Jazz News
(aus dem Jazzinstitut Darmstadt)

8 - 21 April 2021 | Ausgabe 08/2021 (English)

We read the morning paper for you!       

Dear jazz friends,

The Jazzinstitut's JazzNews keeps you up-to-date with news of the jazz world, which we collect, summarize, and issue via e-mail about once a week. This service can also be accessed on our website (www.jazzinstitut.de), where it is updated on a daily basis. 

If you need bibliographies of the musicians named in our JazzNews, please click on our website’s Jazz Index page. This is a bibliographical reference to jazz-related books, magazines, journals and other sources that you can access without charge. If you don't find the name(s) you’re looking for, feel free to e-mail us! We will send you Jazz Index digests of articles about musicians as they make the news.

Now, have fun reading about the jazz week that was!

... brief news ...

Jeff Kaliss talks to the saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh about 30 years studying Persian music the results of which he incorporates in his own work, about lessons from Ornette Coleman, about his latest album "Facets" for which he retuned eight notes of the piano, about the equal-tempered piano as an example of colonizing minds representing what Modirzadeh calls "Chromatic supremacy", about how he learned some Lester Young alternate fingerings from Sonny Stitt when he was 16, about inspiration through Thelonious Monk and Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as about having been a musical activist, inside and outside of the academy (San Francisco Classical Voice). --- Howard Fishman re-watches "Round Midnight", the 1986 movie starring saxophonist Dexter Gordon which he compares to "a lazy, languid ballad performed by an ensemble of masters", calling the movie "the film that jazz deserved" (The New Yorker).

A.D. Amorosi talks to the pianist Uri Caine about getting his first taste of jazz at age 11, about studying with expatriate French pianist Bernard Peiffer, as well as about the Philadelphia jazz scene of the 1970s and early 1980s and how you have to live with the "love-hate relationship with where [you] come from" (WRTI). --- Dan Ashley and Tim Didion talk to the 83-year-old San Jose-based saxophonist Ruben Victorio who became ill with Covid-19 some months ago and only was released from the hospital after 114 days (ABC 7 News).

Stefan Blattner asks the German singer Uschi Brüning about her memories of a concert at Hygiene-Museum in Dresden in 1971, a recording of which was just released on CD (MDR). --- Caroline Becker talks to the young German trumpeter Pascal Klewer about the reality of being a freelance jazz musician in times of Covid-19, about the need for public funding for jazz as experimental art music, about the gigs he lost due to the pandemic, as well as about living on 900 Euro a month, concluding: "I will be underpaid for life, but that is the price of my profession" (Der Spiegel).

The singer, banjo player and fiddler Rhiannon Giddens talks about the basis of American music in African-American banjo and fiddle traditions, about the marginalization of the impact of Black violin virtuosos, about the Black roots of country music, as well as about the necessity to re-think the history of roots music of all forms (Bayerischer Rundfunk). --- Summer Evans talks to the saxophonist Tia Fuller about her role in the animated movie "Soul" in which she is the saxophonist behind the character Dorothea Williams, and about trying to bring greater visibility to women in jazz through that role but also through her work in music (Wabe).

Daniel Gerhardt watches the documentary "The United States vs. Billie Holiday" (Zeit Online). --- Andrian Kreye listens to Esperanza Spalding, Amanda Whiting, Brandee Younger, and Angel Bat Dawid (Süddeutsche Zeitung). --- Jan Paersch talks to the bassist Giorgi Kiknadze about receiving the Werner Burkhardt Music Award (NDR). --- Eleonore Büning remembers the composer Erwin Schulhoff and his connection to jazz (Neue Zürcher Zeitung). --- Christian Riethmüller celebrates the US-German singer Bill Ramsey on the occasion of his 90^th birthday (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). --- Felix Contreras talks to the 97-year-old Mexican drummer Tino Contreras about a career that started in the 1940s and goes strong till today (NPR). --- Allan Grauband talks to the saxophonist and composer Hugh Levick about the Hear Now Music Festival he curates in Los Angeles (Los Angeles Review of Books). --- Philipp Krause talks to the German saxophonist Stephanie Lottermoser about the multiperspectivity of jazz to be heard on her latest album "Hamburg" (Laut).

