Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Phoebe Legere - Amazing...like a superhero...people part the Red Sea for her...

The Phoebe Legere Quintet - The Ooh La La Coq Tail

Phoebe Legere, is a jazz composer, pianist, singer and multi-instrumentalist of French Canadian, Mayflower Pilgrim and Native American descent.

She has played with Warren Vache, John Zorn, Don Cherry, Cecil Payne, Charles ‘Bo Bo’ Shaw, Frank Vignola, Earl May, Dennis Charles, Greg Haynes, Billy Joel, Joni Mitchell, Rufus Thomas, John Hartford, Ikue Morie, Morgan Powell, Howie Smith, Jim Staley, Larry Rivers and David Bowie. Legere studied composition with Morton Subotnick, Dinu Gezzo, and Milton Babbitt protege Wayne Oquin; and jazz with John Lewis of MJQ, Ira Newborn, and Rich Shemaria.

The New York Times wrote:
'Phoebe Legere plays the piano with enormous authority in a style that encompasses Chopin, blues, ragtime, bebop and beyond, and she brings to her vocal delivery a four and a half octave range, and an extraordinary palette of tonal color and meticulous phrasing.'

Legere started playing the piano at age 3, composed her first song at 6, started playing organ in the church at 9, studied piano at New England Conservatory and sang with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at 16. As a teenager Legere was signed to Epic Records. Phoebe Legere first gained the attention of jazz piano aficionados during her decade-long jazz piano residency at One Fifth Avenue. At midnight, after the gig, Phoebe moved farther downtown, experimenting with new musical forms, electronics and modalities of interdisciplinary performance. Monad, a philosophical concept which means “One,” was Legere's seminal Loisaida jazz/classical/electronic experimental art band.

In 2000 Legere co-wrote a work called The Waterclown for the Cleveland Chamber Symphony that was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. (TNC Recordings) She wrote three epic poems and, in collaboration with the Tone Road Ramblers, a composing collective, set them to music. Dark Energy, The Prairie, Common Root of All Organisms are all available on Einstein Records.

In 2001, Legere recorded a CD that combined experimental electronics, Afro beat, Native American music and blues called “Blue Curtain” (Einstein Records) In 2002, she won a NYSCA grant to compose an opera about the Native American holocaust called The Queen of New England and in 2004 she wrote and produced a musical called Hello Mrs. President about the first woman President of color.

In recent years Legere returned to school: to study orchestration, conducting and film scoring at Juilliard and NYU graduate school. In 2009 she conducted the New York Film Orchestra playing her composition 'Dark Harbor for Ved Mehta.”

Phoebe Legere has played at Carnegie Hall, the Algonquin, and CBGB’S. She has sung with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and with Frank Vignola’s Hot Club USA. As 'Phoebe Songbundle' she has sung and played to thousands of children in Native American education programs.

Legere was the resident composer for the Wooster Group and she has written music for downtown film, theater, and dance companies. She is now the Composer in Residence at the Theater for the New City.
Phoebe's Native American name is 'Songbundle' and indeed, she has written a thousand songs including college radio hit 'Marilyn Monroe,' and many songs for other recording artists including mega platinum Sony artist Kelly Chan.

Last year she wrote and played on a CD with Brian Eno: her song “Ultra Romantic Parallel Universe” (2009) is available on Mercury England. In the USA she has recorded for Epic, Island, Funtone, Mysterious Ways and Einstein records. She has an extensive discography, both as a composer and a collaborator. Her bass player and friend for 20 years was the late Earl May, the left handed bass player on Coltrane's Lush Life album. Earl May was a founding member of Legere's 9 piece band, Swingalicious.

Her new band is called The Ooh La La Coq Tail. 'I'm putting Musette, Jazz and Blues together. For the past 10 years I've been making New Classical, Native American, and Experimental Jazz records, using invented instruments, wearable computers, and adventurous open structures. Suddenly, I felt like going back to basics: hand - made, virtuosic, and very American jazz music sung in that very North American language: French.'
The Ooh La La Coq Tail plays everything from Duke Ellington to Gershwin to Abenaki/Penobscot traditionals to the music of Phoebe Legere.

From: http://www.arielpublicity.net/login
Sara Dudine
sara@arielpublicity.com
Christina Duren
christina@arielpublicity.com

Nat King Cole, Oscar Peterson Trio & Coleman Hawkins

The Café at the Edge of the World: The pickPocket ensemble Waltzes, Swings, and Stomps in Global Acoustic Intimacy

The pickPocket ensemble could be playing in some midnight café, as patrons smile with nostalgia. Or they could be gliding down a shadowy cobblestone street, as passersby kick up their heels. Or you might have caught them at the very beginning, when a refugee from experimental electronic music started to waltz through practice sessions on a mountainside overlooking the San Francisco Bay.

The cinematic, polyglot charm of what pickPocket’s founder Rick Corrigan calls “café music” moves from the pensive, bittersweet Memory (self-release; October 29, 2010), the group’s latest album, to rousing and playful dance numbers swaying in odd meters. With two upcoming shows in Berkeley in November and December, the quintet promises an intimacy and immediacy that borrows gleefully from Balkan boogies, Arabic ornaments, wry French musette, and just about anything else they can get their hands on.

“Café music is almost like the inversion of folk,” exclaims Corrigan. “Folk music is something deep and particular to a region or people. Café music is just opposite: We come from all the places we come from and meet in the middle.”

Free to play with any and all elements that catch their ear—North African blues, whirling Balkan beats, elegant Middle Eastern melodies played on the banjo, old-school waltzes—the pickPocket ensemble aims not to resemble, but to reassemble music into a new acoustic form. The group sounds like the house band at intimate night spot, where a Paris street corner, the outlines of the Atlas Mountains, or a Mediterranean village square magically flash past the windows in quick succession.

This is no gimmick; it’s the way pickPocket hears the world. “You’d go into a record store and in the “world music” section everything used to be Balkanized—excuse the phrase—into countries: Greece, France, Turkey. But most musicians don’t think that way,” Corrigan explains. “They mix with anyone whom they can communicate with, which is why we like to talk about café music. It’s not about nations; it’s about intimacy, about just you and me, interacting face to face.”

This face-to-face feeling and disregard for ethnic and genre boundaries give audience members from across the globe the eerie feeling they’re listening to music from their childhood. “We often have fans tell us that they love a certain song, that it reminds them of music they heard as a child. The funny thing is, it’s never the same song twice and never the same place twice,” muses Corrigan.

pickPocket prides itself on crafting musical narratives from disparate elements. The resultant pieces sound just a breath away from the film soundtracks that inspired many of the members growing up. Yet the guiding principle that brings it all together is simplicity. Corrigan and fellow members often spend rehearsal time, not finessing the sinuous melodies or spitfire 11/8 time signatures but figuring out how to get rid of extraneous notes, until just the perfect polished essence remains.

