It’s travel day today. I’ll be on my way to New York to attend the Jazz Connect Conference, APAP, and Winter Jazzfest, see a lot of live shows and make several interviews. It will be good to see a lot of old friends and colleagues again and make new ones. So starting tomorrow, this blog…
Six films for this year’s Competition have been announced last month and now here come nine more. Celebrating their world premiere in Berlin will be Ivo M. Ferreira‘s “Cartas Da Guerra” (Portugal), the Italian-French documentary “Fuocoammare” by Gianfranco Rosi, “Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis”, a Philippine/Singapore production by Lav Diaz, the French-German “L’avenir” by Mia Hansen-Love…
The Tucson Jazz Festival goes into its second year with a 10-day extravaganza and the not-to-be-omitted fact that the average high temperature during the 2015 festival was 71.5°. So this year, the Tucson Jazz Institute Ellington Band will feature Jimmy Heath on opening day, January 14th. And Kenny Werner and his trio will revisit Erroll Garner’s…
One of the most talked-about musicians of the past year certainly is Kamasi Washington. With his three-disc opus “The Epic”, also available on vinyl, he also released one of the most interesting sets of the year. Now, where exactly in Europe he broke is ankle only he knows and it’s not supposed to be the main…
He was one of the founding members of The “And The Beat Goes On” Whispers and died at only 71 years old after a long battle with cancer. A new Whispers LP was always something I looked forward to in the 80s and with albums like “Love Is Where You Find It” (1981, with gatefold…
Pianist Paul Bley leaves an amazing amount of work – from his 1953 debut record “Introducing Paul Bley” to his ethereal live solo recording “Play Blue”, recorded in Oslo in 2008, the stylistic diversity of this Montreal-born master is outstanding. Vanessa Bley, his daughter, released an official obituary that said he “died at home with…
And so the trend continues: HMV reports that they were selling up to one turntable a minute in the weeks before Christmas and now Amazon follows suit with news that their best selling audio product of last year was – drum roll – the turntable! Even though the seasonal hit was a relatively simple Jensen…
The angel on her shoulder must have been gone. In her autobiography, “Angel On My Shoulder”, released in 2000, Natalie Cole said that there had been several instances in her life where she thought she would die. “Each time, someone had intervened when I otherwise should have been dead. Make that Someone with a capital “S”….
She liked long walks in Central Park and was very proud of her “Cole Porter” view in her Manhattan apartment. A singer’s singer. Equally potent in the Great American Songbook as in contemporary material. Her love for Brazilian music was endless. The best songwriters were sending her their material so that she could give it her…
“Fresh Horizons” is the theme for the Jazz Connect Conference in New York next month. Held at Saint Peter’s Church in Manhattan on January 14th and 15th, it once again brings together the international jazz community for workshops, sessions, and get-togethers. I was on a panel titled “Spolight on Germany” in 2014 and the 2016…