Results for "AAJ Staff"

Latin Jazz Conversations: Pedro Giraudo (Part 2)

June 9, 2011

With each statement that they make, progressive musicians show signs of consistent forward motion and artistic evolution. They reject complacency at every turn and take each available opportunity to grow into more expressive artists. As they release new albums and appear for more performances, they show elements of growth both small and large. They reach plateaus ...

The Jazz Session #278: James Carter

June 9, 2011

Interview: Berry Gordy Jr. (Part 3)

June 9, 2011

Over the pat two days, some fans of Motown and Marvin Gaye have sent along emails insisting that Berry Gordy Jr., Motown's founder, was rewriting history. Their contention is that Mr. Gordy had blocked What's Going On in 1970 and 1971 and that he had heated arguments with Gaye over its release. Of course, we will ...

Ponderosa Stomp: Lineup, Tix

June 9, 2011

ALLEN TOUSSAINT, DAVE BARTHOLOMEW, WILLIAM BELL, EDDIE FLOYD, BIG JAY MCNEELY, THE RELATIVES, AND MORE Through hell and high water, the Ponderosa Stomp Festival has spent the last decade bringing icons of American music back to the stage, shining a spotlight on the architects of songbooks that are part of our collective musical DNA. 2011 marks ...

Socmetrics Identifies, Ranks and Tracks Social Media Influencers in Topic Niches

June 9, 2011

Yesterday I took a web tour of SocMetrics, a new service still in beta  that ranks social media influencers, from celebrities to bloggers, and offers multiple tools for identifying which ones are most suited to marketing outreach. It also allows you to track what influencers are saying about particular topics, including your brand, which makes it ...

Something Else! Interview: Percussionist Bill Summers, of the Headhunters

June 9, 2011

The Headhunters, who with Herbie Hancock crafted jazz music's first platinum release, return this month with an aptly titled new project—Platinum. In 2003, their million-selling 1973 debut Head Hunters was ranked No. 498 in Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Led by longtime drummer Mike Clark and percussionist Bill Summers, the ...

Dawn Harden - A Lifetime (2011)

June 9, 2011

There is this deeply personal texture to A Lifetime, a redemptive 10-track journey through love's rocky terrain. French jazz-pop singer-songwriter Dawn Harden wrote or co-wrote, with pianist Patrick Pernet, all but one of the songs, giving the record a lasting resonance. She starts with “Traces," a lovelorn tale of a lost passion presented in a trembling, ...

One Track Mind: Wadada Leo Smith's Organic - "Don Cherry's Electric Sonic Garden" (2011)

June 9, 2011

The music of Wadada Leo Smith, no matter the setting, is spiritual, mesmerizing, purposeful and often dense. We found out back toward the end of '09 just how dense his music can be when this innovative trumpet player debuted his Organic ensemble on disc 2 of the Spiritual Dimensions. That group sported four ... four! ... ...

Ourstage: A Promising Platform for Artists Looking For Partners

June 9, 2011

Making noise on the Internet can be tough for emerging artists. With so many acts having substantial online footprints, it can be difficult to get by on merit. That's where Ourstage comes in. Since its founding in 2007, it's served as an online community where artists can rise above their peers based on one key element: ...

Books: Out of the Vinyl Deeps

June 9, 2011

Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music by Nona Willis Aronowitz The career of Ellen Willis as a rock music critic was comparatively brief, spanning the late 1960's to the early 1970's, but during that time she wrote some of the most insightful and thought provoking essays on rock and roll to date. ...