Home » Jazz News

Jazz News

Timely announcements covering new album releases, tours, concert series, special events, job postings, crowdfunding campaigns and more. You can find more news by searching our website, viewing our news stream, seeing what's trending or reading our blog posts. Subscribe to our news RSS feed and/or embed AAJ news content on your website or blog. Learn about our news service here. Submit news here.

Festival

A Movable Feast of a Festival

Source: Michael Ricci
June 15, 2010

The best way to fight a pervasive assumption is to pretend it doesn't exist. The organizers of the first Undead Jazzfest, which ran Saturday and Sunday night at three clubs in the center of the West Village.

Le Poisson Rouge, Sullivan Hall, and Kenny's Castaways are not necessarily hostile to the idea that jazz audiences like to sit and stay in one place and enjoy a set from beginning to end in silence and then go home. They're just not ...

Continue Reading

TV / Film

Christopher Nolan's Dim View of a Hollywood Craze: 'I'm Not a Huge Fan of 3-D'

Source: Michael Ricci
June 15, 2010

Christopher Nolan, speaking at the Hero Complex Film Festival, was cheered loudly by the audience when he made a moviegoer confession: “I'm not a huge fan of 3-D."

The director of “The Dark Knight" added that, after doing 3-D tests, his new film “Inception" will not be released in the trendy stereoscopic format because “we didn't have time to do it to the standards that I would be happy with." Then, the professorial 39-year-old filmmaker, who burst on the scene ...

Continue Reading

Obituary

Carpenters' Lead Guitarist Tony Peluso Dies

Source: Michael Ricci
June 15, 2010

Tony Peluso, lead guitarist for the Carpenters and a Motown and Latin music producer, died June 5 in Los Angeles of heart disease. He was 60.

Peluso was with the band for 12 years, beginning with single “Goodbye to Love" in 1972, touring the world with siblings Richard and Karen Carpenter and recording many albums. After Karen Carpenter's death in 1983, Peluso segued to producing and engineering records. Partnered for a decade with the head of A&R at Motown Records, ...

Continue Reading

TV / Film

Federal Commission Approves Box-Office Futures Trading

Source: Michael Ricci
June 15, 2010

Box-office futures have passed a final regulatory hurdle, clearing the way for the first bets to be placed in the near future, and overcoming objections by Hollywood that sought to block it.

In a 3-2 vote, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Monday afternoon approved a contract created by the company Media Derivatives that would allow traders to bet on the gross receipts that a movie pulls in during its opening weekend. Media Derivatives already won CFTC approval for the ...

Continue Reading

Recording

Denise Donatelli: One of the Best Jazz Singers

Source: All About Jazz
June 15, 2010

I've been DJ'ing a jazz radio show for almost 20 years now and I always love “discovering" a new artist. Quite often, those “new" artists have been performing for years, and I just haven't been fortunate enough to hear them.

One such artist is Denise Donatelli. Born to a musical family in Allentown, Pa., Denise started playing piano at three. She studied classical piano for years and won several awards. However, she discovered early on that her real “love" was ...

Continue Reading

Music Industry

Playing in the Pits

Source: All About Jazz
June 15, 2010

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to play in the orchestra pit for a West End musical?

Christopher Fish, the cellist who plays in Oliver, has been playing in West End shows for nine years. He's played in 6 shows back to back. You'll find his name on the CDs of the cast recordings of My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins, The Witches of Eastwick and, of course, Oliver. When I got in touch with Chris to ask ...

Continue Reading

Technology

Reblog This at Your Own Legal Risk

Source: Michael Ricci
June 15, 2010

Bloggers rip, reuse and rehash text and media from the entrails of the Internet all the time, but the legality of doing so remain contentious. Legal questions aside, the major blogging platforms have come to facilitate the reproduction of content from other websites.

Last week, WordPress, the top host of blogs, added a “reblog" feature. Clicking that button composes a new post housed on your blog suffixed with the headline, description, thumbnail and link to the source material -- a ...

Continue Reading

Music Industry

Tonys Celebrate Commerce, Not Art

Source: Michael Ricci
June 15, 2010

In Tony Awards voters' eyes, box-office potential and Hollywood celebrity trump quality and innovation.

Awards should be aspirational, validating excellence and originality even though each and every one of us knows that commercialism rules the day. But far be it from the ever-insecure Tony's the geeky glee club representative of the major entertainment awards to bite the hand that feeds it. For the third year in a row the best musical award went not to the work that deserved it ...

Continue Reading