The result:  “I remember a recent show, seeing a family of children, their parents and grandparents all getting into it,” guitarist and banjo player Yates Brown recounts. “And we’re playing this intricate tune in 9, and these kids are dancing to it.  It’s deep music, but I think that's a telling example of how it invites people in.”

To manage this feat, the group draws on diverse past experience—from klezmer (violinist Marguerite Ostro) and Balkan music, to Latin (percussionist Michaelle Goerlitz) and jazz (Berklee grad and double bassist Kurt Ribak). Brown cut his teeth on Middle Eastern and North African music playing with a traditional Arabic orchestra he met through the clinic where he works and where many of the patients are of Arabic heritage. “Next thing I know I’m bringing in the banjo to see how an oud [Arabic lute] melody might sound on it,” Brown laughs. “I think that spirit of exploration and integration is very much in keeping with what I do now in pickPocket.”
Complete  on >>  http://www.rockpaperscissors.biz/index.cfm/fuseaction/current.press_release/project_id/531.cfm

The PickPocket ensemble Tour

12/08/2010, Wed
Berkeley, CA

le Bateau Ivre
, 2629 Telegraph Ave.
Show: 6:00 pm

01/22/2011, Sat
San Francisco, CAThe Red Poppy Art House, 2698 Folsom Street
Show: 8:00 pm

-------------------------------------------------------
From: Rachel DiGregorio
Rock Paper Scissors, Inc.,
511 W. 4th St., Suite 2, Bloomington, IN 47404-5171
rachel@rockpaperscissors.biz
www.rockpaperscissors.biz

Jon Faddis is a complete and consummate musician....



Introducing TYLER JOHN FADDIS, October 24, 2010
NEW YORK, NY, November 29, 2010 -- Trumpeter Jon Faddis and his wife Laurelyn Douglas are pleased to announce the birth of their first child, Tyler John Faddis, on Sunday, October 24, 2010, at 8:38 pm. Scheduled to arrive on Christmas Day, Tyler made his debut two months early. He is growing wonderfully and now weighs over six pounds.

"We are truly thankful to welcome Tyler into our lives," said Faddis. "While there were some concerns with his early birth, we had great confidence in the physicians and medical staff around us and that all would work out well.  We love cuddling our son and seeing him grow stronger each day. We look forward to bringing Tyler home soon and, in the future, introducing him to our extended family and friends around the world."

Although the family shared their first Thanksgiving together in a New York City hospital, they anticipate celebrating Christmas around their own tree at home with family, including grandparents John and Dorothy Douglas. Jon, Laurelyn and Tyler appreciate your prayers and good wishes.
 

ABOUT JON FADDIS
Jon Faddis is a complete and consummate musician -- conductor, composer, and educator. Marked by both intense integrity and humor, Faddis earned accolades from his close friend and mentor John Birks Gillespie, who declared of Faddis, "He's the best ever, including me!" As a trumpeter, Faddis possesses a virtually unparalleled range and full command of his instrument, making the practically impossible seem effortless.
Time Out New York (2003) praises Faddis as "the world's greatest trumpeter ... brash soloistic logic and breathtaking technical acuity," and Nat Hentoff, in The Wall Street Journal (2005), characterizes Faddis as "a trumpet player of prodigious lyrical force."

Born in 1953, Faddis began playing at age eight, inspired by an appearance by Louis Armstrong on television. Meeting Dizzy Gillespie at 15 proved to be a pivotal beginning of a unique friendship that spanned over three decades. Shortly after his 18th birthday, Faddis joined Lionel Hampton's big band, moving from Oakland, CA to New York.
Faddis worked as lead trumpet for the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra at the Village Vanguard, formed his own quartet, and soon began directing big band orchestras, including the Grammy-winning United Nation Orchestra, the Dizzy Gillespie 70th Birthday Big Band, the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Stars, the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band (1992-2002), and the successor to the CHJB, the Jon Faddis Jazz Orchestra of New York (2003-present). The Chicago Jazz Ensemble, which celebrated its 40th anniversary at Columbia College Chicago, named Faddis as its Artistic Director in autumn 2004. Faddis will continue to conduct both the JFJONY and the CJE in the future. Faddis has also served as guest conductor and featured guest with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

Faddis' original compositions include the Jazz opera Lulu Noire (1997) (named a "Top 10" pick by USA Today); others may be heard on his Grammy-nominated Remembrances (Chesky 1998), Into the Faddisphere (Epic 1989), and Hornucopia (Epic 1991). Faddis' album, TERANGA (Koch 2006) features new compositions by the trumpeter, joined by members of the Jon Faddis Quartet: David Hazeltine (piano), Kiyoshi Kitagawa (bass), & Dion Parson (drums), together with special guests Alioune Faye (sabor), Abdou Mboup (djembe & talking drum), Russell Malone (guitar), Gary Smulyan (baritone saxophone), Clark Terry (flugelhorn & vocals), and Frank Wess (alto flute).



Concert for Ray Brown (Niels Pedersen, Ulf Wakenius, Christian McBride, Michael Brecker, Jon Faddis)

Monday, November 29, 2010

Javon Jackson & Les McCann: Two for the Road

Many times in jazz the personnel that comes together in a special way is the result of second choices or just plain serendipity. So too with the pairing of Javon Jackson and Les McCann who have been performing together at clubs and festivals, including a recent concert at the Cape May Jazz Festival. Seeing the two mesh onstage, it would be hard to imagine that the legendary McCann was originally a sub or fill-in.

About three years ago, Jackson had an upcoming performance for his soul-jazz group scheduled at John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom Room in San Francisco and his organist, the great Dr. Lonnie Smith, was unable to make it. Acting on a whim as much as anything, Jackson called Eddie Harris’s widow and mentioned that he was in a bind and did she think Les McCann might be interesting in subbing for Smith in that gig in the Bay area.

She encouraged him to call McCann at his home in Southern California and, as Hooker himself sang, “Boom Boom Boom” the two hit it off onstage and were soon performing other shows together and connecting across generations. Since that show in 2007, they’ve done about fifty shows together and jazz audiences are getting another look at the 75-year-old McCann, who appears rejuvenated by the collaboration.

Maybe that serendipity is fitting given that the McCann and Harris pairing that produced the Swiss Movement performance and recording was also a somewhat chance pairing. As Les McCann wrote in his Farewell tribute piece to Joel Dorn for JT, it was the producer Dorn who suggested that the two get together. “He’s the guy who told me, ‘When you go to Switzerland, there’s a guy over there that I like very much named Eddie Harris,” wrote McCann.


