Music Industry News

Steve Schankman Gives $50,000 to UMSL Jazz Program

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman
December 17, 2008

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The New Lincoln Center, Act I, Part 2

Source: All About Jazz
December 16, 2008

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
December 16, 2008

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
December 15, 2008

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
December 15, 2008

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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What is Working? - An Indie Label and D.I.Y. Series

Source: HypeBot
December 14, 2008

Later this week we'll begin publishing a series of posts produced in conjunction with U.S. indie label trade group the American Association Of Independent Music (A2IM) called “What Is Working". I'll be asking some of the leading figures in independent music:

The Hypebot community also has a lot to contribute to this conversation. Your comments to recent posts about the indie ...

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Obama Should Follow Carter's Lead and Bring Jazz Back to the White House

Source: All About Jazz
December 13, 2008

If President-elect Barack Obama wants to make a bold cultural statementone that resonates deeply with his autobiography and with the legacy of his adopted hometown, Chicagothere's a compelling way to do it: Teach the White House to swing (again).

That's what President Jimmy Carter did in spring 1978, casting the unique brilliance of a presidential spotlight on a distinctly American art form. Carter convened a galaxy of jazz luminaries at the White House, to spectacular effect. Eubie Blake (at 95), ...

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Pharoah Sanders: Welcome to Love

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
December 13, 2008

As an ice-cold rain fell yesterday in New York, I reached for Welcome to Love, a 1990 album by Pharoah Sanders that I hadn't heard in a few years. The Sphinx-like tenor saxophonist is best known for his spiritual and avant-garde jazz recordings of the 1960s and 1970s, most notably Karma, which includes the dazzling 32-minute-plus The Creator Has a Master Plan. But the album I pulled loose features a slightly different Sanders. On Welcome to Love, the saxophonist plays ...

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