My Content
Membership has its privileges! Sign up or sign in to gain full access to both All About Jazz and Jazz Near You. Learn more.
Featured Jazz Articles
Anat Cohen: Musical Zelig
In the 1983 Woody Allen film Zelig, the pseudo-documentary's main character is a man who, out of a desire to fit in, takes on the characteristics of the people he happens to be around, including, in chameleon-like fashion, turning up as a black jazz musician in jny: Chicago. (The character, played by Allen, is white). Since arriving on the jny: New York City scene in 1999, via jny: Tel Aviv and the Berklee College of Music, Anat Cohen ...
read moreEric Dolphy: Gone In The Air
Newly-remastered SACD reissues of Eric Dolphy's albums for the Prestige label mark the 90th anniversary of his birth. The recording sessions that Eric Dolphy led in the last four years of his life advanced the evolution of jazz. It was a tragedy that Eric Dolphy gave himself so completely and unselfishly to art that he neglected to attend to the mundane demands of bodily health. The impact of his death on June 29, 1964 at age 36 ...
read moreThe Bach's Beach Vision Of Jazz Heaven
Heaven for some is a baseball diamond in an Iowa cornfield. For Pete Douglas, it was a house on a beach with a jazz club in his living room, a would-be heaven also for anyone who dropped in. Douglas passed on, in 2014 at age 85, sitting at his desk overlooking the Pacific Ocean. But his vision lingers at the Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, aka the Douglas Beach House, at Miramar Beach on Half Moon Bay in Northern California ...
read moreBurlington Discover Jazz Festival 2018
Burlington Discover Jazz Festival Burlington, Vermont June 1-10, 2018 As the case with any festival worth attending at all, the passionate musiclover faces a challenge with Burlington Discover Jazz. Simply put, it's the choice between attending a marathon of events, thereby risking overload and over-stimulation, or more selectively discern which bills at which venues warrant the attention that will prove truly memorable. The latter approach invariably involves bringing individual taste into play, an attitude corresponding to ...
read moreMandla Mlangeni: Born to Be
Mandla Mlangeni has been engaged. The South African trumpeter, composer, and bandleader oversees three groups, notably the Amandla Freedom Ensemble and the Tune Recreation Committee. Additionally, his works are marked by an intense effort to explore and connect with social discourse in the country today. Indeed, from the Tune Recreation Committee's naming nod to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to the Amandla Freedom Ensemble's latest project Born to Be Black: A Celebration of the Conscious Soul exploring black identity, ...
read moreAtlanta Jazz Festival 2018
Atlanta Jazz Festival Atlanta, GA May 26-27, 2018 The Atlanta Jazz Festival prides itself on being one of the largest free jazz festivals in the United States. The 41st edition took place under a forbidding forecast of heavy rainstorms: the event announcements made a big point of stating that the festival was a “rain or shine" event. In the end the weather largely held--with the exception of a couple of brief showers on Saturday afternoon--and if ...
read moreBokani Dyer: African Piano
Throughout this decade, pianist, composer, and bandleader Bokani Dyer has stood as one of the most formidable and creative keyboard talents in South Africa today. Raised in a musical family--his father is the legendary saxophonist Steve Dyer--Bokani Dyer quickly demonstrated an extraordinary musical vision and identity of his own. Indeed, albums of his, notably Emancipate the Story and World Music, stand as modern classics highlighting the breathtaking creativity in South Africa's music scene today. As Dyer releases his ...
read moreBobby Bradford: Musician, Educator, Survivor
In 1991 the prolific saxophonist David Murray recorded Death Of A Sideman (DIW), an album that put a spotlight on the compositions of Mississippi born cornetist Bobby Bradford. A long time coming, Bradford's music was finally receiving the kind of recognition it deserved, and from one of jazz's biggest names. Murray had been a student of Bradford's back in 1974 at Pomona College in California, where the cornetist still teaches to this day. Bradford's story, however, started in earnest in ...
read moreVision Festival 2018
23rd Annual Vision Festival Roulette New York, NY May 23-28, 2018 Introduction The Vision Festival somewhat surprisingly but reassuringly stands proud as the longest-lived annually produced jazz festival in New York. While the central plank remains what the Festival terms avant jazz, it's interspersed with poetry, dance, art, and film in a way which matches rather than detracts from the music. For its 23rd edition the Festival returned to Brooklyn's Roulette after three ...
read moreJazzNorway in a Nutshell 2018
JazzNorway in a Nutshell Bergen, Norway May 23-27, 2018 If anyone should be in doubt, Norwegian jazz is thriving. Through many years, the musicians in Norway have continued to refine what might be called a particularly Norwegian approach to the jazz tradition. It is not about repeating any preconceived ideas of what jazz is, but rather a curious take on what music can be that is not bound by any genre. New forms emerge ...
read moreShowcase
-
Dreaming Spirits by Mark Egan
-
Still Dreaming by Joshua Redman
-
Meeting of Minds by Bob Mintzer
-
Sebastiana by Ricardo Bacelar
Story of the Day
Jazz has been apart of my life from infancy. My earliest jazz memories are listening to musicians like Nat Cole and Ella Fitzgerald coming over the radio while still in the crib. My mother would sing along, which helped to get this music in my ears
Read more
By Paul Combs
Member since: 2018