Javon Jackson and Les McCann Live at Anthology San Diego

“Why don’t you guys see if you can get together and come up with something?’ And that’s how Swiss Movement came about. It was Joel’s idea. My trio was scheduled to play there at the Montreux Jazz Festival and Eddie’s band was supposed to play there as well, and since we were both on Atlantic Records Joel suggested that we get together for one set of music. He had already discussed it with [Montreux promoter] Claude Nobs and the higher-ups at Atlantic and they all thought it was a great idea. We never had a rehearsal. I did get together with Eddie ahead of time to discuss the tunes, but that record was almost 90-percent spontaneous on the stage. Between songs, I had to sing the chorus into the guys’ ears and remind them of the changes. And that’s how we did it. It was another case of divine intervention.”

Jackson acknowledges that he had absorbed that particular McCann & Harris album by osmosis. “I heard that recording my whole life and I always liked it,” he recalls. “My mother played that particular recording a lot in the house, so I’ve heard that as long as I can remember.” Jackson’s group performs a few songs from that album, including “Compared to What” and “Cold Duck Time,” and Jackson had no problem stepping into the Harris role, in part because of his personal relationship with the late saxophonist and in part because of his own identity forged as a sideman with Art Blakey and other greats, and established as a bandleader all his own. Growing up in Denver, Jackson would check out Harris when he came to town and over the years the two developed a close bond, both musically and personally.

“I’ve known Eddie my whole life so actually it’s an honor to be in the role,” Jackson says. “I don’t look at it as a particular challenge but I do come from that spirit anyway so when we play a song like “Compared to What” or “Cold Duck Time” or we do any of those kinds of songs that have that spirit on there, there may be some references to how he would attack a particular piece of music.”



To be fair, there is plenty of Javon Jackson in the way he plays tenor while leading his group that features McCann; he isn’t simply going up there and recycling Eddie Harris riffs. Also influenced strongly by John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter, Jackson established himself as a formidable player playing with another legendary bandleader—Art Blakey—who demanded that his sidemen play like themselves.

Jackson would go on to his own solo career with over a dozen records as a leader on Criss Cross, Blue Note and Palmetto Records. He also has performed with several other legendary elders of jazz, including Freddie Hubbard, Cedar Walton, Elvin Jones and, most recently, Freddie Redd. But it’s Blakey who seems to have had the greatest impact on Jackson, at least when it comes to the nuances of leading a band.

Asked about how people perceive Les McCann these days, Jackson quickly cites Blakey and his advice about keeping out there in front of audiences. “He would say, ‘If people don’t hear you, they forget about you,’” Jackson explains. “So, it’s good, because people haven’t seen his [McCann’s] name and he’s been kind of inactive largely due to the stroke he had about ten years ago. He’s starting to get back out again and we’ve been having a lot of fun. People are saying about Les, ‘Hey, wow, we want to see you again.’ It’s a win for him, it’s a win for me, it’s a win for the audience. When everyone wins, it’s even more special.”

Complete on  >>  http://jazztimes.com/sections/tangents/articles/26854-javon-jackson-les-mccann-two-for-the-road

Top 10 Jazz Fashion Crimes....

By Tim Tamashiro
Jazz musicians are incredible at what they do. They are Ferrari's of musical capability and horsepower. So why are jazzers the perpetrators of so many crimes against fashion?

I'm no expert when it comes to fashion but I do know that a suit and tie can go a long way for a gentleman or a fashionable black dress can do wonders for any woman. Duke Ellington once said, “You've got to find some way of saying it without saying it." Sure, he was talking about performing music but in this case he also happened to nail down a philosophy for what jazz musicians should wear on stage.

Here are the top 10 jazz fashion crimes:
1. Berets—these classic french chapeaus show up in jazz far too frequently. If you wear a beret to look cool... please know that you're only achieving the opposite. Beret = too ironic.

2. Past Jazz festival t-shirts—Okay. We get it. You were actually at that festival. But we know how old the t-shirt is by looking at the year. If your festival tee is over one year old it's time to retire it.

3. Ballcaps—never, never, never wear a ballcap when you're performing in front of an audience unless you're at a family reunion.

4. Fedora's / Pork pie hats—a great haircut is much more effective... these hats make you look silly and insecure. Just blow us away with your chops, man.

5. Hawaiian shirts—sure they are colorful but they are also FOR HAWAII and VACATION. They are clearly not work shirts.

6. Jazz swag—say NO to any piece of clothing that simply has the word “jazz" on it.. especially in sequins or sparkles. This type of display smells of runny cheese. 'nuff said.

7. Captains hats—there are only two exceptions. Count Basie and New Orleans brass bands.

8. Muscle shirts—are underwear.

9. Bandanas—if you sweat that much bring a towel and discreetly use it between numbers.

10. Po' boy hats (frontward or backward)—even Samuel L. Jackson has moved on from wearing these hats (and he wore them for a long time) so it's time for jazz to move on as well.

Do you see a pattern? Yup, it's hats. Everybody stop wearing them.

Jazz has a long legacy of snappy dressers. Duke Ellington was one of the finest examples. Sure Duke wore hats in his day but he wore them outside as protection from the elements. Chances are you are inside at your gigs. Take your hat off. Not every jazz artist is guilty of these fashion crimes. Jazz suffers from the fashion crimes of a few (well intentioned) individuals but it may be time to challenge them to change their style. It could lift jazz.

Complete on  >>  http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=71191

Chet Baker: Sesjun Radio Shows

Reprinted from http://jazzwax.com
Chet Baker's recording career divides neatly into two broad categories: Images-1 the helpless romantic of the '50s and life's punching bag of the mid-'70s and '80s. By now you're certainly familiar with the charmer of the '50s—a West Coast natural trumpeter and singer whose look of youthful vulnerability and confusion was adapted by James Dean, Montgomery Clift and Elvis Presley. The rouged-up, bruised Baker of the latter period, however, is another matter. Now a new two-CD set—Chet Baker: The Sesjun Radio Shows—captures this fading era splendidly and goes far to restore Baker's image as a commanding player and improviser late in life.

A notorious heroin abuser, the trumpeter had no fixed address from 1978 until his death from a hotel balcony tumble in 1988.  Chet-Baker From the mid-1970s on, Baker spent a good deal of his time in the Netherlands. On a long downward spiral, Baker tried to delay the inevitable by playing and living off the kindness of touring American musicians who employed him on European gigs.

By the early '80s, the tormented Baker seemed to have found a  compassionate audience in the Dutch, particularly among those who loved jazz and appreciated his vital contribution. Rich in its own art history, Holland completely understood his demons, brooding depression and creative thrashing.

