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The World's First International Online Contest by 7 Virtual Jazz Club
On December 19th 2016, the first international online jazz contest ended with the announcement of the three winners. Organized by Valerio Pappi the artistic director of “7 Virtual Jazz Club" the inaugural edition of this innovative competition was dedicated to cornetist Nick La Rocca. Born of Sicilian parents in jny: New Orleans, La Rocca, despite the controversies surrounding him, is of immense historical importance as leading the first ever jazz recording. The disc, of course, is the 78 RPM Dixieland ...
read moreThe Word is Beat: Jazz, Poetry & the Beat Generation
It is the aspiration of much literature that it wants to change the way we look at the world, but few authors and poets have been as influential as the group of writers labeled the Beat Generation. They saw a lot that they did not like about American society in the fifties when they came of age, and they did their best to change it through their literature and a new practice of living. They grew up in the climate ...
read moreUnseen Recordings: Copenhagen Jazzhouse Launches New Web Channel for Experimental Music
There was a time when MTV was the place to discover new music, especially in the world of pop, but since the heyday of MTV a lot of things have happened. Nowadays, web channels like YouTube and Vimeo are the places to discover new music and both listeners and artists upload their own videos. In many ways this is the ideal situation, but there is a problem. The quality of the videos is often poor and they are ...
read moreThe Harlem Renaissance and American Music
The Harlem Renaissance and the “New Negro"One of the most significant intellectual and artistic trends of twentieth century American history, the Harlem Renaissance impacted art, literature, and music in a manner that forever altered the American cultural landscape. The Harlem Renaissance was a movement in the 1920s through which African-American writers, artists, musicians, and thinkers sought to embrace black heritage and culture in American life. This shift towards a more politically assertive and self-confident conception of identity and ...
read moreGoodbye, Cecil's
In the hallway around the corner from the bandstand at Cecil's Jazz Club, hangs a poster for Slugs' Saloon. Through most of the 1960s, until its end in 1972, Slugs' was one of the most important jazz clubs in New York City. Unlike many of the upscale establishments that appeared in its wake, it was a small dive bar (complete with sawdust on the floor), which didn't deign to serve food. Management routinely admitted minors who weren't accompanied by adults. ...
read moreHear Me Talkin' to Ya: Jazz Aphorisms
For artists who express themselves in a non-verbal medium, jazz instrumentalists have come up with a bundle of choice aphorisms. Here are four attributed to, or about, tenor saxophonists, which were coined too late for inclusion in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff's Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1955). If you feel like sharing some favorites of your own, you can post in the comment box below. Frank ...
read moreA Merger In Jazz Education
A musical merger of higher education has been established at the last university to include jazz into their curriculum--UCLA. Jazz Studies, under Director/guitarist Dr. Kenny Burrell, The Herb Alpert School of Music , and the Thelonious Monk Institute, guided by Herbie Hancock, have all joined jazztistical bonds in providing not only jazz but all-around musical learning for all students seeking the realms of higher educational degrees in music. Jazz education was brought to UCLA when Burrell started ...
read moreCrossCurrent 3: A Cry for Cultural Development
CrossCurrent Festival 3: Press Conference Piazza Loggia, Café Aquarium Brescia, Italy June 21, 2011This space may not be the most fitting for an extended cultural/sociological analysis of how artistic expression and economical acknowledgment feeds each other, but there are events that can be taken as a good starting point for reflection. The New York edition of the forthcoming Crosscurrent Festival can be, with reasonable evidence, considered to be one of them. ...
read moreNew York's New Music And Arts Series M.A.K.
New York City has a brilliant new arts foundation, and a related music series. Nikka Arts is a music and arts foundation, founded by New York singer and composer Lola Danza and her business partner JB, of aboptv.com. The organization aims to provide a space where musicians and artists can present their creative work, and also attract money to record inventive musicians who, like most artists now, are not offered contracts by major labels. Nikka Arts is ...
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