As with most of this year’s festivities and events, Thanksgiving will be completely different. In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged Americans to avoid holiday travel altogether. There have been lots of streamed concerts and showcases and talks and the like which surely isn’t the same as actually attending a concert,…
Since Herbie Hancock is among my alltime favorite artists, I would like to share this info about an upcoming talk about one of the most influential artists of our time. On November 24th, New York’s Jazz Standard and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center present a virtual conversation about Herbie. Two members of his touring…
The legendary recording studio in New Jersey, home to hundreds of Blue Note recordings and thousand others, has announced a virtual music service where you can stream live from VanGelder.live. Kicking off the live streaming service this upcoming Saturday, November 14th, will be a live show with an all-star quartet celebrating the music of Blue…
Let’s deal with some numbers today. The three record store days this past season, on August 29th, September 26th, and October 24th, combined to help generate 1.41 million album sales in the US, vinyl alone, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. Record Store Day is usually celebrated in the spring, celebrating not only vinyl releases, but…
Just a few days after the new soft lockdown in Germany, Berlin’s Jazzfest this year had to find ways to react. The Berlin-based concerts will now be streamed online as well. Over the course of four festival days (November 5-8), there will be 27 projects in total. Kicking off this year’s festival is a discussion…
We miss going out to see live music. The last concert I’ve been to was a great show by singer Baby Rose. That was back in March! Since then, a lot has happened in the digital world. Whole festivals can be watched online. Here is another, very interesting one: the Norwegian Digital Jazz Festival. The…
Lots of new music to make the new lockdown a bit more bearable. Since I have to close my business as early as Monday until November 30th (hopefully not longer), there is more time to listen to new music. One of Stevie Wonder’s background vocalists of late, Kimberly Brewer, who gave us the wonderful original…
Trumpeter, bandleader and composer Wynton Marsalis will be next up for the Living Jazz Call & Response series, a unique series of intimate conversations with interesting jazz musicians. Those icons speak candidly about the inspiration behind their music, but also about their struggles and triumphs, about the current climate for musicians during these difficult times,…
Both of my turntables with belt drives quit their work in the course of a few days recently. The only alternative: a direct drive turntable. Throughout my years in the clubs of 90s Berlin, the standard was, and I guess still is, the Technics 1210. The next best bet clearly is the Audio-Technica 140 XP…