While in the Netherlands, Baker performed regularly on a live radio show called Tros Sesjun, Images-2 which broadcast shows live from jazz clubs. Tros originally was an acronym for Televisie Radio Omroep Stichting, one of the public broadcasting arms in the Netherlands, while Sesjun is Dutch for "session." [Pictured: Nick Vollebregt's Jazzcafe in Laren, the Netherlands]

The shows often were aired from jazz clubs in Laren, a town 30 minutes from Amsterdam. The first set from these clubs typically was recorded professionally while the second went out over the air live to listeners.

The Sesjun Radio Shows CDs cover five different sets at three different clubs from 1976 to 1985. Both CDs, from start to Images-3 finish, are astonishing. First, the sound is crystal clear and warm, as though recorded last week in a top-shelf studio. Second, the material was smartly chosen, ranging from Ray's Idea and Lady Bird to Strolln' and Lament. Third, Baker is uniformly excellent on all tracks—his trumpet playing cool and clean, and filled with wanderlust.

On these dates, Baker was recorded with five different Dreamdrops groups—and all of them offer surprises. For example, Baker's working pianist Michel Graillier is exceptionally tender on the 1984 date from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The same goes for guitarist Philip Catherine and bassist Jean Louis Rassinfosse from Nick Vollebregt's Jazzcafe in Laren in 1985.
And then there's Baker with flutist Showcase_danko Jacques Pelzer and pianist Harold Danko [pictured] in 1976, who frame the trumpeter with neo West Coast lines. This gentle support is evident on There Will Never Be Another You, I'm Old Fashioned and the glorious Chet's Theme.

Whatever you think of Baker's later period, the odds are you've misjudged him. But don't feel bad. Too much sub-par Images-4 Baker material from this era has been released, complete with photos of a creased-face, morose artist on the verge of a calamity. As a result, the late-Baker image is now that of a failing artist hanging on by his fingertips. Nothing could be further from the truth here.

The Sesjun Radio Shows should go far to clearing up most people's perceptions of Baker's ability to perform, deliver and innovate during the last years of his messy life.

http://www.jazzwax.com/2010/11/chet-baker-sesjun-radio-shows.html
Used with permission by Marc Myers

What do traffic jams and music have in common?

by Minim Pro
It's Friday night on the M6. The traffic is a nightmare as always and I'm stuck in the middle lane of the motorway in a big jam. Every 30 seconds or so, the cars in front of me edge forward about 20 metres before stopping again. I do the same.

This goes on for a while before I get fed up of constantly riding the clutch and moving forward only to have to stop almost immediately. I decide not move as soon as the cars in front pull away and allow a gap to open up in front of me. I figure that I won't go forward until it's actually worth doing so. This way, I won't need to keep braking every two seconds and I can just allow the car to roll forward in first gear - a much more sensible way of driving in a jam.

traffic_jamAfter a couple of minutes of this, the car behind me forces it's way into the nearside lane and tail-gates the car in front in order to inch past me as I continue to roll forward and maintain the big gap. Once it has undertaken me, the car pulls back into the middle lane, accelerates up to the car in front and then slams on the brakes.

As the car passes me, I notice it is driven by a mousy, middle-aged woman - hardly the boy racer type I might have expected. When we eventually get past the accident that was causing the jam and accelerate to normal speed, it's not long before I go past her. She's doing 60 in the slow lane - ten miles per hour below the legal speed limit.

Why is she now going so slowly yet felt the need to undertake me to get one car ahead in the jam? The answer is most likely not that she was in a big hurry, but that I was irritating her or making her uncomfortable by not conforming to the behaviour of the crowd. Even though I was taking the more sensible course of action, using less fuel and driving in a less tiring way, she had to behave like everybody else.

This is the mentality of the crowd and the effect of learned behaviour. As human beings we learn by observing the behaviour of others and copying them. This is how we establish what is appropriate behaviour in different situations. The woman behind me was frustrated that I wasn't conforming to the standard behaviours demonstrated by the rest of the traffic.

Whilst we're not great in traffic jams, as pedestrians the British are fabulous at queueing. Go into any busy shop or take look at any bus stop and you will see how naturally we form patient and orderly lines. Nobody pushes in and everyone waits their turn. We think that people from other countries are rude when they don't share our love of the queue. However, the reality is that this kind of queueing is just a learned behaviour particular to Britain.

Learned behaviour affects nearly everything we do but we don't have to be a slave to these behaviours and conventions. If we are prepared to think about why we act the way we do and what would happen if we behaved in a different way, we can find new insights and see new opportunities.

Music is not exempt from the effects of learned behaviours - it's just that we often call them 'stylistic conventions'. Any musical style is simply a series of learned behaviours and conventions which musicians copy and absorb when learning to play.

Every now and again, somebody will come along who challenges these conventions and goes against the conventional wisdom of what constitutes a musical style. If their new behaviour is compelling enough, everybody else will copy them until that behaviour becomes the new norm.

These musicians are the ones we call geniuses, the ones that define a new series of standard musical behaviours within a genre. When the crowd copies the musical behaviours of a genius and abandons the previous conventions, music is changed forever.

Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Chuck Berry, The Beatles, Elvis, Hendrix, Satchmo, Bird, Coltrane, Miles - all of these artists changed music by deciding to break away from the musical conventions and learned behaviours specific to their respective genres.

As musicians, we have a choice of sticking with the conventional and the tried and tested, or we can begin questioning the way we do things to see if there are new musical approaches we haven't yet considered. This will involve breaking away from the crowd and it's scary and risky - but the possibilities are both endless and exciting.

I'll leave you with this video from Derek Sivers which is the perfect example of how a couple of people prepared to behave differently can start a movement.

From: http://playjazz.blog.co.uk/

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Betty Roché - Trouble Trouble


by Steve Voce
Mary Elizabeth Roché, singer, born Wilmington, Delaware, 9 January, 1920, died Pleasantville, New Jersey, 16 February 1999. This piece appeared in The Independent, Tuesday, March 23, 1999.

If ever anyone was at the right place at the wrong time, then it was Betty Roché.
Despite the inspiration and sure-footed nature of his music, Duke Ellington's taste in band singers proved controversial, and most of them only found grudging acceptance from jazz fans. But nobody argued over Betty Roché.

She had a particularly clear diction, and her style was light and swinging, particularly suited to Ellington's music of the Forties. Her recording of Ellington's signature tune, "Take The A Train," with the band in 1952 has remained one of the most famous of Ellington's recordings. Despite it, Roché slipped through a crack in the floorboards.

Ivie Anderson had been the singer with the Ellington band throughout the Thirties. "Poor health" was the altruistic reason given for her leaving the band in 1942. But in fact she left to oversee the running of her Los Angeles restaurant, "Ivie's Chicken Shack". Ellington replaced her with a trio of girl singers. One of them, Phyllis Smiley, left fairly quickly. Another, Joya Sherrill, had to leave the band at the end of the summer to go back to school. The third girl, Roché, stayed on.

