Straight No Chaser - A Jazz Show

The Spring is truly the season of spiritual awakengin and celebration. Holy week for those of the Christian faith begins today, and the first night of Passover, the Jewish festival of freedom, begins tomorrow evening as does the festival of Vaisaki, celebrated by Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs.   Theravada,  the New Year festival for Theravada Buddhists, is celebrated for three days begining April 15...

Had she not succumbed from the results of a life lived hard and fast, Billie Holiday would have been 89 years old today. Born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915 in Philadelphia, PA, she overcame a childhood marred by neglect and abuse to become one of the seminal singers in American musical history. By the time she was signed to Brunswick Records in 1935 by the legendary John Hammond to record curren...

May 22 will be the 100th Anniversary of Sun Ra's birthday or as Ra would likely have call ed it, his "arrival day." Who was Sun Ra? Born Herman Blount, in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1914, he came in to Fletcher Henderson's big band as a pianist and arranger just after World War II and became known for his innovative arraignments. By the 1950s, he became known as Sun Ra, leading a big band of his own...

When you hear the name Bernie Worrell , your feet should begin shuffling and your hind quarters should start to shake. That’s because Mr. Worrell is a certified keyboard legend; a founding member and essential collaborator / composer / music director and arranger in George Clinton's Parliament/Funkadelic,   and a sideman to bands as wildly diverse as Talking Heads, Jack Bruce, the Rolling Stones,...

Over the past five years, Stacey Kent has grown from a fine vocal interpreter of the Great American Song Book to one of the most continually interesting and moving jazz singers of our time. Beginning with her 2007 release Breakfast On the Morning Tram , Ms. Kent left the comfortable world of standards for songs by European composers and poets, pop interpretations (“Landslide”) and exciting origina...

Founded in 1954, the Newport Jazz Festival was the first of its kind in America and has been called the "grandfather of all jazz festivals." 2014 marks its 60th year and the Festival is celebrating with a multi-generational tour featuring an all-star band honoring the festival's rich heritage, its significance and the global scope of jazz today. Led by clarinetist and saxophonist Anat Cohen, the e...

The number of Israeli jazz musicians are growing at a fast rate, as another generation of musicians begins to follow in the footsteps of the Cohen family (T uval, Anat and Avishai), bassists Omer Avital and Avishai Cohen, and guitarists Gilad Hekselman, Oren Neiman, Yotam Silberstein and   Roni Ben-Hur. Saxophonist Eli Degibri must be included at the top of this list of stellar musicians, having s...

I must confess that there are times I wish jazz musicians would stop working their way through complicated timings, key signatures and chord voicings and go back to some of the good old soul jazz of the late Fifties and early Sixties.   Give me a 4/4 beat, a cooking rhythm section, maybe a greasy Hammond B-3 organ sound, and I’m a happy man. If you feel as I do, have I got a weekend’s worth of jaz...

I’ve had the great fortune to have gotten my hands on some wonderful jazz music being made in places other than the traditional centers of New Orleans, New York and the West Coast. I’ve been able to feature  some players from  North Carolina in recent podcasts, and now a sax player from Ohio, Pete Mills. A native of Toronto, Canada now living in Columbus, OH Mills has been widely heralded for his...

The terms "Mardi Gras" (mär`dē grä) and Mardi Gras season in English, refer to events of the Carnival celebrations, ending on the day before Ash Wednesday. From the French term "Mardi Gras" (literally "Fat Tuesday"), the term has come to mean the whole period of activity related to those events, beyond just the single day, often called Mardi Gras Day or Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday. Or for those...

A lot of CDs cross my desk, and an unusually large number of female vocalists. While some stand out, most are fairly generic treatments of the Great American Songbook. Enjoyable, but not really worth repeated listening. And then I heard Cheryl Barnes. For several decades, Cheryl’s versatility has encompassed many musical genres.   Singing in four different languages, Cheryl has performed around th...

And now for your edification, a brief history of Valentine’s Day, courtesy of Infoplease.com : The history of Valentine's Day is obscure, and further clouded by various fanciful legends. The holiday's roots are in the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, a fertility celebration commemorated annually on February 15. Pope Gelasius I recast this pagan festival as a Christian feast day circa 496, dec...

