Jazz News

Sergio Mendes Carnegie Hall

Source: Michael Ricci
June 23, 2008

JVC Jazz Festival Review

Sergio Mendes is a proud member of the generation that invented bossa nova, but he has always been more popularizer than purist. Most of the hit singles he had with his group Brasil '66 in the late 1960s were pleasant middle-of-the-road pop with a mild overlay of samba. His most recent albums mix bossa nova with hip-hop and contemporary R&B, sometimes smoothly but often awkwardly. For Mr. Mendes's JVC Jazz Festival concert on Saturday night at ...

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Bassist/Composer Tom Abbs Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
June 23, 2008

Bassist, composer and film-maker Tom Abbs has enlivened not only the ensembles in which he has played, but also the New York City free jazz scene with his brand of musical activism, through the Jump Arts Foundation. An accomplished instrumentalist on tuba as well as bass, he has collaborated with downtown stalwarts Daniel Carter, Steve Swell, Cooper-Moore, Jemeel Moondoc, Assif Tsahar, Andrew Lamb and Warren Smith among many others.

He boasts a distinctive compositional conception manifest through his adventurous Frequency ...

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Michele Rosewoman Receives 2008 Chamber Music America New Works: Creation and Presentation Commission

Source: All About Jazz
June 22, 2008

Michele Rosewoman and Quintessence are again recipients of a CMA 2008 New Works: Creaton Presentation Grant. Ms. Rosewoman is being funded to write and present new music for an expanded version of the ensemble encouraging their current evolution as represented on their latest release, “The In Side Out" (Advance Dance Disques AD0353)

Besides the core instrumentation -- alto/soprano,tenor, piano, bass & drums -- additional instrumentation will include trombone and guitar. Watch for performances of new music in the year to ...

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B.B. King Liza Minnelli at Hollywood Bowl

Source: Michael Ricci
June 22, 2008

The Three Performers, Newly Inducted into the Venue's Hall of Fame, Give the Season an All-Star Start.

LIZA, LIVE: Liza Minnelli performed such hits as “Cabaret" and “New York, New York" at the Hollywood Bowl “Hall of Fame" Opening Night Concert on Friday. As the summer heat and a sense of nostalgia permeated the air, the Hollywood Bowl kicked off its 87th season Friday night with a stirring, fireworks-enlivened tribute to three new inductees into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of ...

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Jazzmobile Vocal Competition 2008; Queen Esther Takes the Night!

Source: All About Jazz
June 22, 2008

2008 Jazzmobile Vocal Competition Harlem's River Room was packed with onlookers, excited to see the results of the final round of the 2008 Jazzmobile Vocal Competition. Every seat was reserved, the bar was full and even outside, many fans had taken a drink and accented to watching the performances through the large open windows. The prestigious judges, Dr. Billy Taylor, T.S. Monk and Eunice Newkirk were in attendance as well as many other important members of the jazz community. Vocalist ...

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Boz Scaggs Tackling Standards on New Album

Source: All About Jazz
June 22, 2008

Boz Scaggs is staying on the standards path for his next album.

Scaggs -- who's currently finalizing a label deal for the planned September release of Speak Low the follow-up to 2003's But Beautiful is “a sort of progressive, experimental effort ... along the lines of some of the ideas that Gil Evans explored." Scaggs says the set features “unusual instrumentation" that includes a string trio, bass woodwinds and harp. “It was very challenging to me as a vocalist," he ...

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A Horn Blows in Brooklyn

Source: Michael Ricci
June 22, 2008

And the Band Honked On THE classroom filled with the sounds of a band struggling to be born, a cacophony of squealing and buzzing. Middle school students in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood were trying to produce the note F.

ALANA VEGTER built her credentials as a professional musician while coaching students in Brooklyn. Ms. Vegter, 25, was there as part of a well-financed experiment by some of the nation's most powerful musical institutions. The experiment is called, clumsily, the Academy ...

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The Battle for Facebook

Source: All About Jazz
June 22, 2008

Mark Zuckerberg launched an online empire from his dorm room at Harvard. Now four fellow students say he stole their idea

It's a sunny afternoon in downtown Palo Alto, California, and inside the graffiti-covered walls of the Facebook headquarters, workmen are hanging lights and arranging tables for champagne glasses. Tomorrow night, there will be a party to celebrate Facebook's four- year anniversary. But in a nearby building -- one of four sleek offices that the social- networking Website runs not ...

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