... brief news ...
Margaret Renkl tells the story of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, founded 150 years ago, traveling the world singing spirituals, a music that "had been created by enslaved people and passed down through generations", and thus building "the foundation for what we now think of as American music". Renkl also attends a rehearsal of today's ensemble and talks with the current Fisk Jubilee Singers' musical director Dr. Paul Kwami (New York Times). --- Marc Myers talks to singer Lady Gaga about her recent concert with Tony Bennett at Radio City Music Hall, five years after Bennett had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (JazzWax). Patrick Ryan talks to Lady Gaga about the show as well (USA Today). Anderson Cooper visited Bennett at home and reports about the idea for the Radio City Music Hall concert (60 Minutes).
Jacob Uitti talks to pianist Robert Glasper about his start in and with music, about connections between playing jazz and basketball (awareness), about jazz as an ever-changing music, about his work with hip-hop artists, as well as about performing before an audience again after the pandemic (American Songwriter). --- Willard Jenkins talks to film director Marty Ashby about his documentary "We Knew What We Had", remembering the jazz history of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Open Sky Jazz). Pittsburgh's Crawford Grill No. 2, a historic club which opened in 1943 and closed in 2003, might reopen (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).
Ethan Iverson listens closely to saxophonist Harold Land's "Ursula" providing a transcription of Land's saxophone line and Barry Harris' underlying piano accompaniment (Do the Math). --- Giovanni Russonello and Seth Colter Walls see Terence Blanchard's "Fire Shut Up In My Bones", the Metropolitan Opera's first work by a Black composer (New York Times). David Smith talks to the opera's composer, trumpeter Terence Blanchard (The Guardian).
Belgian lawyer and jazz pianist Simon Gronowski, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, took part in the opera "PUSH" shortly before his 90th birthday (The Jerusalem Post). --- Yonat Shimrom reports about a new biography of pianist Mary Lou Williams that focuses on her religious believes (Religion News). --- The block where the famous "A Great Day in Harlem" photo was shot in 1958 was renamed after the photographer Art Kane; now residents are objecting to the decision arguing that Kane had not been a resident of the area (Yahoo News).
Wolfgang Sandner talks to Hungarian-German saxophonist Tony Lakatos who after nearly 30 years retires from hr-Bigband, about the need to remain self-critical as a creative musician, and about his retirement only meaning the start of something new (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). Tony Lakatos' "retirement concert" with his quintet and the hr Bigband under the direction of Jim McNeely was recorded and includes a short interview with Lakatos in the middle (hr Bigband / YouTube). --- Oliver Hochkeppel talks to Bosnian-German trumpeter Dusko Goykovich who turned 90 these days, about his first idol Roy Eldridge, about working with Albert Mangelsdorff in the mid-1950s, about living in New York for five years, about settling in Munich in the late 1960s where he will now attend the first birthday tribute at which he is no longer able to play himself (Süddeutsche Zeitung).
Ron Wynn talks to pianist Matthew Shipp about his latest solo album "Codebreaker", about the label "jazz" for his music, about musical influences, as well as about looking for "an illuminated sound — a cosmic sound of some sort that is high vibration. An openness of sound that escapes an academic jazz sound" (Nashville Scene). --- Johannes Kunz writes about trumpeter Wynton Marsalis who turns 60 these days (Wiener Zeitung). --- Rebekka Groß talks to German trumpeter Joo Kraus (Sindelfinger Zeitung). --- Author Ted Gioia received ASCAP's 2021 Virgil Thompson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism for an article about legendary music critic Whitney Balliett originally printed in summer 2020 (City Journal). --- David Browne (Rolling Stone) and Jeff Slate (NBC News) report about British guitarist Eric Clapton and his COVID vaccine conspiracy theories. --- Esquire reprints a 1959 essay by writer Ralph Ellison about Minton's in Harlem (Esquire). --- Joshua Rotter talks to saxophonist Branford Marsalis (San Francisco Examiner). |