Jazz News

Michael Wolff Trio, Creole Jazz Serenaders, Red Clay Ramblers Set NY Showcase

Source: Seth Cohen PR
December 5, 2008

Triple Showcase at the West Bank Cafe to Feature Michael Wolff Trio, Creole Jazz Serenaders with Don Vappie, and the Red Clay Ramblers January 10th and 11th Events Open to the Public, and Part of APAP Conference as Well Three incredible bands will deliver two nights of top-notch music, with January 10th and 11th showcases at the West Bank Cafe in NYC: The Michael Wolff Trio, featuring Victor Jones and Chip Jackson, will preview Wolff's infectious, upcoming CD, “Joe's Strut," ...

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New Oslo Opera House is Really a Stealth Skate Park

Source: All About Jazz
December 5, 2008

Tricked Out The new Oslo Opera House is much more than a temple to the vocal arts. It's a palace of thrash, with as many gnarly facets as the best skate parks.

For years, architects have gone to great lengths to protect their buildings from marauding skaters. But as aesthetic trends move toward folded planes that transition seamlessly from wall to ceiling and back to wall, designers have been looking to their former adversaries for a lesson in ...

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Slumdog Millionaire Named Best Film of 2008

Source: All About Jazz
December 5, 2008

The National Board of Review has picked Slumdog Millionaire as the year's best film.

The board's picks are considered the first major indication of the Academy Awards. The win boosts the awards hopes for Slumdog, which is viewed as the independent film most likely to follow Juno and Little Miss Sunshine in Oscar contention. WALL-E was named the year's best animated feature.

Clint Eastwood was selected as best actor for his performance in the not-yet-released Gran Torino, and best actress ...

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Cadillac Records is as Flat as a Vinyl LP

Source: All About Jazz
December 5, 2008

Trite musical biopic feels like soundtrack album in search of a movie Adrien Brody portrays Polish immigrant Leonard Chess, whose Chess Records nurtured the careers of Muddy Waters and others. Cadillac Records tells the story of Chess and his company. Beyonce stars as Etta James and Jeffrey Wright plays Muddy Waters in this story of the rise of Chess Records and its founder Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody). While it tells the story of an exciting period in American ...

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Cadillac Records Got Their Musical Mojo Working

Source: Michael Ricci
December 5, 2008

In Cadillac Records, Darnell Martins rollicking and insightful celebration of Chicago blues in its hectic golden age, Jeffrey Wright plays the singer and guitarist Muddy Waters.

This feat is made even more impressive and interesting when you reflect that in the same movie season Mr. Wright has portrayed another notable real-life African-American, the former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in Oliver Stones W. The man is equally credible as a statesman and a bluesman. If thats not range, what ...

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Clint Eastwood's Grand Torino

Source: All About Jazz
December 5, 2008

At 78, perhaps the only actor in the history of American cinema to convincingly kick the butt of a guy 60 years his junior, the hard-headed, snarly mouthed Clint Eastwood of the 1970s comes growling back to life in Gran Torino.

Centered on a cantankerous curmudgeon who can fairly be described as Archie Bunker fully loaded (with beer and guns), the actor-director's second release of the season is his most stripped-down, unadorned picture in many a year, even as it ...

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Bob Dylan's "Lost" Poems with Barry Feinstein's Photos

Source: Michael Ricci
December 5, 2008

Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric: The Lost Manuscript by Bob Dylan with photos by Barry Feinstein

In 1964, Bob Dylan looked at a stack of Barry Feinstein's photos and wrote a pile of poems to go with them. And then, well, Dylan forgot about the whole thing. When asked, in the foreword, “Do you remember writing the text?" he responds, “Actually, no." Unlike a lyric repeated so many times it's hard to genuinely hear it, the poems in Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric: The Lost Manuscript ...

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Chalkers Pub & Bistro This Week: December 4-10

Source: All About Jazz
December 5, 2008

Heres whats coming up at Chalkers Pub & Bistro, on the second floor at 247 Marlee Ave. No cover for any of these shows. Thursday, December 4, 8-12 Girls Night Out Jazz Jam Anchored by host and versatile singer Lisa Particelli, with famed Norman Marshall Villeneuve on drums, this event, now in its second year at Chalkers, never fails to attract stellar singers both male and female, as well as superb players sitting in on a ...

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