Jazz News

NPR Exclusive First Listens:Terence Blanchard, Joe Henry, Tim Buckley, & the New Lost City Ramblers

Source: Michael Ricci
August 15, 2009

NPR Music is presenting full advance streams of four new albums ahead of their release dates: Terence Blanchard's Choices; Joe Henry's Blood from Stars; Tim Buckley's Live at Folklore Center, NYC - March 6th, 1967 and a reissue box set from The New Lost City Ramblers. All four will be available for free, on-demand listening at www.npr.org/music as part of the site's “Exclusive First Listen" series. The entire series - which includes full albums in all genres - is available ...

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Moppa Elliott Jazz History Scrambled, with Love and Respect

Source: Michael Ricci
August 15, 2009

Theres a bustling, ostentatious impiety in the music of Mostly Other People Do the Killing. Led by the bassist Moppa Elliott, its a jazz quartet with a diligent grasp of history but an anarchic take on convention.

At Zebulon in Brooklyn late on Thursday night, the group riffled through jazz idioms with hammy geniality, like an impressionist flaunting celebrity voices. The unruliness didnt remotely make it a mess.

Mr. Elliott and his band mates the trumpeter Peter Evans, the saxophonist ...

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Firefly Club, Ann Arbor's Jazz Beacon, Closed by the State

Source: Michael Ricci
August 15, 2009

Ann Arbor’s Firefly Club, a beacon for live jazz for nearly a decade and regarded by aficionados as metro Detroit’s finest all-around jazz club, has been closed and its property seized by the Michigan Department of Treasury due to a delinquent sales tax bill. Club owner Susan Chastain said the dispute boils down to overdue sales tax payments totaling just $1,000 for the months of June and July, though the club ultimately still owes the state $120,000 in back taxes, ...

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Experimental Tech Turns Your Coffee Table into a Universal Remote

Source: All About Jazz
August 15, 2009

Stock up on coasters. A new technology combines the coffee table with a universal remote so that people sitting around the table can tap on a screen to change the channel, turn up the volume or dim the lights.

CRISTAL (Control of Remotely Interfaced Systems using Touch-based Actions in Living spaces) is a research project in user interface that attempts to create a natural way of connecting with devices. The system offers a streaming video view of the living room ...

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Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp

Source: Michael Ricci
August 15, 2009

Reporting from Lake Elsinore, Calif. — The great thing about minor league baseball is the intimate view it gives those who relish the game itself more than the race to the World Series or the high-priced superstars.

Bob Dylan offers much the same intimacy for music fans with another summer tour of minor league ballparks, accompanied this time byWillie Nelson, John Mellencamp and the Wiyos.

Their only Southern California stop was Wednesday night at Diamond Park, the home of the ...

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For Sale: Eternity with Marilyn Monroe

Source: Michael Ricci
August 15, 2009

Elsie Poncher wants to sell the crypt, now occupied by her husband, above the actress to help pay off her Beverly Hills mortgage. Her starting price on EBay: $500,000. The crypt of her husband, Richard, which is directly above that of Marilyn Monroe.

Richard Poncher's eternal sleep will soon be disrupted.

The onetime Beverly Hills resident, who died 23 years ago at the age of 81, will be moving out of the crypt above Marilyn Monroe's resting spot at the ...

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You're Bob Dylan? Police Need to See Some ID

Source: All About Jazz
August 15, 2009

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood.

Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood.

A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and ...

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Don't Let Something as Wonderful as Jazz Slip Away

Source: Michael Ricci
August 15, 2009

Regarding Terry Teachout's “Can Jazz Be Saved?The audience for America's great art form is withering away" (Leisure & Arts, Aug. 8): Miles Davis once said that “jazz is folk music"a music enjoyed by folks for entertainment, inspiration and even sometimes to provoke thought. It was Miles's music and overall persona that people found entertaining. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker were once performing together in a ballroom in Harlem and Diz was overheard telling Bird that “We better be careful 'cause ...

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