Music Industry News

West Valley Jazz Orchestra Renamed San Jose Jazz Orchestra

Source: All About Jazz
June 1, 2009

San Jose Jazz and West Valley Jazz announced a collaboration to provide enhanced performance and education programs to music fans throughout Silicon Valley. As part of the collaboration, the West Valley Jazz Orchestra will be renamed the 'San Jose Jazz Orchestra' and will continue under the leadership of Artistic Director, Gus Kambeitz. San Jose Jazz will run the group as one of its programs and assume production of West Valley Jazz's existing concert series. The partnership was first announced at ...

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56 Years of Rust: Pell Rescues Prez's Horn

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
June 1, 2009

The following article appeared in the Fall, 2008, issue of the British magazine, Jazz Review. By Doug Ramsey

Lester Young drew on Louis Armstrong, Frank Trumbauer, Bix Beiderbecke and his own genius to create one of the most personal styles in music. In the 1930s he provided an evolutionary step between Armstrong and Charlie Parker. Flying weightlessly over bar lines, Young helped to free the jazz soloist from the arbitrary restrictions of time divisions and showed the way ...

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The Doors Are Closing, but the Jazz Bakery is Still in Play

Source: Michael Ricci
May 31, 2009

The lauded music venue may be closing its doors this weekend, but owner Ruth Price is working on plans to keep the music going.

The Jazz Bakery, a staple of the L.A. music community, will close its doors Sunday after losing its lease, but owner Ruth Price insists it's too early to write a eulogy for the club, which has occupied the same space at the Helms Bakery District for the last 16 years.

“I've been really stressing the word ...

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Band Rewards Fans for Burning Their CD and Giving It Away

Source: HypeBot
May 30, 2009

It's no secret that there is promotional power in giving away music, but just slapping a FREE banner on a web site doesn't cut it anymore. Free is everywhere. But what if the free music was on a CD given fan to fan with no strings attached? That could get pretty expensive...unless the fans do it for you. Free fan created CD's os exactly what indie band Chester French is encouraging fans to do with a ...

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Nigerian Authorities Shut Down Femi Kuti's Club the Shrine

Source: JamBase
May 30, 2009

Nigerian Authorities Shut Down Femi Kuti's Club The Shrine

Femi Kuti On the eve of Femi Kuti's tour, which begins in NYC next week, Nigerian authorities have just shut down his Africa Shrine club, much as they often did to Femi's father Fela.

The Kutis say the shut-down is retaliation for the criticism Femi has launched, in posters all over Lagos, calling for the return of electricity in his impoverished neighborhood and inciting his neighbors to revolt against the ever-deteriorating ...

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Bill Mays and Red Mitchell

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
May 30, 2009

Bill Mays and Red Mitchell constituted one of the great piano-bass duos of the 1980s. Musicians and dedicated listeners still talk about their gigs at Bradley's in New York's Greenwich Village. Their album Two of a Mind has been out of print for years, although it shows up from time to time on web sites including this one, at prices ranging from high to heart-stopping. In 1982, Mays and Mitchell made two programs that ran on KCET, the Los Angeles ...

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Phil Spector Sentenced 19 Years to Life for Murder

Source: Michael Ricci
May 29, 2009

In a quiet end to the six-year-old case, the legendary music producer is told that he will not be eligible for parole until 2028, when he would be 88.

Phil Spector stared straight ahead. It was the appointed hour for the legendary music producer's six-year murder case to come to a close and the courtroom was packed with reporters, fans and detractors eager to hear his sentence. But he did not look at the judge, take notes or whisper to ...

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Late Ellington

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
May 29, 2009

There is little question that the 1940-41 edition of the Duke Ellington orchestra, the so-called Blanton-Webster band, was Ellington's finest. Legions of Ellington lovers have listened to it so often that they can sing along with its arrangements and the solos by Webster, Ray Nance, Johnny Hodges, Ellington and the other members.

Still, I've always had a soft spot for the band Ellington took on the worldwide road in the 1960s until shortly before he died in 1974. The musicianship ...

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