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"What? You Know About Leo?"
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Shortly after I posted the Doug's Picks selection of Wadada Leo Smith's new CD, Tabligh (see the center column), I was in a meeting with Daron Hagen. I casually mentioned Smith. “What?" he said, full of excitement. “You know about Leo?" It turns out that Hagen, a distinguished composer of operas, chamber music and orchestral works, was a teaching colleague of Smith at Bard College and holds him in high regard. That led to a discussion of one of Hagen's ...
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Frances Lynne
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
From San Francisco comes news of the death of Frances Lynne, the singer who worked with Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck before there was a Brubeck Quartet. Ms. Lynne went on to sing with Charlie Barnet and Gene Krupa as the big band era wound down. Her first recording, however, was not until 1991 with her husband, John Coppola's band. She and the trumpeter were married for fifty-two years. She was eighty-two years old. Reviewing her CD, Remember, I wrote, ...
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The Testimony of Sweet Baby James
Source:
All About Jazz
James Benton is chock full of soul, man. So much that he can barely control it. Take the song “The Body,” for instance. It’s a boogie-woogie groove authored by Benton himself that was banned from Portland radio in 1955 because of its sexually suggestive underpinnings. Sure, after performing “The Body” to throngs of jazz and R&B lovers over the past 55-plus years, it’s no longer tops on Benton’s hit list (though the crowd invariably devours it as a dance favorite). ...
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Steve Schankman Gives $50,000 to UMSL Jazz Program
Source:
St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman
The New Lincoln Center, Act I, Part 2
Source:
All About Jazz
So what can I tell you about the Diller, Scofidio + Renfro refashioning of Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center? It's still a construction site the official re-opening isn't until February but I previewed some substantially completed portions last week with Liz Diller and Charles Renfro. As I mentioned in an earlier post, from the day it opened Lincoln Center needed to knit itself better into the streetscape of Manhattan. It was in effect designed not to. It was conceived ...
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Other Places: Europe
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Among Rifftides readers in Europe are the proprietors of three web logs helpful to those who wish to keep up with developments on the continent.
Tony Emmerson's Prague Jazz concentrates on music in the Czech Republic. George Mraz, Emil Viklicky, Frantisek Uhlir, Gustav Brom, Miroslav Vitous and a few other Czech musicians are widely known. Emmerson writes about them, but he also keeps tabs on the current crop of players known mainly in Eastern Europe. He sometimes stretches the definition ...
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U.K. Musicians Claim Copyright Coup
Source:
All About Jazz
Government to extend rights to 70 years. British musicians and record companies are celebrating a major victory after the governments culture secretary Andy Burnham recommended that the copyright term in sound recordings should be extended from 50 to 70 years.
The announcement marks a complete turnaround in government thinking, as up until recently the U.K. music industry was all but resigned to thinking that its campaign for copyright extension had fallen on deaf ears. However, Burnham told the ...
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Music is More Than Kids Stuff to Jazz Phenom
Source:
All About Jazz
While some kids idea of making good music may still be limited to an afternoon session of Guitar Hero, 14-year-old Chase Morrin is building a reputation as a master of the piano. Be it performing alone or in a group or composing his own tunes, this Canyon Crest Academy sophomore is making his own brand of noise. With his trademark black hat on his head, he plays smooth and effortlessly on the piano, fingers flying and creating cool sounding riffs. ...
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