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... brief news ...
Guido Glaner talks to German photographer Matthias Creutziger about his photo estate having been purchased by Deutsche Fotothek, about the art of documenting musical moments, as well as about being content with the selection of musicians he took photos of in the fields of both jazz and classical music (Tag 24). Wolfram Nagel talks to Creutziger as well (MDR).--- Lewis Porter listens closely to "Just Friends", recorded by Sonny Rollins and Coleman Hawkins and focuses specifically on pianist Paul Bley's playing and how he reacted to Rollins' lines (Playback with Sonny Rollins). Lewis Porter also shares a short 1958 audio interview with Rollins by Swedish journalist Claes Dahlgren (Playback with Lewis Porter).
Vinnie Sperrazza listens to recordings by drummer Joe Chambers (Chronicles). --- Trevor Smith reports about the NEA Jazz Masters 2023 (NPR), the tribute concert to whom is available on YouTube (YouTube). --- On his 124th birthday Ted Gioia remembers a concert Duke Ellington gave in Fargo, North Dakota on 7 November 1940, which was recorded, and what it tells us about Ellington, his band and life on the road for musicians at that time (The Honest Broker).
On the occasion of Tito Puente's centennial, Ed Morales puts together a playlist, starting with a mambo-influenced recording from 1949, following the timbalero and bandleader through Latin-crazy New York of the 1950s, his collaboration with La Lupe and Celia Cruz in the 1960s, all the way to more jazz-influenced recordings from the 1950s through the 1990s (New York Times). --- Ben Watson talks to pianist Gerald Clayton about a school recital when he was eight years old, about the influence of his father, bassist John Clayton, about some of his piano heroes, about moving to New York in 2007, as well as about his love for surfing (The Irish Times).
Dave Canton talks to bassist Avery Sharpe about music as a possible antidote to current racism and sexism in the US, about his latest album "I Am My Neighbor’s Keeper", as well as about a concert he recently gave at Hampden County Correctional Center hoping to inspire the inmates to stay off the street (MassLive). --- Harald Küst remembers Karl Schwedler, a German singer and leader of Charlie and his Orchestra, a band funded by the Nazi ministry of information to record popular tunes with new, often anti-Semitic lyrics to be aired over shortwave radio as enemy propaganda. Küst reports about Schwedler's Duisburg background, his emigration to the US in the early 1920s and his return in 1939 as convinced Nazi, but also about his post-war career as croupier in a Berlin casino, businessman in the US and retiree in Bavaria (Rheinische Post).
Ted Gioia remembers how Jimmy Giuffre once answered his question about his unusual instrumentations by explaining "that he picked musicians based on how well everybody got along. The instruments they played weren’t especially important" (The Honest Broker). --- Yulia Karra talks to Israeli vocalist Leat Haber about a late decision to make music her profession at age 40, bout working on her first full-length album, as well as about plans to perform at Israeli prisons (Israel21c).
Ethan Iverson listens closely at Ahmad Jamal's album "At the Pershing: But Not for Me" from 1958 (Transitional Technology). Thomas Bugert looks at Ahmad Jamal's influence on other musicians (Jazziversum). --- Lewis Porter reports about a recently discovered trio recording by the Art Tatum trio (Playback with Lewis Porter).
Marcus A. Woelfle listens to a 1923 recording by The Georgians and explains how jazz took up the interest in everything Egyptian that was fashionable in European and American high society even before the grave of Pharaoh Tutankhamun was discovered in 1922. He finds songs dedicated to Egyptian subjects from the 1920s such as the Georgians' "Old King Tut" through the 1960s of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sun Ra, and Pharoah Sanders (BR-Klassik). --- Drummer Terri Lyne Carrington explains why the fight for women's representation in jazz continues to be important (The Skimm).
Lee Mergner talks to jazz researcher Stephanie Stein Crease about her latest book on the life and music of drummer and bandleader Chick Webb (WBGO). Vinnie Sperrazza reads Crease's book about Chick Webb as well (Chronicles). --- Ulrich Gaßdorf talks to German trumpeter Till Brönner about his fascination with Sylt, an island close to the Danish border, where he serves as artistic director to the Kampen Jazz festival (Hamburger Abendblatt).
For International Jazz Day 2023 Herbie Hancock spoke with former US President and saxophonist Bill Clinton about the importance of jazz in today's world (YouTube). Michelle Mercer discusses some of the International Jazz Day rhetoric ("jazz's 'message of dialogue and freedom'") in the face of today's international crises and reprints a piece she wrote in 2013 which, she finds, is still relevant today (Call & Response). --- In 2002 Michelle Mercer traveled to Salvador de Bahia to experience Brazilian carnaval with Gaetano Veloso. Her travel report talks of the local tradition(s), of Veloso's popularity as well as of her own reaction as a participant observer which in the end had brought "alegria" to her face, as a taxi driver said, "a joyful surrender to the pleasures of the moment" (Call & Response).
In a thoughtful essay Lewis Porter analyses a statement John Coltrane once made in an interview, saying "I would like to be a saint" and finds that Trane actually was riffing on a previous interview with Sonny Rollins and that anybody taking that statement for face value might simply be wrong (Playback with Lewis Porter). --- Toby Frei talks to German saxophonist Peter Lehel (KA-News). |
