Jazz News

MOJA Radio/Weekly Features: May 31 - June 6, 2010

Source: Michael Ricci
May 31, 2010

This Monday, May 31st, we'll present another “Happy Birthday" edition of our special feature, MONDAY WITH THE MASTERS on MOJA Radio. This time the focus is on one of the most popular and active bassists, composers and bandleaders around today, CHRISTIAN McBRIDE on the very day that marks his 38th birthday. You'll hear the story of his beginnings growing up in Philadelphia, and his emergence as a leader in the mid-'90's. You'll hear some of his great collaborations with the ...

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Trombonist Steve Swell Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
May 31, 2010

Trombonist Steve Swell captures the energy of a big band in the close quarters of a small group. An alumnus of Buddy Rich's and Lionel Hampton's bands on the one hand, and collaborator with Anthony Braxton on the other, he seems bound to have fixed upon such a hybrid configuration at some point.But how an artist could exhibit such stylistic range and adaptability to begin with, and on top of that reconcile them in a career that has already spanned ...

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Theme Songs Integral Part of Classic Remakes

Source: All About Jazz
May 31, 2010

Studios capitalize on title tunes familiar to both old and young. In a year when the TV Academy nearly abolished its Emmy “main title theme" category, classic TV themes are turning out to be incredibly valuable properties -- especially when it comes to remakes.

An update of “Hawaii Five-O" is coming to CBS in the fall, and Morton Stevens' classic theme (a top-10 hit for the Ventures in 1969) is not only integral to the show, it's a major element ...

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Top Ten Jazz Movies

Source: All About Jazz
May 31, 2010

The Bottom Line: This category was not as crowded as I would have liked because there are few great movies about jazz but several movies with great jazz.

This is a very difficult epinion for me to write because I love jazz so much and movies about jazz are few and far between or just plain lousy. In the 50's, there was a trend to memorialize some of the big band greats, but with one exception, they were mostly inferior ...

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Suicides a PR Nightmare for Apple

Source: All About Jazz
May 29, 2010

How Chinese Suicides Could Hurt Apple: A giant manufacturer of iPhones and other popular electronics has a bad employee problem: they're killing themselves.

Western shoppers in general don't spend a lot of time thinking about the origins of their brand-name sneakers and electronic devices. But when a sweatshop controversy arises, it can mean trouble for companies like Nike and Gap.

So the spate of troubling suicides at Foxconn Technology Group, a major Chinese manufacturer of consumer electronics, presents a problem ...

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Camping with Qaddafi

Source: All About Jazz
May 29, 2010

Spending quality time with the Libyan dictator is in the realm of living dangerously-Risky Business.

Radan Popovic, 45, sits in the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in West Hollywood, a cup of tea in one hand, the other running through his head of thick, black hair. Hes your average, mild-mannered, former Eastern-bloc cinematographer living the Hollywood dream. A Los Angeles resident of 18 years with a hint of a Serbian accent, he has a beautiful family and a thriving career ...

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Skinbook: Facebook for 21st Century Nudists

Source: All About Jazz
May 29, 2010

The rules for Skinbook are clear: No pornographic images or headless torso shots. Don't leave sleazy comments under people's photos.

Boot out any “creeps and voyeurs," as site executives call them, who manage to make it past the vetting process for new members.

Skinbook.ning.com is a U.K.-based website that proudly touts itself as the Net's only genuine nudist social network. Skinbook capitalizes on users' familiarity with Facebook-style member profiles, messages, forums and groups. Except that, unlike on Facebook, everyone's naked. ...

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How Computers Know What We Want Before We Do

Source: All About Jazz
May 29, 2010

Here's an experiment: try thinking of a song not as a song but as a collection of distinct musical attributes. Maybe the song has political lyrics. That would be an attribute.

Maybe it has a police siren in it, or a prominent banjo part, or paired vocal harmony, or punk roots. Any one of those would be an attribute. A song can have as many as 400 attributes those are just a few of the ones filed under p. This ...

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