Jazz News

Google Tries Converting Every Book Ever Written to Digital

Source: All About Jazz
January 4, 2009

CONTROVERSY: GOOGLE tries converting every book ever written to digital... Developing...

Project Gutenberg offers thousands of titles (mostly fiction) in txt format, while manybooks.net provides an impressive array of books in Sony format (as well as several other formats). The motherload of free ebooks, however, is books.google.com. The Google folks are busy digitizing every book they can get their hands on. As of this writing, they have reportedly digitized over 10,000 public domain books, which anyone can download ...

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Sanyo R277 Delivers Internet Radio Without a Computer

Source: Michael Ricci
January 4, 2009

The table-top box provides access to thousands of stations and will wake you up in the morning. Online radio, which can pick up thousands of stations from around the world, is one of the wonders of the Internet.

Except that it isn't very convenient, mostly because it's generally tied to a computer. That means listening in the same room as the computer, unless you have some kind of audio network in the house. The dream of an online radio that ...

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Daniel Nagrin Modern Dancer and Choreographer Dies

Source: Michael Ricci
January 4, 2009

Daniel Nagrin, a choreographer, performer, teacher and writer who was known for intensely dramatic solos that became modern-dance classics, died on Dec. 29 in Tempe, Ariz. He was 91 and lived in Tempe.

For him, jazz was not a finger-popping, torso-twisting genre of self-involvement but a tool to explore character. Don McDonagh --Dance magazine (1997)

Mr. Nagrins choreography and performing were craggily innovative, drawing on jazz movement and music as well as traditional modern dance and classical ...

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Alfred Shaheen Hawaiian Print Pioneer Dies

Source: Michael Ricci
January 4, 2009

Shaheen revolutionized the garment industry in postwar Hawaii by designing, printing and producing aloha shirts and other ready-to-wear items under one roof. Elvis Presley wore a red aloha shirt in this Alfred Shaheen print on the album cover for the Blue Hawaii soundtrack in 1961.

Alfred Shaheen, a textile manufacturer who revolutionized the garment industry in postwar Hawaii by designing, printing and producing aloha shirts and other ready-to- wear items under one roof, has died. He was 86. Shaheen died ...

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Dizzy Gillespie Sounded Some of Modern Jazz's Earliest Notes

Source: Michael Ricci
January 3, 2009

Dizzy Gillespie, the trumpet player whose role as a founding father of modern jazz made him a major figure in 20th-century American music and whose signature moon cheeks and bent trumpet made him one of the world's most instantly recognizable figures, died yesterday (January 7, 1993) at Englewood Hospital in Englewood, N.J. Mr. Gillespie, who was 75, had been suffering for some time from pancreatic cancer, his press agent, Virginia Wicks, said. In a nearly 60-year career as a composer, ...

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On Wax Intimate Portrait of Chanda Rule

Source: All About Jazz
January 3, 2009

I want to thank you all for your consistent support in the endeavors of On Wax, my music showcase. May we all continue to build and maintain our report. I have another major event coming up on January 30th, 2009 featuring an incredible vocalist by the name of Chanda Rule. She has played almost every notable venue in New York City and has now set her sights on On Wax for an Intimate Portrait. This is your opportunity to come ...

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Rainbow Room to Close Grill Citing Economy

Source: All About Jazz
January 3, 2009

The recession has reached the ritzy Rainbow Room, the special- occasion spot that overlooks midtown Manhattan from high above the tourist-attracting Rockefeller Center skating rink.

With business slowing and the lease in dispute, the venue's Italian- themed Rainbow Grill restaurant plans to shutter as of Jan. 12, a spokesman said Saturday. Its bar, banquet space and the weekend dinner-dancing sessions that reflect its glamorous history will continue on the 65th floor. “It's a very difficult decision to make, given the ...

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Vincent Ford Songwriter for Bob Marley Dies

Source: All About Jazz
January 3, 2009

Some claim Marley gave friend credit to help him support himself. Vincent Ford, a songwriter credited with composing the Bob Marley reggae classic “No Woman, No Cry," has died in Jamaica. He was 68.

Ford died Sunday at a hospital of complications from diabetes, said Paul Kelly, a spokesman for the Kingston-based Bob Marley Foundation.

The song, which appeared on Marley's 1974 Natty Dread album, was inspired by the Kingston ghetto of Trench Town where Marley and Ford ...

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