Opinion
Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.
Can Jazz Survive COVID-19? China Has Tested the Waters
In the coming weeks, Frank Sinatra's line “I wanna wake up in a city that doesn't sleep" from “New York, New York" may not strike a chord. On March 17, the epicenter of jazz ground to a halt. By the decree of governmental enforcement, all jazz venues in jny: New York City announced closures in rapid succession. Being the last to surrender, Blue Note New York's closure has not only marked a complete suspension of the Mecca of ...
read moreNew Media, Jazz and Camille Bertault
A recent headline in Fortune.com read: “Why 'Success' on YouTube Still Means a Life of Poverty." Hundreds of thousands, even millions of views often result in meaningless royalty checks to musicians from YouTube (owned by Google). And yet, there are musicians whose videos on that platform, combined with a Facebook and Instagram presence, have either created or dramatically elevated their careers. While this is a much likelier scenario for a pop or a hip-hop artist, it has happened ...
read moreJazz and Assault Rifles: A Peace Barrage
I just participated in the March 24 “March for Our Lives" event in Philadelphia, one among many cities where the Parkland, Florida Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootout led to a large turnout of people advocating for an end to school violence and greater gun control, including, for many, the banning of assault rifles. You may think this violence-preventing effort has nothing to do with jazz, but I think of jazz as an antidote to violence of all kinds, a ...
read moreTrumpet Miming in Film: Mostly Jive
No surprise that filmmakers want to feature trumpet players in their films. After all, we are a complicated, sometimes volatile and, ahem, sexy cohort. I've written here about the odd character-illogical bent that movies show toward the species, but in this post, I'll restrict myself to analyzing how well filmmakers pull off the act of shooting a character playing the trumpet or cornet. Let me note that, technically, no one is actually playing for the soundtrack while scenes ...
read moreNEA Dismantling: Let's Do The Time Warp Again
In a response to the recent local and national actions demanding that President Trump rescind his proposal to dismantle the NEA/NEH/IMLS, I feel like I'm in a sorta twisted, time-warp. Twenty years ago, in the midst of the 1990s, the very same debate to decimate the NEA by a Republican-empowered Congress took place. Lots of news stories, factoids and even mythology about the benefits and/or wasted resources concerning the Arts and Arts Education clogged the air waves. After ...
read moreChuck Berry: 1926-2017
In the same spirit of the evolutionary question, “What comes after Music," I ask how does one simply acknowledge, if not pay homage, to what is beyond Greatness? The Saturday, March 18th New York Times did not do bad with: “While Elvis Presley was rock's first pop star and teenage heartthrob, Mr. Berry was its master theorist and conceptual genius, the songwriter who understood what the kids wanted before they knew themselves. With songs like “Johnny B. Goode" ...
read moreNew York Times Downsizes Jazz Coverage: A Response
The February 23rd report from the Salon website that the The New York Times has downsized its coverage of live and recorded jazz is quite a shock, and, in my opinion, a poor decision on their part which I hope they will seriously reconsider. Their iconic and highly competent reviewers, Ben Ratliff and Nate Chinen, have left the newspaper, although their reasons for departure aren't clear. Salon cites the reason for the downsizing to be a decline in the number ...
read moreShowcase
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