Feb 24, 2010
Home recuperating from an illness, I caught The Jazz Baroness on HBO. This documentary, originally made for the BBC, was directed by Hannah Rothschild, the great-niece of its subject, the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter (1913-1988). An heir to the Rothschild fortune, "Nica" turned her back on Europe and moved to...
Feb 23, 2010
Podcast 177 is a conversation with Patrice Rushen, who many know from her R&B days (“Forget-Me-Nots” ) but who is a crack jazz musician. Skilled in electric and acoustic jazz, she has served as musical director for Janet Jackson’s tour and the Grammy Award Show, as well as composing pop, classical and jazz music....
Feb 16, 2010
I've blogged before about one of my favorite music blogs, "Funky 16 Corners", where soul/funk/jazz DJ and crate crawler Larry has been putting up some of the funkiest sounds anywhere on the internet. In addition to individual song or artist posts, he's created full downloads of 10-15 songs thematically grouped. He's up...
Feb 15, 2010
Podcast 176 is my interview with Babatunde Lea, a veteran percussionist who has just released a tribute album to one of his musical mentors, Leon Thomas. Thomas was a shining star of the jazz avant-garde in the Sixties, making memorable recordings with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Archie Shepp, and especially Pharoah Sanders....
Feb 14, 2010
Perhaps the biggest surprise in jazz last year was the sudden emergence of singer Jackie Ryan. Although she has recorded for years, her appropriately titled CD Doozy came out of no where to top the Jazz Week charts for seven weeks. That represented the second time in the history of the charts that a singer had...