Like so many future stars, Roché had started off by winning a talent contest at Harlem's Apollo Theatre when she was 17. This led eventually to her joining the Savoy Sultans, the resident band at the Savoy Ballroom, in 1941. Typifying the episodic nature of Roché's career, the band broke up soon after she joined it. She made her first record on the band's last recording session, a song called "At's In There". She also sang briefly for bands led by the tenor sax player Lester Young and trumpeter Hot Lips Page.

She travelled to Hollywood with the Ellington band to make the film "Reveille With Beverly" in October, 1942. The film also featured Frank Sinatra and the Count Basie and Bob Crosby bands as well as Ellington's. Roché was to sing "Take The A Train". The A Train was a subway train that famously travelled through New York to Harlem. Roché's lyrics said of the train, "You'll find it's the quickest way to get to Harlem." In a typical Hollywood generalization the train in the film as she sang was shown racing across the open prairie.

The American musicians' union (the AFM) had imposed a ban on recording that lasted throughout Roché's period with Ellington and she was thus denied the fame that would undoubtedly have come to her had she been featured on the band's records. In January 1943 Ellington's became the first black band to give a concert at Carnegie Hall. That evening he gave the first performance of one of his most controversial compositions, his 45-minute "Black, Brown and Beige" suite.

Roché sang the famous "Blues" section, with its pyramid-like construction of lyrics. This piece was designed to express the feelings of black life in the cities of America at the beginning of the century. The concert was recorded, but the results were not issued until 40 years later. By the time Ellington was able to record a studio version in 1944, Roché had left the band.

Complete on  >>  http://www.jazzinchicago.org/educates/journal/articles/betty-roch

Donna Lee - Charlie Parker Quintet



Donna Lee by:
Miles Davis (trumpet),
Charlie Parker (alto sax),
Bud Powell (piano),
Tommy Potter (bass),
Max Roach (drums).

The Tamir Hendelman on Jazz Set....


Tamir Hendelman had just flown to LAX from England, and bassist Marco Panascia from New York, to meet drummer Lewis Nash on the bandstand at the Sherman Oaks club and restaurant (since closed). Photo: Patrick Schneider

They became fast friends. In Hendelman's words, "We just made it happen. One magical night, boom, and then the next day we were in the studio." Their studio session became Hendelman's new album, Destinations, and JazzSet has the live set.

As the pianist in the L.A.-based Jeff Hamilton Trio and Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, Hendelman is alert, his antennae and fingers dancing to the nuances of every situation. A fellow CHJO member notes that John Clayton's dynamic orchestral writing influences Hendelman's outstanding trio arrangements.

(Scoop: Clayton has rearranged "Rhapsody in Blue" as "Rap-City in Blue," and the CHJO with Tamir Hendelman will premiere it in Japan soon.) And, to top Hendelman's own credibility as one of the busiest pianists in L.A., Barbra Streisand hired him for one night at the Village Vanguard in 2009, which is now documented on DVD.

Museum Acquires Storied Trove of Performances by Jazz Greats

By LARRY ROHTER
For decades jazz cognoscenti have talked reverently of “the Savory Collection.” Recorded from radio broadcasts in the late 1930s by an audio engineer named William Savory, it was known to include extended live performances by some of the most honored names in jazz — but only a handful of people had ever heard even the smallest fraction of that music, adding to its mystique.

After 70 years that wait has now ended. This year the National Jazz Museum in Harlem acquired the entire set of nearly 1,000 discs, made at the height of the swing era, and has begun digitizing recordings of inspired performances by Louis Armstrong , Benny Goodman , Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Bunny Berigan, Harry James and others that had been thought to be lost forever. Some of these remarkable long-form performances simply could not fit on the standard discs of the time, forcing Mr. Savory to find alternatives. The Savory Collection also contains examples of underappreciated musicians playing at peak creative levels not heard anywhere else, putting them in a new light for music fans and scholars.

“Some of us were aware Savory had recorded all this stuff, and we were really waiting with bated breath to see what would be there,” said Dan Morgenstern, the Grammy  -winning jazz historian and critic who is also director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University . “Even though I’ve heard only a small sampling, it’s turning out to be the treasure trove we had hoped it would be, with some truly wonderful, remarkable sessions. None of what I’ve heard has been heard before. It’s all new.”

After making the recordings, Mr. Savory, who had an eccentric, secretive streak, zealously guarded access to his collection, allowing only a few select tracks by his friend Benny Goodman to be released commercially. When he died in 2004, Eugene Desavouret, a son who lives in Illinois, salvaged the discs, which were moldering in crates; this year he sold the collection to the museum, whose executive director, Loren Schoenberg, transported the boxes to New York City in a rental truck.

Part of what makes the Savory collection so alluring and historically important is its unusual format. At the time Savory was recording radio broadcasts for his own pleasure, which was before the introduction of tape, most studio performances were issued on 10-inch 78-r.p.m. shellac discs, which, with their limited capacity, could capture only about three minutes of music.

But Mr. Savory had access to 12- or even 16-inch discs, made of aluminum or acetate, and sometimes recorded at speeds of 33 1/3 r.p.m. That combination of bigger discs, slower speeds and more durable material allowed Mr. Savory to record longer performances in their entirety, including jam sessions at which musicians could stretch out and play extended solos that tested their creative mettle.

“Most of what exists from this era was done at home by young musicians or fans, and so you get really bad-sounding recordings,” Mr. Schoenberg said. “The difference with Bill Savory is that he was both a musician and a technical genius. You hear some of this stuff and you say, ‘This can’t be 70 years old.’ ”

As a result, many of the broadcasts from nightclubs and ballrooms that Mr. Savory recorded contain more relaxed and free-flowing versions of hit songs originally recorded in the studio. One notable example is a stunning six-minute Coleman Hawkins performance of “Body and Soul” from the spring of 1940; in it this saxophonist plays a five-chorus solo even more adventurous than the renowned two-chorus foray on his original version of the song, recorded in the fall of 1939. By the last chorus, he has drifted into uncharted territory, playing in a modal style that would become popular only when Miles Davis  recorded “Kind of Blue” in 1959.

Glimpsing the Jazz Hierarchy
Asked if the Savory recordings were likely to prompt a critical reassessment of some jazz musicians or a reordering of the informal hierarchy by which fans rank instrumentalists, Mr. Morgenstern responded by citing the case of Herschel Evans, a saxophonist who played in the Count Basie Orchestra but who died early in 1939, just before his 30th birthday. Evans played alongside Lester Young, who was one of the giants of the saxophone and constantly overshadowed Evans on the Basie group’s studio recordings.

