Music Industry News

Santana:multi-Dimensional Warrior

Source: JamBase
October 18, 2008

By: Alex Borsody

Santanas Multi-Dimensional Warrior (released October 14 on Sony Legacy) is a double-disc collection of selections meant to emphasize the spiritual side of his music. The usual culprits - “Black Magic Women," Oye Como Va" and “Smooth" - are overlooked in favor of more obscure selections. What sets this compilation apart from the seemingly endless sea of Santana collections is that Carlos himself was intimately involved with the selection and remastering of the tracks. Calling this album “a ...

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Aaron Parks: To the Big Screen, and Back to the Jazz Scene

Source: All About Jazz
October 17, 2008

"Aaron Parks: Seattle's Boy Genius" is not the story anymore. The local jazz piano prodigy, who went to the University of Washington straight out of junior high, is now 25, living in New York City for the past eight years. He's moved into movies, assisting his mentor Terence Blanchard on soundtracks for Spike Lee's Katrina documentary “When the Levees Broke" (among other Lee titles) as well as the filmic adaptation of “Their Eyes Were Watching God"; and Parks has a ...

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Correspondence: On William Claxton

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
October 16, 2008

William Claxton's cover shots appeared on ten CDs produced in Los Angeles by Dick Bank. The photographer's last project for Bank was the cover photograph for the 2006 Andy Martin-Jan Lundgren album How About You?

Bank sent this note following Claxton's death last weekend.

I had the idea for the cover to be a trombone (for Andy Martin) resting on top of the piano (for Jan Lundgren). It necessitated Clax getting up on a tall ladder to shoot it. ...

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Focusing the Spotlight: A Little More About Ritmo Masacote

Source: The Latin Jazz Corner by Chip Boaz
October 15, 2008

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Happy Birthday, Thelonious Monk!

Source: JamBase
October 15, 2008

JAZZ'S GRAND TRICKSTER WOULD HAVE BEEN 91 THIS WEEK

There's no one quite like Thelonious Monk. His impact on the instrument of piano, jazz and music as a whole is beyond comprehension. He's one of those rare individuals whose imagination and fearlessness break up the calcification that builds up on music and frees it to wriggle and leap in the most amazing ways. Without Monk we would likely have no Marco Benevento or Brian Haas (JFJO). Without Monk ...

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Other Places: The Guardian's John Fordham

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
October 14, 2008

For more thirty years, John Fordham has been favoring the British public with his finely-honed critiques and observations about jazz. Most of his work has appeared in the newspaper The Guardian, but he is also the author of an entertaining and informative history of jazz. Fordham is a full-range listener with good ears and a writer with an open mind, as interesting on The Bad Plus as he is on Humphrey Lyttleton. 

In a flow of 881 words, Fordham's most ...

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Side Monk: Thelonious Monk as Sideman

Source: Night Lights Classic Jazz
October 13, 2008

As a musician and a man, Thelonious Monk must have provided easy inspiration for the title-namer of his 1956 Riverside album, The Unique Thelonious Monk. His singular sound on the piano, his inability to perform in New York City for several years (due to NYC's cabaret laws), and his unorthodox compositions that sounded like urban spirituals filtered through stride and bop, nodding at some strange deity of cool, all contributed to a relatively low profile until the late 1950s, when ...

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Jazz Lives Here: Bringing Jazz Back to the Home: Hour 20 & Hour 21

Source: All About Jazz
October 12, 2008

Hour 20 By Sunday afternoon, the previous night’s revelers may be taking it easy, but many jazz musicians are bringing jams into their own homes. In Park Slope, Brooklyn, latin jazz great Arturo O'Farrill is leading a jam session with his two sons and their schoolmate. O’Farrill’s children originally did not want to be musicians, but can now improvise and hold their own. “I think I chose the drums because I figured it would be the most annoying, but I ...

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