In Carmen McRae’s suitcase throughout her last year of touring was a tape of Rebecca Parris’ 1990 album, Love Comes and Goes. McRae told Parris that the recording was among her prized selection of “travel music.” Now Parris’ traveling, like McRae’s, is over. “Boston’s First Lady of Jazz,” as she was known, died on June…Read More
Composer Jihye Lee has been awarded the Charlie Parker Jazz Composition Prize and Manny Albam Commission at the 30th Annual BMI Jazz Composers Workshop Showcase Concert, which took place on June 14 at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater in New York City. Serving as judges were Darcy James Argue, Alan Broadbent, and Ed Neumeister.…Read More
The second annual Jazz Congress will take place on Jan. 7-8, 2019, at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, in New York City, it was announced today. The venue is located at Broadway and W. 60th Street in Manhattan. Jazz Congress brings together members of the global jazz community to network,…Read More
The Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) at Rutgers University-Newark, in New Jersey, has acquired a collection of nearly 1,000 artifacts that belonged to the late William “Count” Basie. The Count Basie Collection, according to an IJS press release, includes the musician’s pianos, Hammond organ, photos, correspondence, concert programs, business records, housewares, and press clippings. “Scholars,…Read More
Supporting her 2017 album release Turn Up the Quiet, pianist/singer Diana Krall will launch a new 21-date U.S. tour Oct. 3 in Waterbury, Conn. According to the tour announcement from her label, Verve Records, the fourth North American leg of Krall’s ongoing world tour will continue through Nov. 4, when it lands in Costa Mesa,…Read More
Lorraine Gordon, longtime owner of the Village Vanguard jazz club in New York and widow of its founder Max Gordon, died on the morning of Saturday, June 9, at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan. She was 95 years old. Her death was confirmed by Jed Eisenman, the general manager of the Village Vanguard. Eisenman said that…Read More
On March 6, 1963, the day before John Coltrane recorded his classic album of ballads with singer Johnny Hartman, the saxophonist entered Rudy Van Gelder’s recording studio in New Jersey to lay down tracks of a very different sort. He and the rest of his quartet—pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones—cut…Read More
On Thursday, June 26, at Damrosch Park in the heart of New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, a new all-female big band will perform its first public concert. Sisterhood of Swing, a 14-piece group led by Canadian trumpeter/vocalist Bria Skonberg and also featuring violinist Regina Carter and clarinetist Anat Cohen, will provide the…Read More
New York City isn’t often thought of as a center for brass bands, but that may change on Sunday, June 10, when the first annual New York Brass Festival gets underway at the McKittrick Hotel in Chelsea. The 10-hour event will feature 10 bands on two stages and cover a wide range of music styles,…Read More
The Sun Ra Music Archive, online home of much of the prolific keyboardist/composer/bandleader/theorist’s album catalog, has just premiered the first three episodes of a new radio series, Sun Ra Radio. The episodes, each approximately three hours long, present an overview of the alleged Saturn native’s career with a combination of studio and live recordings by…Read More