“There can never be too much Lester Young, and there is some wonderful new Lester Young on these discs,” Mr. Morgenstern said. “But there are also some things where you can really hear Herschel, who is woefully under-represented on record and who, until now, we hardly ever got to hear stretched out. What I’ve heard really gives us a much better picture of what he was all about.”

The collection has already shed new light on what is considered the first outdoor jazz festival, the 1938 Carnival of Swing  on Randalls Island. More than 20 groups played at the event, including the Duke Ellington  and Count Basie orchestras, and though newsreel footage exists, no audio of the festival was believed to have survived — until part of performances by Count Basie and Stuff Smith turned up on Mr. Savory’s discs.

Other material consists of some of the most acclaimed names in jazz playing in unusual settings or impromptu ensembles. Goodman, for example, performs a duet version of the Gershwins’ “Oh, Lady Be Good!” with Teddy Wilson on harpsichord (instead of his usual piano), while Billie Holiday is heard, accompanied only by a piano, singing a rubato version of her anti-lynching anthem, “Strange Fruit,” barely a month after her original recording was released.

“The record is more like a dance tempo, whereas this version is how she would have done it in clubs,” Mr. Schoenberg, a saxophonist and pianist who is also the author of “The NPR Curious Listener’s Guide to Jazz,” said of the live Holiday recording. “You have the most inane scripted introduction ever, but then Billie comes in, and she drives a stake right through your heart.”

Because Mr. Savory liked classical music, the discs also include a few performances by the Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad, taken from one of her very early tours of the United States, and several by Arturo Toscanini’s NBC  Symphony Orchestra. There are even speeches, by Franklin D. Roosevelt   and Pope Pius XII, and a broadcast of James Joyce  from his work.

The collection also provides a glimpse into the history of broadcasting, thanks to the presence of Martin Block, a WNEW announcer who hosted a show called “Make Believe Ballroom,” on many discs. Walter Winchell coined the term “disc jockey” to describe Block, whose citation when he was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame gives him credit for being “the first radio disc jockey to become a star in his own right.”

Mr. Savory himself played piano and saxophone, and his choice of what to record reflects a musician’s refined tastes. “We’re lucky that he was such a jazz fanatic, because he really knew who was good and who wasn’t,” Mr. Schoenberg said.

According to his son Eugene, Mr. Savory was born William Desavouret in June 1916 aboard the ocean liner Mauretania, where his parents were passengers immigrating to the United States from France. (Mr. Desavouret, Mr. Savory’s son, said he did not know why his father changed his name.) He grew up in New Jersey and Southern California and showed an early fascination with technology, which led, while he was still a teenager, to his entry into the recording business.

A Mysterious Man
As best as can be reconstructed, Mr. Savory went into a Manhattan recording studio to make a demo for a group he played in, found that the equipment was not working and offered to repair it. That led to his being hired to maintain the gear and eventually to a contract with a studio that specialized in transcribing live performances off the air for radio networks and advertisers.

“He was doing these air checks, he told me, to get the balance in the recording, and recorded the shows on his own,” said Susan Schmidt Horning, a historian of technology and culture who teaches at St. John’s University in Queens and who interviewed Mr. Savory several times. “I think he was just interested in recording and loved music. He did it because he could do it. He knew the value of these recordings, artistically and commercially, and wasn’t going to let them go. “The recordings that the museum acquired end around 1940, when Mr. Savory moved to Chicago to work for Columbia Records and CBS. During World War II he was initially assigned to the Naval Research Laboratory, where, Mr. Desavouret said, he helped develop radar for all-weather fighter aircraft, but later also served as a test and combat pilot.

At war’s end, Mr. Savory went back to work for Columbia, where he was part of the team that invented the 33 1/3-r.p.m. long-playing record. In the 1950s he moved to Angel Records, EMI’s classical label; engineered or produced numerous albums there under the name W. A. Desavouret; married Helen Ward, a former singer in the Goodman band; and eventually moved to Falls Church, Va.

“As an engineer, Bill was remarkable, the guy who developed the technique for cutting the masters” of 78-r.p.m. recordings that were being transferred to the new format, said the jazz record producer George Avakian, 91, who worked with Mr. Savory at Columbia in the 1940s. “He was an all-round character, a humorous, delightful guy who never got as much credit as he deserved, and he did so much.”

Mr. Avakian said he remembered hearing a few songs from the collection in the late 1950s, when he visited the Savory home, and still recalled the excitement he felt then about the quality of the music on the discs. “I asked him once, ‘How much more have you got?,’ and he said, ‘I don’t know,’ ” Mr. Avakian said. “He was really vague about it.”

When he moved to suburban Washington, Mr. Savory took a job with a defense contractor, working, Mr. Desavouret said, on electronic communications and surveillance devices designed to pick up audio and data signals. His son also said his father told him that he was “a spook, connected with the C.I.A. ,” an assertion he is inclined to believe because “when I’d come for Thanksgiving, we’d go out with six retired C.I.A. guys,” and because, on retirement, his father was given a memento calling him “the master of mysterious projects.”

After Mr. Savory’s death, his lawyer and heirs were not sure what to do with the meticulously annotated collection. Some of the boxes with discs had been sealed in 1940 and never opened again, and others had been damaged by exposure to water or were covered with “50 years of mold and gunk,” as Mr. Schoenberg put it.

Mr. Desavouret, a musician and retired computer scientist who lives northwest of Chicago, said, “When he died, I felt overwhelmed,” because “there was a danger it was all going to be thrown away.” In fact, he added, “Dad’s lawyer hired a couple of people to clean things up, and they dug through everything and threw away some stuff that they thought was not useful. So I had to issue instructions to preserve all the recordings and writings until we found out what the hell it is.”

Eventually, Mr. Desavouret had the recordings shipped to his home in Malta, Ill., where Mr. Schoenberg, who had been trying to track him down, finally heard them this spring and immediately realized that “we have struck gold.”
From Disc to Digital

“This has been on my mind for 30 years,” Mr. Schoenberg said. “I cultivated and pestered Bill Savory, who never let me hear a damn thing and wouldn’t even tell me what was in the collection besides Benny Goodman,” for whom Mr. Schoenberg, 52, used to work.

But because of deterioration, converting the 975 surviving discs to digital form and making them playable is a challenge. Mr. Schoenberg estimates that “25 percent are in excellent shape,” he said, “half are compromised but salvageable, and 25 percent are in really bad condition,” of which perhaps 5 percent are “in such a state that they will tolerate only one play” before starting to flake.