Obituaries

We learned of the passing of the German journalist Matthias Spindler at the age of 67 (Jazz Pages, Mannheimer Morgen), the music historian Frank Tirro at the age of 85 (Yale News), the journalist and promoter William A. Brower at the age of 72 (The Toledo Blade, Washington Post), the Italian pianist Amedeo Tommasi at the age of 85 (Exclaim!), the German trombonist Alexander Katz at the age of 71 (Jazz Pages), the Swiss bassist Isla Eckinger at the age of 81 (Basler Zeitung), as well as the producer Bob Porter at the age of 80 (WBGO).

Last Week at the Jazzinstitut

(New) books we read
Among the books on our desk the last couple of weeks was "Better Days Will Come Again. The Life of Arthur Briggs, Jazz Genius of Harlem, Paris, and a Nazi Prison Camp" by Travis Atria; as well as "Jazz/Rock/Pop – Das Dresdner Modell. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber", edited by Ralf Beutler and Frank-Harald Greß   (see the Jazzinstitut's book review page).

The Louis Armstrong International Continuum
The Louis Armstrong International Continuum went ahead as an online conference drawing interested viewers from all over the world over two days in early April. Dr. Cornel West started the event that ended with musicians such as Rene Marie, Bobby Sanabria and Jason Moran talking about the impact of Armstrong on their art, with presentations in between by music historians, literary and cultural scholars and Armstrong experts. The live-event was recorded and will be made available online shortly (Center for Jazz Studies media page, Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, conference program).

Kathrin Preis (Residency)
Luise Volkmann realized her residency at the Jazzinstitut last week, doing research at the archive for a number of days, then meeting with several of her colleagues for a new LEONEsauvage project (Kathrin-Preis). One result of her residency which she documented in photos and video entries (Facebook) and which Nicole Schneider caught in congenial digital sketches (SketchJazz), will be a concert at our Darmstadt Jazzforum conference about "Roots/Heimat: Wie offen ist der Jazz?" in early October 2021, as well as a talk about her research on the topic (17^th Darmstadt Jazzforum). Our local paper reports (Darmstädter Echo).

Darmstädter Musikpreis (Darmstadt Music Award)
The Darmstadt Music Award 2020 goes to... not a single artist or group but to the initiative "Wir für Kultur" that collects money for local artists to help them through the hard times of the coronavirus crisis. The award was given to the initiative's founders Iris Bachmann and Hildegard Förster-Heldmann this Tuesday in a livestreamed event (Centralstation) that also included music by classical pianist Finn Krug and jazz musicians Anke Schimpf and Uli Partheil performing pieces by the late Jürgen Wuchner. The award speech was given by the Jazzinstitut's Wolfram Knauer who also asked for additional donations from viewers and music lovers (Wir für Kultur).

Jazzinstitut at JazzAhead
The Jazzinstitut will participate in this year's digital JazzAhead trade fair from 29 April - 2 May 2021 (JazzAhead). We will be available to talk about aspects of our daily work as an information and documentation center, and we will provide insights into some of our services such as the Wegweiser Jazz database mapping the German jazz scene, musicians, clubs, festivals and much more (www.wegweiserjazz.de).

Current opening hours of the Jazzinstitut
The Jazzinstitut is currently still closed to the public. Even when we will re-open it will be by appointment only. Research slots will be given out with exact time slots for one visitor at a time. At the same time we continue our offer for research help by phone, e-mail or video-call. If you would like to schedule a video call, please send an e-mail to make an appointment and give us an idea what you want to talk about. We will then reply with a link for a Webex video session for your meeting.