Jazz News

John McLaughlin's "Floating Point" Receives Grammy Nomination

Source: All About Jazz
December 4, 2008

(Los Angeles, CA) - The 51st Annual Grammy Awards Organization has announced that guitarist John McLaughlin's Floating Point (2008 Abstract Logix Records) has been nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Contemporary Jazz Album. Winners will be announced on February 8, 2009. Floating Point was recorded in India for Abstract Logix Records and MediaStarz. McLaughlin used many of that country's finest young musicians on the recording. He likes to call them the “young lions of India." Contrary to ...

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Reminder: Rudresh Mahanthappa Presents Samdhi Unplugged at the Painted Bride Art Center

Source: All About Jazz
December 4, 2008

Rudresh Mahanthappa Presents Samdhi Unplugged 7pm and 9pm Jazz on Vine Saturday, December 6 $25/$12.50 for members Painted Bride Art Center 230 Vine Street Philadelphia, PA 19106 Phone: 215.925.9914 Samdhi is a Sanskrit word meaning that which combines or unites or the interval between day and night. In Hindu terms, it refers to the period between the end of one age (or yuga) and the dawn ...

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Grammy Awards Blow Their Own Horn with Nomination Concert

Source: Michael Ricci
December 4, 2008

The Grammy Museum will open downtown this weekend, but on Wednesday night the venerable awards brand was trying to prove it's no relic in this “American Idol" era. The nominations for the 51st Annual Grammy Awards were announced Wednesday not at some early-morning news conference -- as they have been in the past -- but sprinkled in a one-hour prime-time special featuring performances by Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and other stars singing classic songs at the Nokia Theatre. It was ...

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Grammy Reactions: Album, New Artist, Snubs and Surprises

Source: Michael Ricci
December 4, 2008

The Times' pop music critic Ann Powers and Pop & Hiss' co-editor Todd Martens discuss the nominations for the 51st annual Grammy Awards. They were filmed outside the Nokia Theatre in downtown Los Angeles immediately following the announcements.

Reaction: Soul and R&B dominate the best new artist category, with two exceptions: country-rock newcomers Lady Antebellum and Disney-trained stars the Jonas Brothers. Give the Grammys credit: In a category that has long nominated artists well into their career, this ...

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John Beasley "All-Star" Quartet at the Jazz Bakery

Source: All About Jazz
December 4, 2008

Buster Williams, Bennie Maupin, Jeff “Tain" Watts and John Beasley play the Jazz Bakery, Los Angeles December 4-6, 2008

Bandleader JOHN BEASLEY assembles bassist Buster Williams and multi-reedist Bennie Maupin, two original members of Herbie Hancock's Sextet (Mwandishi and Sextant), along with drummer Jeff “Tain" Watts, who has performed on every Grammy Award winning jazz record by both Wynton and Branford Marsalis, to play music from Beasley's 2009 GRAMMY considered latest CD Letter to Herbie, a tribute album to Herbie ...

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San Francisco Jazz Heritage Center Announces Its First Major Exhibition

Source: All About Jazz
December 4, 2008

Rare art and photographs from the Fillmore Jazz Era of the 1940s and 1950s highlight free exhibit.

SAN FRANCISCO (Dec. 2)-- The Jazz Heritage Center, San Franciscos only permanent cultural and educational complex dedicated to jazz, announced that it will be holding its first exhibition, Harlem of the West Revisited.

Beginning Dec. 6, 2008 and lasting until March 7, 2009, the Jazz Heritage Center will feature art and photography from The Fillmore bustling jazz era of the 1940s and 1950s. ...

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Michael Feinstein Snarling Sinatra Tribute Boots Santa

Source: Michael Ricci
December 4, 2008

Christmas, Michael Feinstein and Frank Sinatra: three different, tenuously connected worlds collided Tuesday evening at Feinsteins at Loews Regency, where Mr. Feinstein brought a drastically revamped version of his annual holiday extravaganza.

What used to be a campy variety show, featuring witty obscure novelties and backup singers wearing Santa hats, became a testosterone-fueled homage, “The Sinatra Holiday Project," whose title is borrowed from Mr. Feinsteins recent tribute album, The Sinatra Project.

As he did in September in the shows introducing ...

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Miguel Zenon Home in Two Traditions: Jazz and the Sounds of Puerto Rico

Source: Michael Ricci
December 4, 2008

When the jazz saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenon visits his native Puerto Rico to see his mother and other relatives every year around Christmastime, he rarely hears any jazz.

Instead hes surrounded by plena, a century-old Afro-Caribbean musical tradition, a kind of movable street-corner folksong. Plena is made with three different-size panderos (like tambourines without the cymbals) and voices singing about island myths and scandals, cultural identity, political reality, love and plena itself. Its really common, he said in an ...

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