The transfer of the Savory collection from disc to digital form is being done by Doug Pomeroy, a recording engineer in Brooklyn who specializes in audio restorations and has worked on more than 100 CD reissues, among them projects involving music by Louis Armstrong and Woody Guthrie . The process involves numerous steps, beginning with cleaning the discs by hand and proceeding through pitch correction, noise removal, playback equalization, mixing and mastering.


From: Jazz Promo Services: http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/

Sean Lennon And Yoko Ono: DNA Memory....

Sean Lennon recently sat down with his mother, Yoko Ono — not to talk about John Lennon or The Beatles, but to talk about her life. "I was born from my mother, who is a Yasuda, and my father, who is an Ono," Ono says. Photo: StoryCorps

But Ono was essentially disowned from the latter family because of "having a very kind of outlandish life," she says. The Ono family was very conservative. "Yeah, well, you know, my father was a banker, but he was an independent spirit," Ono says. "He was a very good pianist and very much into music."

But Yoko Ono learned from a piano teacher, because she was born when her father was banking in San Francisco. She says she didn't meet her father until she was 2. "It was big. And the time that I met him, my mother and my father were kissing, and I looked like this, like, 'Well, maybe he's going to kiss me too,' " Ono says with a laugh.

"She must have been so lonely," Sean Lennon says.
Listen on: http://www.npr.org/2010/11/24/131566214/sean-lennon-and-yoko-ono-dna-memory

Complete om  >>  http://www.npr.org/2010/11/24/131566214/sean-lennon-and-yoko-ono-dna-memory?sc=nl&cc=mn-20101128

The Many Moods Of James Moody....


Millions of listeners know James Moody, even if they don't know him by name. He composed one of the most enduring songs in American music, "Moody's Mood for Love," and he did it with on-the-spot improvisation.

Even Aretha Franklin sang it. He's made an unforgettable film appearance, walking an invisible dog in Clint Eastwood's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. He splashes more cologne than any one person should use, yet his kiss-on-both-cheeks greeting is treasured for its sincerity, even if the scent marks the recipient for the rest of the day.

Moody is one of bebop's finest practitioners, and he's made tremendous music for more than 60 years. As a partially deaf child in Newark, N.J., he battled the perception that he was mentally retarded (to use the term of the day). As a member of a segregated Air Force band, he suffered the indignity of racism in 1940s America. He battled an addiction to alcohol.

Listen on:

Complete on  >>  http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2010/11/22/131510108/the-many-moods-of-james-moody?sc=nl&cc=jn-20101128

4º Jazz and Blues Porto de Galinhas Jazz Festival

4º Jazz and Blues Porto de Galinhas Jazz Festival
JAZZPORTO  2010 - MAIN PROGRAM 


Ø  2 DEZ, Thursday
19:30 horas: Taryn Szpilman (RJ)
Participação especial: Jefferson Gonçalves (RJ)
Palco Tragaluz

21:30 horas: Dom Ângelo Jazz Combo (PE)
Participação especial: Fred Berkemeier (HOL)
Palco Piscinas Naturais-Marangatu


Ø  3 DEZ, Friday
19 horas: Street Jazz Band (Garanhuns, PE)
Ruas e Praças de Porto de Galinhas

21 horas: Brasil Modern Jazz Quarteto (AL)
Palco Piscinas Naturais-Itaoca

22 horas: Quinteto Violado (PE)
Palco Piscinas Naturais-Itaoca

23 horas: Jam Sessions
Fred Berkemeir (HOL), VaGouveia e convidados
Palco Piscinas Naturais-Marangatu


Ø  4 DEZ, Saturday 
18 horas: Funeral Jazz com Street Jazz Band (PE)
Ruas e Praças de Porto de Galinhas

20 horas: Alexandre Santiago & Dose Dupla (PE)
Palco Piscinas Naturais-Itaoca

21 horas: Marcelo Naves (SP) e Uptown Band (PE)
Palco Piscinas Naturais-Itaoca

22 horas: Karl Dixon (USA)
Palco Piscinas Naturais-Itaoca

23 horas: Jam Sessions
Fred Berkemeier (HOL), VaGouveia e convidados
Palco Piscinas Naturais-Marangatu

Highlights:

ü  O vocalista Karl Dixon diretamente dos Estados Unidos;
ü  Quinteto Violado com versão jazzística;
ü  Taryn Szpilman, vocalista da Rio Jazz Orquestra, abrindo a JazzPorto;
ü  Funeral Jazz com a Street Jazz Band de Garanhuns;
ü  Circuito Gastronômico New Orleans;
ü  Blues Bar - Circuito de Jazz e Blues nos Bares e Restaurantes;
ü  Painel em homenagem aos 111 anos de Duke Ellington;
ü  Jangada Livraria com CDs, DVDs e livros sobre jazz e blues.
ü  Oficinas com Marcelo Naves e Jefferson Gonçalves (gaita) e Fred Berkemeier (sax);
ü  Transmissão ao vivo pela internet (www.jazzporto.com.br).

Friday, November 26, 2010

Laurindo Almeida and The Modern Jazz Quartet....

Fred Berkemeier - Saxophone teacher at the Alkmaar Conservatory since 1990.


Date of birth:11-4-1954
Qualifications:
Hilversum Conservatory(Teaching Musician)1989,Master Degree 1990.

Activities as a teacher:
Saxophone teacher at the Alkmaar Conservatory since 1990. Bandcoach since 1990.

International contacts:
Conservatory of Cape Town(South Africa). Workshops in townships for local musicians - 2001
Conservatorio Brasileiro de Musica-Rio de Janeiro (Rogerio Borda) - 2006 - 2007 - 2008
Escola de Musica Villa Lobos (Carlos Soares) - 2007
Conservatory of Beirut (Libanon) - Dutch Embassy Beirut - 2007
ESEC (Escola Superior de Educacao Coimbra) - Portugal. Masterclass improvising in a funktional way for students Musica e Educacao - 2007
Conservatorio Pernambucano de Musica -Recife - 2008 - 2009.

Publications:
CD,s:
Pukul Tifa(Massada) - 1979 - Golden Record
Double Talk(Choice) - 1987
Two Way Street(Two Way Street)- 1993
You Say You Care(Swing Progress)- 1992
Globetrotter(Cool Runnings) - 1998
Soul Cleaner(Cool Runnings) - 2001
Composicoes de Rogerio Borda(Rogerio Borda) - 2008

Experience as a performer:
Pop Stages in Holland,Belgium and Germany with Massada (Pink Pop Festival and supporting act for Michael Jackson - 1979)
Ahoy -Rotterdam,supporting act for the Commodores (1987)
Dutch Jazz Festivals (NOS,Jazz Mecca (North Sea Festival) and the club circuit, with Cool Runnings, my own band, and artists like Laura Fygi and many Funk-,Blues ,Fusion and Jazz formations as a free-lance musician,until today.

