Jazz
As Louis Armstrong, the gifted actor John Douglas Thompson is working with a script whose lines and contours are as woefully predictable as a profile in the old Life Magazine.
WGBH is exploring an interesting question — how little can you invest in arts coverage and still have the chutzpah to ask for money from supporters who mistake crumbs for a loaf?
Jazz songs by composer John Harbison? An ensemble devoted to the music of Björk? A quartet taking over a theatre and breaking the “fourth wall”? Jazz Week 2012 stakes out territory on the permeable boundary where jazz encounters other genres and even other art forms.
So Jason Moran has decided to re-create something that is already a pinnacle of a master’s work –- something that could hardly be improved on. You could be expected to ask Why? and How?
It was with great sadness that I learned that on the day after Christmas 2011 pneumonia carried off an underappreciated giant of jazz, saxophonist and composer Sam Rivers. His 88 years took him on a long journey from his midwestern origins to decades here in Boston and later in New York to a rich late period in the somewhat improbable locale of Orlando, Florida.
With Reverse Thread, Regina Carter moves beyond conventional boundaries, her music a rich blend of jazz and world music—a cross-cultural exploration of modern and traditional music that expands the boundaries of both genres. Regina Carter. At the Shalin Liu Performance Center, September 24. Her album is Reverse Thread (E1 Entertainment). Carter will be performing in…
In the best of all possible worlds, Duncan Heining’s biography will be the cornerstone of the edifice that time will erect to the memory of George Russell and his gift to music. Whether that will happen or not remains to be seen. In some ways, because of the vagaries of the book business, it’s up…
I cite the repertoire only to give you a sense of the breadth of the material Jason Moran and Fred Hersch built on. The glory of the evening was the complete integration of the two pianists’ musical thought.
There’s something special going on among the four musicians in BANN that is very promising—something that makes me want to see the band live. I hope one of our local bookers picks up on them soon, so I don’t have to go to New York City to do so. As You Like by BANN [Seamus…
People who love jazz should read jazz history books periodically, and Kevin Whitehead, jazz critic on NPR’s “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross, has done a great service in giving us a What, Who, Where, and When book with insight and ingenuity.
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