Jazz News

Happily Seduced by the Blues

Source: Michael Ricci
June 27, 2009

BOB KOESTER came here in 1958 because he was a jazz and blues fan who wanted to see his favorite music played live in the small, smoky clubs that dotted the city. But he has ended up doing much more than that: as the founder and sole proprietor of Delmark Records he also became and remains the most dedicated chronicler of that scene, now gradually receding into history. “I was seduced by the music,” Mr. Koester said in an interview ...

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Bill Connors to Join Corea, Clarke & White for September 2nd Hollywood Bowl Concert

Source: All About Jazz
June 26, 2009

It's official: pianist Chick Corea, bassist Stanley Clarke and drummer Lenny White will be joined September 2nd by guest guitarist Bill Connors at the Hollywood Bowl kick-off gig of their fall tour. The band, now billed as Corea, Clarke & White, will also be joined by legendary violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and song stylist Chaka Khan.

Inspired by what his friend and fellow Miles Davis alumnus John McLaughlin was doing with Mahavishnu Orchestra, Corea originally brought Connors extraordinarily expressive electric guitar ...

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Vancouver Jazz Fest: Sonny Rollins' Life-Long Search for Excellence

Source: All About Jazz
June 26, 2009

VANCOUVER - Saxophonist Sonny Rollins doesn’t take the Orpheum stage until 8 p.m. Monday, but he’s told the venue that he needs the dressing room by mid-afternoon. That’s because he wants to practise for three hours before he takes the stage. And, if things go the way they did when he appeared here two years ago, he’ll practise for another hour after the concert. At 78, the man many consider the greatest living tenor saxophonist still feels he has room ...

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The Panorama Jazz Band Invites Its Audience to Play Along

Source: All About Jazz
June 26, 2009

For the past 14 years, the Panorama Jazz Band's variegated mash-up of world beats has consistently challenged expectations about what New Orleans jazz can be. Equally at home anchoring a second-line parade as a traditional Jewish wedding, the band's raucous party music, which it has performed everywhere from Gypsy campfires to Carnival parades, combines sounds from all over the globe. According to bandleader and clarinetist Ben Schenk, the group's polyglot repertoire would be nothing without the historic discipline of a ...

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Jazz Fest All-Star Lineup Includes Tribute to 'Kind of Blue'

Source: All About Jazz
June 26, 2009

"In the church of jazz, the album 'Kind of Blue' is one of the holy relics," writes Ashley Kahn in “Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece" (DaCapo Press, 2000), one of two books written exclusively about the celebrated album. It is hailed as the best-selling jazz album of all-time and ranked 12th on Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list published in 2003. Music icon Herbie Hancock, who played some of that music ...

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Stanford Jazz Festival Returns for Its 38th Year

Source: All About Jazz
June 26, 2009

At the age of 84, James Moody may be the oldest musician performing at the 38th annual Stanford Jazz Festival, which he opens on Friday at Dinkelspiel Auditorium. But there's not a player on the festival's program with a more youthful spirit. In a career stretching back to the mid-1940s, when he first gained attention in Dizzy Gillespie's ridiculously talented bebop orchestra (his bandmates included Thelonious Monk, Milt Jackson, Kenny Clarke and Ray Brown), Moody has distinguished himself as a ...

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African-Born Lionel Loueke Next up in Glenwood Springs' Summer of Jazz

Source: All About Jazz
June 26, 2009

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colorado — Lionel Loueke brings his unique combination of jazz guitar and African roots influences to the Glenwood Springs Summer of Jazz stage in Two Rivers Park tonight. The third in the summer concert series begins at 7 p.m. at the park pavilion. Loueke joins local jazz aficionado and KDNK disc jockey Wick Moses for a concert preview discussion from noon to 1 p.m. today at the Colorado Mountain College Glenwood Center on Blake Avenue. Cost for the ...

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Michael Jackson's Spirit, Music, Legacy Outlive His Death

Source: All About Jazz
June 26, 2009

While the vultures, thieves and naysayers pick over the bones of his controversial personal life, it is only the talent and genius of Michael Jackson that matter in the aftermath of his death. Jackson is one of the most monumental figures in the history of music. He was the ultimate performer, the self-proclaimed “King of Pop" and the master of modern entertainment. His spectacular vocal ability and knack for writing songs full of hooks, combined with a massive stage presence ...

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