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Jazz Musician of the Day: Sidney Bechet
All About Jazz is celebrating Sidney Bechet's birthday today! Along with his fellow New Orleanian, Louis Armstrong, Bechet was one of the first great soloists in jazz. His throaty, powerful clarinet and his throbbing soprano are among the most thrilling sounds in early jazz. He went from being a pioneer of jazz in the 1920s to ...
Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?
by Nathan Holaway
This article was originally published in September 2005. Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans? The Big Easy. The Crescent City. N'awlins. Some adore it, some despise it. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans continues to be the testimonial travesty of the United States. With certain political ...
Bria Skonberg: Rising Star On Hot Jazz Scene
"If Louis Armstrong and Doris Day could somehow be the same person, they'd be Bria Skonberg." —Wall Street Journal Jazz lovers in Oakland and Mill Valley, Calif. Are in for a real treat in late March as Bria Skonberg brings her unique talents to the San Francisco Bay area. She calls her music Hot Jazz and ...
Rudresh Mahanthappa: Dancing on the Edges of Time
by Victor L. Schermer
Saxophonist and composer Rudresh Mahanthappa is constantly making waves in the music world, expanding the technique of his instrument and integrating jazz and world music, especially that of his parents' native land, India. Brilliantly innovative, he often surprises with his improvisations and the way he transforms the music into something new and stimulating. India's great poet, ...
The Old Hat Jazz Band: Old Hat Jazz Band
by Bruce Lindsay
Brevity, so Polonius informed us, is the soul of wit. In which case, this four-track debut recording from the UK's Old Hat Jazz Band might well be the wittiest release of the year. It's also a tease. Four short tunes full of life, energy and nuanced performance give a contemporary twist to early jazz traditions, offer ...
Alex Belhaj's Crescent City Quartet: Sugar Blues
by Dan Bilawsky
Trad jazz isn't trending on Twitter or climbing the charts, but that doesn't mean it's completely irrelevant in today's musical landscape. There's still a segment of people, both on the delivering and listening ends, who enjoy the way multiple horns can snake around one another in a polyphonic dance of joy, supported and driven by guitar ...
Mr. Zombie Orchestra: Someone Likes It Zombie!
by Neri Pollastri
Quartetto piuttosto classico nella formazione e tuttavia abbastanza atipico per il repertorio e la sua interpretazione, Mr. Zombie riunisce quattro giovani musicisti emiliani, tutti tecnicamente apprezzabili, che hanno l'esplicito intento di “trovare un punto di accordo tra antico e moderno, tra cultura statunitense e cultura europea, tra Jelly Roll Morton e Secondo Casadei." ...
Uncompromising Expression: 75 Years of the Finest in Jazz
by C. Andrew Hovan
Uncompromising Expression:75 Years of the Finest in Jazz Richard Havers 400 pages ISBN: # 978-1-4521-4144-2 Chronicle Books 2014 It's probably still a bit of an understatement to suggest that Blue Note Records has become one of the most iconic labels associated with recorded jazz. Now in its 75th year, ...
How Ken Burns Murdered Jazz
Ken Burn’s interminable documentary Jazz starts with a wrong premise and degenerates from there. Burns heralds jazz as the great American contribution to world music and sets it up as a kind of roadmap to racial relations across the 20th century. But surely that distinction belongs to the blues, the music born on the plantations of ...
On Highway 61: Music, Race, and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom
by Dennis McNally
The following is an excerpt from the “Spirituals to Swing" chapter of On Highway 61: Music, Race, and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom by Dennis McNally (Counterpoint Press, Berkeley, 2014). Danny Barker, who in the 1930s was Cab Calloway's guitarist, told a particularly revealing story of working at the Nest Club, a Harlem ...
