Jon Garelick
By digging deep into Thomas McKeller, the Gardner Museum has not only resurrected a lost figure (and lost music, and “lost” art) but revealed and contributed to an ongoing history.
“Forgiveness is the key and love is the answer… Have a good Jazz Fest, but also have a good life.”
The show had an undercurrent that brought to the fore all the issues that have put Wynton Marsalis at the center of the culture wars.
Mostly the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival ends up being about the multiplicity and infinite variety of cultures and traditions, including generic funk.
You could sometimes be halfway into a Bad Plus show before hearing anything like a jazz chord from pianist Ethan Iverson.
The throughline of “Town and Country” is folk — austere, hardscrabble.
The sense of place, the passage of time, the death-haunted imagery, and the coolly rhythmic verse gives Lucinda Williams’s songs their traction.
The Fest’s music is mostly about audience participation — whether it’s dancing, sing-a-longs, or shouts of call-and-response.
But dissonance is at the edge of everything you hear at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival — a sound that contains multitudes.
Jazz Commentary: Charlie Parker — The Eternal Radical at 100
I’m still not sure I heard what’s revolutionary about Charlie Parker’s recordings — they’re very old news by now. But I warm to the expressions of unique genius, a beauty that in itself is radical.
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