Jazz News

Mobile Devices Are Splintering the Web

Source: All About Jazz
February 1, 2010

Smart phones, with their app platforms, and now tablets, with their, um, app platforms, are segmenting Internet content, according to a post by Advertising Age.

Are the days of any device being able to access anything on the Web quickly becoming numbered?

Editors note: DUH! Turns out this is a Tweet, which exactly makes his point as I don't tweet, I can't read half of the web. This was posted as news on LA Times as ...

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Jazz It Up! Episode 10, Season 2: Christian McBride Big Band, Eric Person Trio, Jon Hendricks, Robin D.G. Kelley, Vintage Oscar Peterson

Source: Michael Ricci
February 1, 2010

One of the hardest working men in jazz, bassist Christian McBride, leads a big band at the Iridium in New York City for the last episode of season 2 of Jazz it Up! In the first of two feature songs, tenor saxophonist Todd Williams caresses a blues as McBride co-signs on bass and voice; during the second, McBride's uptempo composition “The Shade of the Cedar Tree," the big band lifts the groove high, as McBride relates details about his upcoming ...

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Five Social Media Tips for Indie Musicians

Source: Michael Ricci
February 1, 2010

To tweet or not to tweet. That is no longer the question.

Musicians who don't take advantage of social networking tools will soon perish in the La Brea tar pits of old-school media.

At least that's what the “social media rock stars" told the audience at an event this afternoon hosted by the Recording Academy as part of its Grammy Awards festivities this weekend. Panelists included Pete Cashmore of Mashable, Kevin Rose of Digg, David Karp of Tumblr and actor-musician ...

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Natalia Lafourcade at the Conga Room

Source: Michael Ricci
February 1, 2010

She shows a maturing songwriting and singing voice. With early-bloomer musicians such as Natalia Lafourcade, there's sometimes a thin but crucial line between precociousness and preciousness.

When this gifted Mexican pop-rocker released her self-titled solo debut in 2003, she was not yet 20 summers old. But Lafourcade -- a daughter of musicians who grew up singing mariachi and who plays guitar, piano and several other instruments ably and writes or co-writes most of her material -- already had attained a ...

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The American Composers Festival

Source: Michael Ricci
February 1, 2010

The Pacific Symphony's annual American Composers Festival explores a different facet of music in America. This year's festival -- the 10th -- focuses on “The Greatest Generation," examining themes from the Depression of the 1930s through World War II.

Programs at the Orange County Performing Arts Center will feature composers Aaron Copland and Kurt Weill as well as a world premiere of Michael Daugherty's “Mount Rushmore." In addition, the festival includes performances by two student arts groups to explore the ...

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Blue Whales Are Singing in a Lower Key

Source: Michael Ricci
February 1, 2010

Scientists don't know why, but some think the baritone voices reflect the security of their greater numbers. The whales' singing is barely audible to the human ear. Blue whales have changed their songs.

It's also possible that the low voice is just a fad.

It's the same old tune, but the pitch of the blues is mysteriously lower -- especially off the coast of California where, local researchers say, the whales' voices have dropped by more than half an octave ...

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Mark Berman ("Sex and the City") Returns to NYC's "Top of the Rock" February 24

Source: Michael Ricci
February 1, 2010

Mark Berman, jazz piano star notable for his hot montuno piano playing on HBO's “Sex and the City" theme song, as well as for his live playing with such stars as Aretha Franklin, Mark Murphy, and Wycliffe Gordon, to name but a few, brings his jazz trio to the 67th Floor Weather Room at the Top of the Rock, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, Wednesday evening February 24, from 6PM - 8PM.

The Mark Berman Trio returns by popular demand to the ...

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Tito Gonzalez and Cuban 'Son'

Source: Michael Ricci
February 1, 2010

Tito Gonzalez, Al Doblar la Esquina

Introducing Tito Gonzalez, his tres, and a long, strange trip.

There aren't many people who can claim to have cut their musical teeth while traveling worldwide as a fisherman, been blasted onto national television as part of a taxi-driver's collective of musicians, and had a government agency land them a gig playing for one of the top Cuban son bands of their era. Tito Gonzales spent his young life walkabout, picking up guitar licks ...

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