Results for "Kidd Jordan"

Kidd Jordan

Edward "Kidd" Jordan's multi-faceted legacy is among of the most influential and enduring in the history of improvised music. An integral part of the seminal musical tapestry of New Orleans, he is the patriarch of one of the city's most respected musical families and his parallel careers as a performer and educator span the past six decades. Now 73, he has worked most of his life outside the mainstream spotlight, tirelessly sustaining the jazz continuum through both his teaching and his cutting edge performances all around the globe with like-minded improvisers.

Born on May 5th, 1935 in Crowley, Louisiana, about two and a half hours Northwest of New Orleans, Jordan grew up in Cajun country listening to zydeco and blues music before hearing Charlie Parker, Lester Young and other jazz musicians while in high school. By his freshman year in college at Southern University in Baton Rouge, where he studied music, he was playing professionally with local groups. After graduating in 1955, he relocated to New Orleans and began pursuing two of the trademark elements of his career: teaching music and working in pit bands and pick-up groups with the wide variety of prominent musicians passing through the city. That year he also became the brother-in-law of life-long musical partner, and fellow New Orleans jazz legend, Alvin Batiste.

Garden Party

Label: Mahakala Music
Released: 2019
Track listing: C Melody; Dopolaria; Father Dies, Son Dies; Garden Party; Guilty Happy; Improptu.

Day and Taxi, Adam Rudolph, Harish Raghavan and More

By MAURICE HOGUE

First out of the mixed bag of audio treats this week (it's Halloween after all!) is a track from Oliver Lake's first recording 43 years ago Ntu: The Point from Which Creation Begins. I haven't played Oliver in a while and that seemed like a good place to begin catching up. Adam Rudolph's epic project, Ragmala, ...

John Dikeman And The Origin Of The Species

By MARK CORROTO

If we were to go searching for saxophonist John Dikeman's spirit animal, we might have to bypass beast for sapien. Let's just say his spirit animal is the father of punk, Iggy Pop. Like early music by The Stooges, Dikeman's sound makes reference to the music of both Albert Ayler and Pharoah Sanders. It's a shame ...

New York's 24th Annual Vision Festival

By FRANK RUBOLINO

Although Europe has a plethora of creative improvised music festivals throughout the year, drawing on a large audience base of appreciative fans, one festival in the USA stands out as the beacon of hope and encouragement for this music in its native land. Now in its 24th year, New York's Vision Festival, presented by Arts for ...

Celebrating Andrew Cyrille at the 2019 Vision Festival

By DAVE KAUFMAN

The 2019 jazz festival “high holy" season opened with the sounds of the 24th Vision Festival, the longest running jazz festival in jny: New York City. The festival is dedicated to free jazz and improvised music, but it is an expansive celebration of art in its many guises. Dance performances, poetry and visual art forms are ...

Vision Festival 2018

By JOHN SHARPE

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 ...

New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival 2018

By MARK ROBBINS

Yes, Virginia, there is jazz at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. From it's inception in 1970, George Wein, mastermind of the Newport Jazz Festival and the Newport Folk Festival, created a festival that was indigenous with New Orleans. Whether it was the music, food, arts and crafts everything was New Orleans. That first year ...

Fred Anderson: On the Run

By LAZARO VEGA

This interview was first published at All About Jazz in August 2002 and is part of our ongoing effort to archive pre-database material. The Roscoe Mitchell Quintet with special guest Fred Anderson played a successful benefit concert for Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The quintet's performance, ...

Mats Gustafsson/ Alfred Vogel: Blow + Beat

By KARL ACKERMANN

Swedish saxophone powerhouse Mats Gustafsson was playing with his trio--The Thing--at the 2016 Beazau Beatz Festival when he hooked up with the excellent, but under-recognized, Austrian drummer Alfred Vogel, who hosts the outing. The resulting Blow + Beat is an extraordinarily challenging musical experiment from two fearless advocates of free thought. The saxophone/drum duo is an ...