chords? That's when a pianist (or guitarist) plays a melody with chords rather than individual notes. This is done with the top note of the chord playing the melody line with chord notes below creating the harmony. Block chords are often played on piano with a “locked hands" technique, when both hands play block chords in unison or lock-step. To illustrate, let's visit with the great Dick Hyman... As Dick notes, Milt Buckner pioneered the block-chords sound, ...
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Backgrounder: Dave Pell Octet 'Plays Rodgers & Hart'
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
I received so much email yesterday about the octet format that I figured I'd end the week with a Backgrounder by the Dave Pell Octet. The octet's arrangements in the 1950s were designed to give the eight musicians a West Coast big band sound—a miniaturized Les Brown Orchestra if you will. Prior to Dave Pell, there was the Dave Brubeck Octet in San Francisco in 1950. And that's it if you type “octet" into Tom Lord's Jazz Discography. There were ...
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Florian Ross Octet: Tunes & Explorations
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
I love jazz octets. More than any other ensemble configuration, an octet shows off an arranger's stuff. Unlike a big band, an octet is fully exposed, with individual instruments coming and going rather than full sections broken into chords. In many ways, octets are little big bands—the skeletal version. As a listener, you get to hear the busy shifts of a chart more vividly than a big band's brass and horn sections. Because they're exposed, octet arrangements either sound great ...
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Now Available: Premiere Recording Of Anthony Davis's Malcolm X Opera Starring Davone Tines
Source:
AMT Public Relations
“The work is gripping, and it is unlike any other opera... X is a work that deserves to enter the American repertory... not just a stirring and well-fashioned opera but one whose music adds a new, individual voice to those previously heard in our opera houses.” —The New Yorker “Poignant…forceful…resonant” —The Boston Globe “A riveting and uncompromising work” —The New York Times Known as the nation’s foremost label launched by an orchestra and devoted exclusively to new music, Grammy Award-winning ...
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Ovision - Eclectic Art Concept Album - Featuring Fabrizio Bosso and Roc Flowers
Source:
Scott Thompson Public Relations
Eclectic art in a concept album isn’t the most common way to approach music in 2022. This didn’t stop the creators of Ovision when it came to truly expressing themselves with music. A musical journey into the world of new jazz, hip hop, experimental soul and progressive rock Ovision aims to leave its listeners perplexed, in an overdose of creative influx, leaving them with something close to a spiritual experience. A project that you would have to use a lot ...
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