Night Lights is a weekly one-hour radio program of classic jazz hosted by David Brent Johnson and produced by WFIU Public Radio. Night Lights airs on WFIU HD1 Saturday at 11:05 p.m.
Last year Night Lights began an annual Bastille Day-week salute to the convergence of all things French and jazz with Paris Noir, a program about post-World War II expatriate African-American musicians in France. This year our tribute show focuses on jazz interpretations of the many songs that have been written about the City of Light.
The Birth of the Cool was a milestone in modern jazz–a handful of arrangements, compositions, recording sessions, and performances that, as historian Ted Gioia notes, “turned the jazz idiom on its head.” It extended the idea of what a jazz combo could sound like, and it provided an aesthetic head of steam for several of its creators. Recorded at the end of the 1940s by a group led by Miles Davis, these sides were obscure at first…
*Mosaic Records will release a three-CD Select set of mid-1970s RCA Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin big-band recordings later this year.Elsewhere around the jazz blogosphere this past week…
Max Roach was a revolutionary bebop drummer, a leader of the classic Clifford Brown-Sonny Rollins hardbop quintet, a social activist, jazz educator and intellectual, a forerunner of Do-It-Yourself recording, and an explorer of the avant-garde…among other things. Max Roach contained multitudes, and his death in August of 2007 reverberated across the jazz world as if it were a long solo being played on a cosmic drumset. This program, an audio snapshot of his career on record, features his work with pianists Herbie Nichols and Bud Powell, his hardbop configurations with Clifford Brown and Sonny Rollins…
Inspired by a recent thread at Organissimo, here’s a list of jazz biographies and books that are in various stages of completion, nearing completion, or nearing publication:Peter Pullman’s book on Bud Powell. Pullman has been at work on this ever since overseeing the impressive booklet for the great jazz pianist’s Complete Verve Recordings…
In the years following World War II, a number of African-American jazz musicians took up residence in France, inspired by the relative lack of racism, the working opportunities, and the appreciation that French audiences showed for their art. Jazz greats such as Dexter Gordon, Bud Powell…
Trumpeter Freddie Webster is one of the great lost-legend stories of jazz, significant because he influenced both Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, little-known because he recorded only a few scattered solos and because he…
As the messiah of modern bop, Charlie Parker was one of the first jazz musicians to be recorded widely in live settings. On this program, in honor of the 84th anniversary of his birth, we’ll feature music from Bird’s performances with Bud Powell, Fats Navarro, Charles Mingus, Roy Haynes, and other leading lights of late-1940s and early-1950s jazz, including an impromptu “Well You Needn’t” with Thelonious…
View a Complete List of Archived Programs »
Copyright © 2009, The Trustees of Indiana University | Copyright Complaints
FCC-EEO Employment Report (PDF, 183K)
1229 East Seventh Street, Bloomington, Indiana 47405
Subscribe to the