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It Was a Very Good Year... for Big Bands
by Jack Bowers
Whatever else one chooses to say about it (many of my comments would be unprintable), 2006 was a banner year for big bands, at least on record. Like a prizefighter who has been battered, bloodied and knocked to the canvas by a series of heavy blows but stubbornly refuses to throw in the towel, big bands ...
Yule Struttin', Albuquerque Style
by Jack Bowers
The New Mexico Jazz Workshop held its annual holiday fund-raiser, “Yule Struttin,'" December 2 at the Albuquerque Museum of Art. About seven hundred people were there to enjoy a variety of food and drink, a silent auction, art exhibits, and entertainment by a number of groups including the Albuquerque Jazz Orchestra. The AJO was ...
The AZ Jazz Academy: Onward And Upward
by Jack Bowers
The Arizona Jazz Academy, a meeting place for some two hundred aspiring jazz musicians of high school and middle school age, is modestly housed on the third and upper floor of the First Baptist Church Educational Building at the corner of 5th Street and 6th Avenue in downtown Tucson. After climbing two flights of stairs and ...
A Glacial Summer Month
by Jack Bowers
September was an up-and-down month--mostly down--as I traded in the old computer for a newer model and was out of commission for nearly two weeks while I had the data from the old transferred to the new (I'll admit I'm incapable of doing it myself). So there's not much to write about, given that nothing was ...
Maynard Ferguson: Gonna Fly Now
by Jack Bowers
On Thursday morning, as Betty and I finished packing for our second trip to the Prescott, Arizona, Jazz Summit (more about that later), the e-mails started to arrive. The first was a rumor; the second confirmed the unwelcome news. Maynard Ferguson, a trumpeter whose breathtaking virtuosity, especially in the higher register, epitomized the word incredible, had ...
Taking Schwarzenegger To The Cleaners
by Jack Bowers
In mid-July, Betty and I attended a concert at the Albuquerque Museum of Art's handsome outdoor amphitheatre. While there were no big bands present, the event was nonetheless important--some might say historic--for a couple of reasons. First, the headliner was the great trumpeter Bobby Shew, an Albuquerque native who's been so busy conquering the world that ...
Tennis Balls & WBEZ Balls
by Jack Bowers
Another month has flown by, summer is in full bloom, and I'm in the middle of my annual “Wimbledon break." In spite of its worldwide popularity, soccer's quadrennial World Cup is of no more than passing interest in this household, but everything stops whenever one of the four major tennis tournaments gets under way. ...
Viva Stan! Viva Woody! Viva Poston!
by Jack Bowers
I've now attended three of the semi-annual gatherings sponsored by Ken Poston and the Los Angeles Jazz Institute, and have learned that even though the performers and programs vary, there's one truism you can take to the bank: just when you're thinking “it can't get any better than this, it gets better than this. The most ...
On a Desert Island with You . . .
by Jack Bowers
With more than 1,800 big-band CDs in the library, it's becoming almost impossible to pare the number down to an armful small enough to carry to that mythical desert island so often spoken of or dreamed about . . . at least, not without some fudging! One solution would be to take only boxed sets, say ...
Granddad Does Dallas
by Jack Bowers
The sixth annual University of North Texas Jazz Festival was my first. I may make it an annual event, too. The Festival, held March 31-April 2 in the north Dallas suburb of Addison, welcomed 53 middle school, high school and college big bands, combos and vocal groups from seventeen states, each of whom presented a brief ...
