Music Industry News

All That Chinese Jazz

Source: All About Jazz
June 25, 2008

Beijing - It's hot in the small auditorium at Beijing's Contemporary Music Academy, and the hundred or so students gathered for the master class shift uneasily in their seats, trying to concentrate. A young tenor player is blowing over a blues progression, earnestly reworking licks he's memorized from Charlie Parker and John Coltrane albums. His face is set in a frown of nervous concentration, and though his sound is solid enough, his fingers move over the keys too tensely to ...

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Comparisons Are Not Necessarily Odorous

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
June 25, 2008

From time to time, Rifftides readers have suggested that in evaluations of music I should pay more attention to sound quality. Like many musicians and critics, although certainly not all, I concentrate more on the notes than the reproduction. Once when Paul Desmond and I were listening to an ancient LP, I apologized for the scratches. Desmond was no technophobe; he loved the electronic wonders of his time. If he were around now, he would have an iPhone or a ...

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Live Music Thrives as CDs Fade

Source: Michael Ricci
June 25, 2008

THE MEDIA EQUATION

A little over a week ago, Patterson Hood, a guitarist and singer in the Drive-By Truckers, stood in front of a sleepy but amped noon crowd at Bonnaroo, the music festival in Manchester, Tenn., explaining profanely that it was time to, um, wake up. As he kicked into “The Righteous Path," a song from the group's new-ish record “Brighter Than Creation's Dark," it was if the space in front of him was filled with sunburned bobble- heads, ...

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Jazz Goes Folk

Source: Night Lights Classic Jazz
June 24, 2008

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ESP-Disk Returns to the Forefront of Modern Music

Source: All About Jazz
June 23, 2008

ESP-DISK, the premiere American avant garde record label of the sixties--one of the most turbulently creative periods in music history-has returned to reclaim its rich legacy with a series of releases that include reissues of groundbreaking out of print albums from its extensive catalogue, exciting previously unreleased live sessions from its vaults and new recordings that follow in its great tradition of presenting cutting edge modern musicians under the banner of “The artists alone decide..." The latest collection of compact ...

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Live Nation Rocks the Music Industry

Source: All About Jazz
June 21, 2008

Michael Rapino, CEO of the Clear Channel spinoff, may just have this whole file-sharing, iTunes-listening, MySpace-Internet-era music thing all figured out.

The music business may be in turmoil, but Rapino couldn't be happier. He is the CEO of Live Nation, a two-year-old spinoff of Clear Channel that generated $4.4 billion in revenue in the past 12 months by running concert tours - more than any other outfit in the world - and owns venues large and small, like the House ...

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Hollywood's Professional Drum Shop

Source: All About Jazz
June 21, 2008

The Professional Drum Shop was founded in 1959 by Bob Yeager with Chuck Molinari in an effort to provide the professional drummer with a place to get needed equipment repairs and shopping convenience.

Yeager had been repairing fellow drummers equipment on the road for years. With their encouragement and financial support, he decided the time was right to get off the road and open the “Shop".

Drawing on his years of playing experience with more than 200 different bands, and ...

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Is It Tatum Or...?

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
June 21, 2008

In the 1970s, Red Garland told me about the pianists who influenced him when he was learning. He mentioned Nat Cole, James P. Johnson, Luckey Roberts, Teddy Wilson and Bud Powell. Then he said,

Tatum, of course was the master. He was Mr. Piano. The first time I heard a Tatum record--I think it was “Tiger Rag"--I thought it was at least three pianists.

Garland was far from the only listener who was convinced that Art Tatum's 1933 ...

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