Canadian singer Holly Cole has always featured songs from the Great American Songbook in her repertoire, both in her charismatic live shows and on her albums. She has now come up with a collection of eleven songs which are mostly from that particular genre. I think these days that it’s immensely necessary to either come…
Musical director for Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” in the US, pianist and singer Jon Batiste plays an exclusive show tonight at Berlin’s Silent Green in Wedding. His debut album, the solo piece “Hollywood Africans” (or primarily a solo one), came out last month and it’s a celebration of the African-American heritage and culture with a…
Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Aline Frazao grew up in Luanda, Angola, and came to Portugal when she was 15. She soon started to write songs, endorsed both Fado and Bossa Nova and the music of Cape Verde. Her third album “Dentro Da Chuva” came out last month. The eleven very minimalistic tracks on offer are…
I still vividly remember those glorious crate digging days in record stores in Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Amsterdam. There was one store in Amsterdam in the late 80s which had almost every Polydor Records album of Roy Ayers as an import from the US and I also found an album on his own record label, Uno…
The first year for new artistic director Nadin Deventer shows a lot of new features for one of the oldest German jazz festivals. Day 1 (November 1st) will have 10 acts on five stages – all in the main building, the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. Highlighted as the “Haus Of Jazz”, the first day will…
The first Herbie Hancock LPs I got my hands on in the early 80s were “Secrets” (1976) and “Sunlight” (1978). I know, not your typical entry into the Herbie universe, but there you go. I just wanted to check out as many artists as possible who were playing on Stevie Wonder‘s “Songs In The Key…
Five years after “West Coast Cool”, singers Cheryl Bentyne and Mark Winkler released “Eastern Standard Time” earlier this summer. From the West Coast Cool songs of the 50s which were the emphasis of their earlier effort, they both now focus on the Eastern coast with tunes associated with Blossom Dearie, Bob Dorough, or Peggy Lee….
One of the reasons why I haven’t posted that much during the past months is the simple fact that this summer has been going incredibly well for my outdoor business, including my first terrace concert in late August. Starting in the next season, we are going to feature a live concert each month between April…
Growing up with the music of Bill Withers, I always thought that “Lean On Me” was the least attractive. Which of course still means that it’s an amazingly great piece of music, coming from the mind of this brilliant artist. And so it was this particular song last night at Neukölln’s Heimathafen where José James…
It is hard to believe that 20 years have gone by since the groundbreaking “Godsdog” album by Heidelberg-based De-Phazz. It was their second album (after “Detunized Gravity” from 1997), I was still working as a bartender in a hip Mexican restaurant in Kreuzberg (and played their music), but had already started my career in radio….