By Don Heckman Medford, Oregon. Jazz in its purest form illuminated the stage in the performance by pianist Bill Mays and trumpeter Marvin Stamm at the Artistic Piano Gallery Sunday night. No drum set, no swinging big band horns, no funky fusion guitars. Only two gifted jazz veterans, applying their remarkable improvisational skills to an… Read More Live Jazz: Bill Mays and Marvin Stamm in a Siskiyou Music Project
By Roger Crane What is left to say about the lovely and iconic “Over the Rainbow?” Well, some basics. The music is by Harold Arlen and the lyric by E. Y. “Yip” Harburg. As many of you know, it was written for and featured in the 1939 Judy Garland movie The Wizard of Oz. The… Read More Keeping the GAS (Great American Songbook) Flame Burning: “Over the Rainbow”
By Devon Wendell By the mid 1960s, Roland Kirk had already established himself as one of the most unique forces in jazz. Being blind and able to play up to 3 horns simultaneously (and even a nose flute) was enough to get people’s attention. But aside from the visual stage performance, Kirk’s music was texturally… Read More Doc Wendell’s Prescription For Bop and Beyond with Roland Kirk’s “Rip, Rig, And Panic” (Emarcy)
By Don Heckman Los Angeles – Sept. 11. (Thurs.) The Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, conducted by Juanjo Mena finish the summer’s classical season at the Hollywood Bowl with a grand performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, and Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. Hollywood Bowl. (323) 850-2000. –… Read More Picks of the Week: September 9 – 14 in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London, Copenhagen, Milan and Tokyo
Impressions from MJF 56, Saturday By Michael Katz. Saturday at MJF is a sprawl of music, food, and a friendly wave of humanity washing over everything. After years of vacillating between the supposedly bigger names in the sun-baked arena and the fun of the Garden Stage, I opted this year to grab a bench seat… Read More Live Jazz: Saturday at the Monterey Jazz Festival 56
Impressions from MJF 56, Friday Night By Michael Katz If you are the type of person whose entertainment values revolve around baseball and jazz, you could be forgiven for thinking that there are Cubans everywhere. Baseball has recently given us young stars such as Yasiel Puig of the Dodgers, Yoenis Cespedes of the A’s and… Read More Live Jazz: Friday at the Monterey Jazz Festival 56
By Michael Katz Every year I head up to the Monterey Jazz Festival with a battle plan for seeing as much of the three days and over 500 artists as reasonably possible, and every year that plan gets shredded almost from the opening notes. Musicians whom I’d intended to sample (like Gregory Porter last year)… Read More Preview: The 56th Annual Monterey Jazz Festival
By Michael Katz There is nothing like driving around in a remote area to underline the virtues of good music. So I’d like to say a few kind words about Sirius XM. And also Avis, whose rental car was equipped with it. I recently spent a week in Yellowstone National Park, the setting for my… Read More Radio Jazz: Time To Get Sirius?
Review by Devon Wendell Photos by Bonnie Perkinson Hollywood, CA. For the most part, it’s not just the music that has made The Annual Playboy Jazz Festival a Los Angeles summer tradition, but instead, it’s the music combined with the ever present party atmosphere. And this year was no different. Amidst the clouds of pot… Read More Live Jazz: the 35th Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl (Day #2)
By Michael Katz Jazz on the Westside found a cozy nook to curl up in Monday night, as radio station KCRW presented an Up Close event with pianist Alan Pasqua and music host Tom Schnabel at the New Roads School in Santa Monica. The goal of the evening, a one hour tour of the history… Read More Live Jazz: A Brief History Of The World (Piano Division) with Alan Pasqua and Tom Schnabel
The International Review of Music 