Performing Abroad:
Cuba - 1999
South Africa (Ngukana Brothers) - 2001
Senegal (Thione Seck) - 2002
Portugal (Coimbra Fado Club) - 2007
Libanon (Elie Barrak - Dutch Embassy) - 2007
Brazil (Vava Gouvea - Recife - Marcio Bahia, Aurea Martins, Fernando Costa, Rogerio Borda - Rio de Janeiro - on stages such as Parque de Patins,Modern Sound, and Centro Cultural Justica Federal, between 1996 and 2009.



Troca plays Jobim's 'One Note Samba' live @ Maal 3, Amstelveen.
Fred Berkemeier - sax
Tim Langedijk - guitar

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Angelique Kidjo has been deemed “Africa’s premier diva” by Time Magazine...

Angelique Kidjo has been deemed “Africa’s premier diva” by Time Magazine, and the moniker speaks accurately to the singular career and life she has forged: Like Miriam Makeba was before her, Kidjo is the continent’s most internationally celebrated female musical exponent. And yet, the GRAMMY-winning artist has lived outside Africa for more than two decades.

She currently resides in New York City, where she is an exceptionally active member of the music scene, and she reaches people around the world with her recordings, tours and philanthropic work. On her new album, Kidjo revisits the music that was instrumental in her artistic formation in Benin, the country whose communist dictatorship she fled in the early ‘80s. Razor & Tie will release the disc, entitled Oyo, on February 9, 2010.

Although Oyo is primarily comprised of covers, the music is instantly recognizable as Kidjo’s: The first thing one hears at the outset of the album is her breathtaking voice, long-sustaining the first word of “Zelie,” a song written by Bella Bellow from Togo. There are various other African songs, including “Lakutshn Llanga,” a lullaby made famous by Kidjo’s hero, Miriam Makeba, and the Beninese traditional song “Atcha Houn.”

Many tracks reveal the prevalence of American soul and funk in the port city of Cotonou, where Kidjo grew up: She duets with John Legend and is joined by the horns of Antibalas on Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up,” offers Yoruban interpretations of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember” and Santana’s “Samba Pa Ti,” collaborates with Diane Reeves on the Aretha Franklin hit, “Baby I Love You,” and also takes on James Brown’s “Cold Sweat.” Other highlights include the Sidney Bechet tune “Petite Fleur,” a favorite of Kidjo’s father, who passed away last year, and “Dil Main Chuppa Ke Pyar Ka,” the theme song of a Bollywood film they saw together some ten times.

Recorded and mixed by Russell Elevado (D’Angelo, The Roots, Erykah Badu) and produced by Kidjo and longtime collaborator Jean Hebrail, Oyo features a band of highly accomplished musicians, including another Benin-born, New York-based artist, the guitarist Lionel Loueke, as well as Christian McBride on upright bass, Kendrick Scott on drums and Thiokho Diagne on percussion. The trumpeter Roy Hargove makes a memorable appearance on “Samba Pa Ti.”

Oyo comes on the heels of Kidjo’s Djin Djin, which featured performances by a roster of eminent artists who admire her: Alicia Keys, Peter Gabriel, Joss Stone, Branford Marsalis, Carlos Santana, Ziggy Marley and Amadou & Mariam, to name just a few. Constantly recording and touring, Kidjo is equally engaged in advocacy and activism, from UNICEF (for whom she is a Goodwill Ambassador) to her own Batonga Foundation, which provides educational aid to young African girls. In September 2009, she joined forces with UNICEF in a campaign to eliminate tetanus.

A portion of proceeds for downloads of the song, “You Can Count On Me,” will provide tetanus vaccines to pregnant women and mothers. Another haunting song, “Agbalagba,” was originally penned for and offered as a free download with the New York Times best-selling book Say You’re One Of Them by African writer Uwem Akpan. The book, recently featured in Oprah Winfrey’s book club, consists of five stories, each written from the point of view of a child in Africa.

Angélique Kidjo is a Special Representative for UNICEF, the UN organization that helps give education and healthcare to children around the globe. Find out more at unicef.org

Just In Time, por Julie Andrews e Gene Kelly

Soon Kim for his Berlin concert the 19th of December....


Maria Schneider Orchestra On JazzSet

Photo: Margot Schulman
Maria Schneider conducts at the 2009 Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival. Also pictured: Kenny Rampton (trumpet).

Born Nov. 27, 1960, in Windom, Minn., Maria Schneider celebrates her birthday with her Orchestra every Thanksgiving week at the Jazz Standard in New York. It's always a sell-out — every set, every night.
Schneider put her first New York band together in the 1980s, and it played Monday nights at Visiones, a Greenwich Village club near NYU. People flocked to see and hear this slim, petite, confident newcomer from Minnesota and her handsome band. Visiones would get so full that fans stood on the sidewalk, peering in the windows.

In 1994, Schneider released an album with the name of her mentor Gil Evans embedded in the title: Evanescence. She followed Evanescence with Coming About and the opening track "El Viento," commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band. At the time, Schneider told JazzSet, "When I think that, for the rest of my life, I'm going to be trying to figure out what am I going to be writing next, it's kind of scary."

Complete on  >> http://www.npr.org/2009/11/05/120096420/maria-schneider-orchestra-in-concert?ft=1&f=1039

Strips On Sound: Artist Ed Ruscha Inspires Nels Cline

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Recent Listening: Tarbaby

Orrin Evans, Eric Revis, Nasheet Waits & Guests, Tarbaby: The End of Fear (Posi-tone). Pianist Evans, bassist Revis and drummer Waits comprise a leaderless or cooperative trio who live up to the album's subtitle. They are not afraid to go wacky, nearly unhinged, in two free pieces, "Heads"—featuring trumpeter Nicholas Payton at his most liberated and chancy—and "Tails," with the avantTarbaby.jpg garde alto saxophonist Oliver Lake sitting in. Payton and Lake rein in their wildness for the melody choruses in a quintet interpretation of Sam Rivers' "Unity" but hold back little in their solos and simultaneous improvisation.

Tarbaby is not afraid to plumb the romance and lyricism of Fats Waller's 1932 ballad "Lonesome Me," with a touching reading of the melody by tenor saxophonist J.D. Allen. In "Brews" Evans is not afraid to skew the good old B-flat blues toward the lamented, half-forgotten pianist Herbie Nichols and a couple of chromatic runs straight out of Teddy Wilson. Nor in his "Jena 6" is he afraid to demonstrate the harmonic individualism that makes him one of the most interesting jazz pianists under 40 (he's 34).

Complete on  >>  http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/2010/11/recent_listening_tarbaby.html



Live clip of TARBABY.
www.imani-records.com
www.tarbabymusic.com