Music Industry News

Other Places: A Newport Report

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
August 12, 2008

It is now called the JVC Jazz Festival, but it still takes place in Newport, Rhode Island. If the festival no longer has the jazz purity of its beginnings in the 1950s, at least it has survived. It continues to include major jazz artists among the tangential pop figures who attract the big crowds that pay the bills. In today's Boston Globe, Steve Greenlee summarizes the two days of Newport and evaluates the highlights as if he were scoring Olympic events. ...

Continue Reading...

Bix and Dick

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
August 12, 2008

A British company is releasing a two-CD package tracing Bix Beiderbecke's influence on musicians of his era. Proceeds from sale of the set will be devoted to medical care of Dick Sudhalter, a musical descendant of Beiderbecke and his greatest biographer. Sudhalter is in bad health with MSA (muscular system atrophy) and getting worse. He needs help. From the Jass Masters news release:

The CD set contains a number of tracks that are being re-issued for the first ...

Continue Reading...

When Music Barely Pays the Bills

Source: Michael Ricci
August 11, 2008

COLUMN ONE Front page Los Angeles Times Professional musicians need more than gigs to stay afloat. One way they can make a little cash is to teach their future competitors.

Tim Eckert's job requires a light touch and a measure of heavy lifting. As a workaday classical musician, he lugs a 40-pound double bass from downtown Los Angeles to Century City to Azusa and points in between.

In the most reductionist terms, I am paid to come in with my ...

Continue Reading...

Away from the Spaceways: John Gilmore

Source: Night Lights Classic Jazz
August 11, 2008

Tenor saxophonist John Gilmore, who influenced John Coltrane and helped to pioneer the challenging techniques of 1960s avant-garde saxophone, spent most of his career with Sun Ra and his Arkestra, recording outside of Sun Ras band on only a handful of occasions. His powerful, edgy style combined aspects of hardbop and outside playing; well hear examples of it with pianists Andrew Hill and Paul Bley, as well as recordings that Gilmore made with McCoy Tyner, Elmo Hope, Pete LaRoca, and ...

Continue Reading...

About The Corey Cook Ensemble

Source: All About Jazz
August 10, 2008

Corey Cook & his associates represent a diverse range of New York City's most promising artists & music business impresarios, from graduates of prominent conservatories such as The Julliard School, New Jersey City University, and The Manhattan School of Music to seasoned veterans of the music industry who've toured the United States and abroad. Among Mr. Cook's most esteemed associates is the veritable Harold V. Zinno, Jr., whose famed colleagues have included such legendary entertainers as Sammy Davis, Jr. and ...

Continue Reading...

Kenton's Big Sound Getting a Revival

Source: All About Jazz
August 10, 2008

Was there ever a big band with a more colossal sound than Stan Kenton's? The pianist piled on mountains of brass and woodwinds that devastated appreciative listeners, and many of those fans who were of college age when his orchestra ruled campuses in the '50s remain in awe of the group's prowess nearly three decades after his death. And though Kenton's name probably isn't often mentioned in the same hushed tones as Ellington's or Basie's, his group was enormously popular ...

Continue Reading...

Major Breakthrough: Music's 'DNA' Decoded

Source: All About Jazz
August 9, 2008

Peter Neubcker, the German music software engineer responsible for the popular pitch correction Melodyne, has created a program called Direct Note Access (DNA) that can dissect a chord into individual notes so that the chord can be re-formed into something new.

For music producers who use computers -- which is just about all of them -- this constitutes a major game changer whose implications for the future of music are deep and widespread. For example, Direct Note Access will make ...

Continue Reading...

Warner Music Narrows Loss on Brisk Digital Sales

Source: Michael Ricci
August 9, 2008

The company's fiscal third-quarter loss falls to $9 million from $17 million a year earlier. Digital revenue jumps 39%.

Strong international sales and higher digital music revenue narrowed losses for Warner Music Group Corp. in the fiscal third quarter, surpassing analyst expectations in the face of the industry's rocky transition to digital distribution. The music company whose artists include rock bands R.E.M and Disturbed, and pop star Katy Perry, reported a net loss of $9 million, or 6 cents a ...

Continue Reading...