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Results for "Ken Franckling's Jazz Notes"
The Creativity Never Ceases
The Montreal International Jazz Festival's innovative programming is one of the creative charms that keeps jazz fans coming back for more. Every year, there's a new twist or musical pairing that makes its presentations stand apart from other venues. It's a staggering jazz festival just in the quantity of its 600 or so performances. But the ...
A Grammy Twist That's Good for Jazz
Bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding has taken the jazz world by storm with her talent and youthful enthusiasm. That's not a bad thing. A smattering of White House jazz gigs and performing at President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize concert were a help. So, too, will be her high profile at the 53rd annual GRAMMY Awards in ...
Newport Goes Nonprofit, Not for Nothing
Last summer, founding producer George Wein said he wanted to find a way to keep his two legacy music festivals going well into perpetuity. This week, Wein, 85, in his sixth decade as a festival producer, made good on it. The Newport Jazz Festival, which began in 1954, and the Newport Folk Festival, which started five ...
Not Only Cats Love Jazz
Cats make jazz and love jazz. In the case of loving jazz, so do mice. Well, at least one mouse in particular. Next month, a Walt Disney Records imprint, Disney Pearl Series, will release Disney Jazz Volume 1: Everybody Wants to Be a Cat. It's a 13-track collection of popular songs from the soundtracks of Disney ...
Tops in Jazz - 2010
As the year winds down, I'll be preparing my Year-in-Jazz retrospective. In advance of that, here's a rundown of my favorites among 2010's new releases and historic recordings. Always keep in mind that top 10 listings of this sort reflect what the reviewer gets a chance to hear during the year.. as well as musical taste ...
Clever Barometer on Musician Costs
So how are today's musicians doing economically compared to past years? Not bad if you take the word of the 2010 PNC Christmas Price Index.® The Wealth Management division of Pittsburgh-based PNC Bank is just out with its 27th annual analysis of the gifts contained in The Twelve Days of Christmas. The survey shows this year's ...
A Birthday Twist
Dave Brubeck has given us a present for his 90th birthday on December 6.The pianist and prolific composer has released a two-disc compilation called Legacy of a Legend, it's releasing coming three days after Brubeck resumed touring. (He had a three-month layoff after doctors gave him a pacemaker.) It's a 21-track compilation on Columbia/Legacy that spans ...
Jazz in God's Living Room
Jazz has been considered “the devil's music" at times. More in distant decades and in some places more than others, and even among random people today. So it is ironic when we get to hear it performed in church. I'm not talking about St. Peter's (the “jazz church" in midtown Manhattan) or other ministries that offer ...
A Memorable Cape May Weekend
It's amazing that the Cape May Jazz Festival has now completed 17 full seasons of its semi-annual jazz weekends. That's 34 festivals drawing large off-season crowds to New Jersey's southern tip. It was a growing pains sort of weekend for the new blood/old blood running the festival after the summertime resignations of festival co-founders Carol Stone ...
Cool, Hip and Funny
I interviewed singer-guitarist John Pizzarelli for a profile that will be in the December issue of Hot House in conjunction with a mid-month (December 14 to 18) run with his quartet at Birdland in Manhattan. As is usually the case with these encounters, John had far more to say than space allows in the magazine. I'll ...
