Back in the 1980s, the Warsaw-based International Jazz Federation held an annual competition, Jazz Photo International, featuring submissions in an exhibition at Poland’s premier festival, the Jazz Jamboree, and publishing the winning images in Jazz Forum magazine, also based in Warsaw. (The magazine is still alive and well, though now only in Polish: www.jazzforum.com.pl.) On an international scale, this was… [read more]

It’s been just over a year that I have semi-officially considered myself a jazz writer. It started with this post, which began as an essay for a graduate course on jazz and film (I am currently finishing my MA in Jazz History and Research at Rutgers-Newark, the only masters program currently offered in jazz history worldwide). Since then I’ve been… [read more]

Swing Journal, the magazine promoting American jazz in Japan since the end of WWII, ceases publication with its June issue. According to editor-in-chief Takafumi Mimori, “We will make efforts to revive it somehow,” but the monthly publication known for its photography, articles by U.S. as well as Japanese commentators and previously robust support from electronics firms and instrument manufacturers has… [read more]

For the past 38 years, Jack Kleinsinger was impresario and host of “Highlights In Jazz,” a moveable fete of jazz luminaries presented in not-really-jam-sessions. And now, in light of financial considerations, it ends. “I’m not giving up on jazz, it’s just this deepening recession,” Kleinsinger says. The final Highlights In Jazz concert took place last night, Thursday, May 13.

May 13, 2010, New York — “You should be ashamed of yourselves,” producers of the Jazz Icons DVD series scolded the Jazz Journalists Association for naming Count Basie & His Orchestra — Live in Berlin & Stockholm 1968 a “Jazz Video of the Year” finalist in the 2010 JJA Jazz Awards. In an “open letter” sent to a selection of… [read more]

Wednesday, May 12 — Boston: The Tanglewood Jazz Festival (Sept. 4-5, 2010, in Lenox MA) has announced it will award four performance spots on the “Jazz Café” stage of its annual Labor Day weekend programming on the basis of musicians’ videotapes and electronic press kits. For what appears to be the first time, emerging artists are being asked to submit… [read more]

This article originally appeared in the Post Mortem blog published by The Washington Post. It is reproduced with the permission of JJA member Matt Schudel.

It just so happened that I renewed my membership in the Jazz Journalists Association on Friday [April 23], the same day I heard that Gene Lees had died. I’ve been writing about jazz since 1992,

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This article originally appeared on Doug Ramsey’s Rifftides blog, published by ArtsJournal.com.

Gene Lees died on April 22. We lost a writer unsurpassed at illuminating music and the world that musicians inhabit. I lost a cherished colleague whose work inspired me, a dear friend whose companionship brightened my existence. For a formal biography, see his entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia.… [read more]

America’s best high school jazz bands are directed by JJA “A Team” honorees, according to Jazz At Lincoln Center, announcing winners of its 15th annual Essentially Ellington competition.

The Garfield High School (Seattle) Jazz Band took first place, a trophy and $5,000 in the weekend-long competition and festival, which comprised performances and workshops by 15 finalists drawn from 96 bands… [read more]

How has JazzFest Berlin changed in the last 20 years, since the wall came down? Not all that much, and this is basically true for all of the festival’s 45 years. That’s OK, because its founders pointed it in the right direction in the first place, long before I ever got there. I’ve been lucky — or deranged — enough… [read more]