from jazz@jazzinstitut.de

15 March 2016

... what else ...

 --- James Karst remembers the "first" jazz recordings of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band 100 years ago by focusing on the trumpeter Freddie Keppard who had been offered a record contract prior to the ODJB but turned it down because he feared that his music might be plagiarized ( New Orleans Times Picayune).
 --- Tiffany Benedict Browne reports about the guitarist Wes Montgomery who started his career on Indiana Avenue in Indianapolis in the early 1950s ( Indianapolis Monthly).
 --- Amy Dickinson gives relationship tips to a jazz musician who has problems aligning his work with his wife's ( Press Connects).
 --- Lynnette Hintze remembers the Montana-based pianist and singer Nina Russell ( Daily Interlake).
 --- Tori Mann reports about the drummer Quentin Baxter from Charleston, South Carolina, who was awarded the state's highest arts award, the Elizabeth O'Neill Verner Governor's Award for the Arts ( Charleston City Paper).
 --- Ethan Iverson visits the Louis Armstrong House Museum and writes a fabulous blog entry about it, complete with pictures ( Do the Math).
 --- Hardeep Phull reports about how the guitarist Django Reinhardt influenced musicians far beyond jazz, citing the Black Sabbath member Tony Iommy as a case in point ( New York Post).
 --- Christiane Büchli talks to the Swiss saxophonist Co Streiff ( SRF).
 --- Hans Hielscher reports about the Spanish trumpeter Andrea Moris ( Spiegel Online).
 --- Lous Dassen will not establish a new "Dr. Jazz" club in the city hall of Düsseldorf, Germany ( Rheinische Post).
 --- Chris Foran remembers a Gene Krupa concert in Milwaukee in March 1957 and has some photos to document it, too ( Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).
 --- Heinrich Oehmsen hears the Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel at Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany ( Hamburger Abendblatt).
 --- Holger True talks to the current artistic directors of the Elbjazz festival in Hamburg, Germany, Karsten Jahnke and Alex Schulz ( Hamburger Abendblatt).
 --- Michael Steinman published three videos of jazz historian Dan Morgenstern remembering Tommy Benford, Frankie Newton, Al Hall, Mary Lou Williams, Donald Lambert, Eubie Blake, Willie The Lion Smith, Nat Lorber and Buddy Tate ( Jazzlives).
 --- Ralph A. Miriello talks to the singer José James ( Huffington Post).
 --- For whatever reason, the British journalist Tim Cooper was invited to the Java Jazz Festival in Indonesia, travel and hotel paid for, even though he professes not to even like jazz, and thus his report doesn't mention music until the last sentence ( Standard).
 --- John Leland presents rare backstage photos of Billie Holiday by the photographer Jerry Dantzic ( New York Times).
 --- Martina Zimmermann talks to the organist Rhoda Scott ( Deutschlandradio Kultur).
 --- Mike Hobart talks to the ACT label founder Siggi Loch ( Financial Times).
 --- Howard Reich hears saxophonist Ernest Dawkins and pianist Vijay Iyer in concert ( Chicago Tribune).
 --- Barry Lytton reports about the film "Who's Crazy" from 1965 with music by Ornette Coleman ( News Times).
 --- The guitarist Al DiMeola was booked into the Pascha nightclub in Cologne, Germany, but has canceled that concert because the Pascha is one of Europe's largest brothels which he didn't know when the contract was signed ( Emma).
 --- Sebastian Scotney talks to Christine Stephan, the editor of Jazzthetik, the German magazine which celebrates its 30th anniversary these days ( London Jazz News).
 --- Luckily, Germany has a system of funding the arts, and jazz has always been among the musical genres deemed worthy of funding. To get a glimpse into the funding structure we recommend a look into the decisions made in Germany's capital Berlin over the years, funding artists, venues and residencies of different sorts ( Senatsverwaltung Berlin ).
 --- And finally, Riane Konc has a number of new definitions for "jazz" ( The New Yorker).

Obituaries

 --- We read further obituaries about the pianist  Horace Parlan who had died at the age of 86 ( New York Times, Wallace Bass ).
 --- We learned of the passing of the Dutch pianist and composer Misha Mengelberg at the age of 81 ( Do the Math, De Volkskrant, WBGO, Bayerischer Rundfunk, NPR, The Guardian), the singer and producer Leon Ware at the age of 77 ( New York Times), the cook and jazz club owner Charlie Sims (Donna's Bar and Grill) at the age of 81 ( The New Orleans Advocate ), the German clarinetist Karl Petri at the age of 95 ( Frankfurter Rundschau), the flutist Dave Valentin at the age of 64 ( New York Times, New York Daily News), the guitarist Paul Abler at the age of 59 ( Star-Ledger), the impresario Fred Weintraub (The Bitter End) at the age of 88 ( New York Times), the bassist Lyle Ritz at the age of 87 ( Ultimate Classic Rock), the clarinetist Paul Nossiter at the age of 86 ( Cape Cod Times), as well as the German producer Walter Quintus at the age of 67.