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, the next few days will feature some brand new releases with songs just right for your sweetheart.   We begin with George Winston’s second tribute album to the pianist nicknamed “Doctor Funk”, Love Will Come: The Music of Vince Guaraldi Volume 2 . Winston came to prominence for his sometimes somnambulant solo piano records for the Windom Hill label, prim...

Today makers the 100 th anniversary of William Seward Burroughs II, a unique figure in the annals of American Literary and Cultural History. Burroughs, who left a mark as a writer, painter, spoken word artist, actor, gadfly and drug abuser, is one of the major figures to come out of the Beat Movement of the 1950’s, and one of the true Post-Modern artists of the time. The publication in 1959 of his...

Even for an artist hailed by Ebony Magazine as one of "7 Young Players to Watch" who has studied with jazz heavyweights like Charlie Haden, Wadada Leo Smith, Dave Douglas, Joshua Redman, and Matthew Shipp, it takes considerable confidence and courage for a young musician to match wits with veteran improvisers like William Parker and Gerald Cleaver. But on his second release, Divine Travels , saxop...

Bob Dorough turned 90 years old last year, but there is no indication he is slowing down. The singer-songwriter-pianist has been the bringer of tunes with a slightly warped perspective for six decades, going all the way back to his Devil May Care album in the late 50’s. Along the way, he became one of the few singers to record with Miles Davis, wrote the lyrics to the hit song “Comin’ Home Baby” a...

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph. This is triumphant music. Modern jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no...

Every year about this time, people begin to ask me for musical suggestions for Valentine’s Day. What’s the bst music for a romantic dinner? What’s the best CD to surprise someone with as a gift? Old classics? Maybe some newcomers? Well, this year the answer is simple – pick up Cava Menzies and Nick Phillips‘ new CD Moment to Moment. Not that this is an album dripping with love songs. Rather, it's...

“Weather Report is the closest thing that jazz had to the Beatles. The fans are still worldwide and hungry for the band's legacy." – Peter Erskine. Seminal jazz group Weather Report rises again with the Weather Report Legacy Project and crowd-funding initiative. The new project will support the creation of a feature documentary, "Calm Before the Storm,"  which tells the story of the fabled group f...

For the past few years, the Jazz Standard in New York City has presented an evening concert that attempts to rethink a classic jazz album in its entirety.  Two years ago, it was John Coltrane’s Ascension . Last year, it was Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz . The brain-child of producer-promoter Milan Simich, these shows have allowed some of today’s finest players pay tribute to the past while sharing w...

Rather than attempt to make a conventional list of "Best of" CDs at the end of each year, I take stock of what artists impressed me the most, what CDs found their way back into the player most often, and whose music continued to move me after the initial novelty of a first listen wore off. Then I break these into a few handy categories, like "Memorable Reissues" or "Tribute Albums of Note". It see...

Bobby Watson’s distinguished career has taken him from the coveted post of musical director of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers; to co-founder of Horizon, an acoustic quintet modeled after the Messengers that showcased (among others) the talents of Victor Lewis, Edward Simon, and Terrell Stafford ; to a varied and deep catalogue of recordings as a band leader. But it wasn’t until 2010 that he got the...

Ah so much to do and such little time to enjoy the holiday season! Podcast 400 is my reminder to you that life is short, and you should savor every moment you can, preferably with a sterling musical soundtrack. And here is an hour plus of Christmas jazz for you to enjoy as you trim the tree, wrap the gifts, sip a hot toddy or just bathe in the glow of the holiday spirit. Musical selections include...

They start arriving in the late Fall and they just keep on coming - new Christmas jazz CDs vying for space on the record store shelves and your listening devices. As a consumer service, I listen to them all and Podcast 399 presents my favorite holiday releases of 2013, including selections from: Jonathan Butler - "Little Drummer Boy" from Merry Christmas to You . The South African Smooth Jazz Guit...

Christmas CDs come and go, but the one released this year by the Manhattan Brass Quintet should remain a holiday jazz staple for years to come. R.J. Kelley (horn), Mike Seltzer (trombone), Wayne Du Maine (trumpet), Dave Taylor (bass trombone) and Lew Soloff (trumpet) have put together Manhattan Holiday , with tunes arranged by two of the most creative artists working in music today; Carla Bley and...