Jul 28, 2013
Since its beginning in 1954, the Newport Jazz Festival has delivered line-ups that have both showcased jazz history and predicted it, while the city of Newport has lent the festival an unparalleled home steeped in history and culture. When you throw in fans that really are more of a community than an audience, you...
Jul 19, 2013
Podcast 362 was a profile of educator/musician Ira Wiggins, so it seems appropriate that this Podcast features a student/musician. Drummer Alex Snydman graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, just a stone’s throw from where this humble writer lives. I became familiar with his name on the local...
Jul 12, 2013
Just a year ago I previewed a new music festival, Yidstock! in Podcast 285. A year later the festival is back, bigger and better. From July 18-21, 2013 at the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA there will be live performances, music-related films, lectures, exhibits and other events that will culminate in two...
Jul 9, 2013
America’s college campuses increasingly include students filling Jazz Studies programs. There are dedicated schools well-known for producing jazz musicians – from Boston’s New England Conservatory and Berklee School of Music to Los Angeles’ Thelonious Monk Institute – but increasingly the most sought after...
Jul 8, 2013
Had he not met a tragic end in a domestic dispute in 1972, Lee Morgan would be celebrating his 75th birthday today. A peer of the many great musicians who came to prominence with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the late 1950’s, Morgan was a major voice on the trumpet, and wrote and recorded Hard Bop tunes as well...