Jazz News

Alyssa Graham Celebrates "Echo" Release

Source: All About Jazz
July 27, 2008

Vocalist Alyssa Graham's stunning new album, 'Echo' (Sunnyside) comes out next Tuesday, July 29th. She'll be marking the occasion with an in-store performance and record signing at New York City's Lincoln Triangle Barnes & Noble on August 4th. From “Pictures of You, “ a musical travelogue that traces the arc of a modern day love affair, to “Involved Again, “ a previously unrecorded gem originally written some 50 years ago for jazz legend Billie Holiday, 'Echo' proves Alyssa Graham to ...

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AllAboutJazz.com: Local Advertising Options Now Available

Source: All About Jazz
July 27, 2008

Dear Fellow Jazz Friend:

All About Jazz, the web's leading and longest running jazz music destination offers advertisers the opportunity to reach “AAJ" readers locally. Now, New York venues and festivals can reach New York area readers; Bay Area venues and festivals can reach San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland readers, and so on.

All About Jazz is the only jazz website that offers geo-targeting opportunities both in the United States and abroad.

Click here to learn more about this ...

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George H. Russell Guitarist and Composer Dies

Source: Michael Ricci
July 27, 2008

George H. Russell, a veteran record promoter, guitarist and composer, died of a heart attack July 19 at his home in Laguna Beach, said Sandra Gillard, his companion. He was 89.

Russell was commissioned to write the music for “Encounter Near Venus," a children's story ballet presented by Ballet Pacifica in Orange County in 1975. He also composed music for two other ballets, “Birthstone Suite" and “Mah Jong." Russell recorded two solo guitar albums, which were combined in 1994 as ...

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High Culture Meets Low Culture in a Mass-Media World

Source: Michael Ricci
July 27, 2008

Many stigmas are gone as the lines between highbrow and lowbrow blur. But will a loss of quality be the price?

It was only 50 or so years ago that critics and intellectuals were busy constructing -- and redrawing, and shoring up -- hierarchies about what kinds of culture were good for us and which ones were bad. Literary man Dwight Macdonald wrote a famous essay about “Masscult and Midcult" -- both, he said, were degrading real, traditional High Culture. ...

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Two Amateurs, Reinventing the Wheel

Source: Michael Ricci
July 27, 2008

Patti Smith in Steven Sebring's movie about her, subtitled “Dream of Life." He began filming her 12 years ago WHEN Steven Sebring began filming Patti Smith, 12 years ago, he was, by his own admission, pretty much an amateur. He made his living as a fashion photographer, as he still does. He didn't own a movie camera. (He now does.) He had been hired by Spin magazine to shoot some pictures for a story on Ms. Smith, and although his ...

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Minimalist Man Tries Organizing a Concert Series

Source: Michael Ricci
July 27, 2008

The scheduled performers include Margaret Leng Tan.

IF Foster Reed had named New Albion, the record company he founded in 1983, after the unknown spot on the Pacific Coast where the English explorer Francis Drake landed in 1579, the notion of braving long odds to chart new territory would certainly resonate. Actually Mr. Reed named his label after a now defunct Sonoma, Calif., beer said by some to have been America's first microbrew. A comparison could be made with his ...

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Elitism is Not a Dirty Word

Source: Michael Ricci
July 27, 2008

Categorizing 'the best' isn't confined to art; it plays out in sports, cinema, pop music and beyond.

EVERY NOW and then, writers at The Times lose a word. Mainly these are adjectives subject to misuse. Some years ago we were advised to let go of legendary. Similarly, don't expect to see iconic, which has become equally cheapened, in the paper much anymore. The adjectival criminal I'd like to see handed over to the word police is elitist, especially in its ...

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Pop Music Critics Embrace the Mainstream

Source: Michael Ricci
July 27, 2008

SHAMELESSNESS IS not a problem for pop critics. The job used to require ego and a disdain of the establishment. Ego remains but many now embrace the mainstream. Is it good? They all have opinions.

Quite the opposite: It's a daily practice. Invented by rebel newspaper staffers (most notably, Ralph J. Gleason at the San Francisco Chronicle) who stayed out late and never came into the office, codified by freaks and attitudinal New Journalists, the pursuit of passionate ...

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