By Bill Marx “Boston is adrift in the brave new competition among big American cities vying for tourist dollars.” Maureen Dezell, WBUR Maureen made that charge back in July 2006 in an article that turned out to be one of the last posts on the late WBUR Arts Online. Now that the quote, along with […]
Jazz
Cultural Commentary: Crunch Time for Arts Coverage at The Boston Globe
by Bill Marx A recent study in Editor & Publisher delivers the lowdown; with its circulation down about 20% in four years, The Boston Globe is in free fall. Two major investors in The New York Times, which owns the Globe, are “challenging the company’s investment decisions, including its commitment to the struggling newspaper industry […]
Music Review: Becoming Coltrane: Part One
By J. R. Carroll This review/commentary will focus on Coltrane’s recordings with the Miles Davis Quintet for Columbia (in October 1955 and June and September 1956) and Prestige (in November 1955 and May and October 1956), as well as a variety of sideman dates and nominally leaderless sessions, many of which have recently been reissued […]
Book Review: Trane’s Long Shadow
Ben Ratliff, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Reviewed by J. R. Carroll During an interview in Japan in 1966, John Coltrane was asked what he would like to be in ten years. Coltrane replied, “I would like to be a saint.” Lewis Porter, author of the definitive study John Coltrane: […]
Coltrane Redux
It is remarkable that two prime discoveries in John Coltrane’s recording history should appear in the same year; one of them an improved elevation from the world of underground tapes, the other a total surprise.
Jazz Album Review: Playing the Music Eclectic
For fans of jazz, world music, Americana — in short, for fans of all the genres guitarist Bill Frisell has explored over the past decade — “East/West” is a must. By James Marcus Will the real Bill Frisell please stand up? It’s a question his admirers have been asking with increasing frequency over the past […]
Dance Review: Savion Glover — The Monster Bridge
By Debra Cash Tap superstar Savion Glover effortlessly bridges the jazz and rap generations. Improvography is a word coined by the late Gregory Hines. Neologisms are about grabbing the power to make definitions; they assert that language is not specific or expressive enough to make your meaning clear. When tap dancer Savion Glover uses “Improvography” […]