The Jazz Icons series has been earning well-deserved raves from jazz fans around the world for its two rounds of live concert releases on DVD, featuring compelling and historical performances from the likes of Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk…you get the picture. (And the sound!) A third wave of titles has been announced–we’ll be seeing the following come September…
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In the conclusion of our four-part interview with saxophonist John Handy, he discusses why his quintet broke up, playing Bartok with classical pianist Leonid Hambro, a forthcoming Mosaic Records collection of previously-unreleased 1960s recordings, his experiences as a jazz educator, and his memories of Monterey and the mid-1960s rock scene. To hear some of Handy’s music from the 1960s, check out Handy On the Horn…
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A number of radio stations around the country have picked up the Night Lights show Dear Martin: Jazz Tributes to Martin Luther King Jr. Station links and air dates follow:KSJD-Cortez, Colorado: Monday, Jan. 21 at 1 p.m…
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Most jazz lovers have favorite albums that they turn to for certain moods, times, or occasions–or just out of habit, because over the years that particular LP or CD has created some pleasantly well-worn grooves in one’s listening state of mind. Such albums for me include Bud Powell’s The Genius Of, John Coltrane’s Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, and Bill Evans’…
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Alto saxophonist Lee Konitz is a longtime master of melodic improvisation who’s played a part in some of jazz’s most momentous acts–the Claude Thornhill big band and the Miles Davis Birth of the Cool nonet in the late 1940s, and the Lennie Tristano groups of the 1950s and early 1960s. After working in Stan Kenton’s orchestra and making some albums for Atlantic, Konitz recorded a series of LPs as a leader in the late 1950s for the Verve label…
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One of the albums featured in this week’s show, After the Vanguard: the Return of Bill Evans, is the 1962 Riverside LP Moonbeams. Can you name the model who posed for the cover? (Hint: she went on to greater fame in the mid-1960s with a certain artistic entrepreneur. And no fair Googling.)
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“Jazz is not a what, it is a how. If it were a what, it would be static, never growing. The how is that the music comes from the moment, it is spontaneous, it exists at the time it is created. And anyone who makes music according to this method conveys to me an element that makes his music jazz.”–Bill Evans
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After jazz journalist Gene Lees heard Bill Evans for the first time, he told the pianist that his recordings “sounded like love letters written to the world from some prison of the heart.” Lees was just one of many to feel such an emotional connection with Evans’ playing, which inspired a cult-like following that continues to this day. The group that he formed in 1959 with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian helped set the template for the modern jazz trio, and the albums they made–particularly the live Waltz for Debby and Sunday at the Village Vanguard–have become jazz classics. But this group came to an abrupt end shortly after those albums were recorded, when…
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Our annual holiday program, with cool yule jazz from Mal Waldron, Elvin Jones, Bill Evans and Jim Hall, Booker Ervin, Coleman Hawkins, surprise holiday sounds, and a special Christmas reading from Louis Armstrong.
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This edition of Night Lights features the Jazz Workshops, progressive 1950s jazz recorded by pianist/composer/theorist George Russell and saxophonist Hal McKusick. The RCA Victor Jazz Workshop series, begun by A & R man Jack Lewis, was in some respects…
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