Thankfully, despite surges in corona virus cases requiring strict limits on socializing, jazz endures as the ultimate of creative group engagement.
Recent events dealing with international issues demonstrate how the world’s interlocked cultures are, and how improvised music with techniques and strategies from African-American roots can address issues of importance as an art, while also remaining an entertainment.
On November 1, the “best of Boricua jazz” returned to the airwaves in the via Brave New Radio, WPSC 88.7FM, from William Paterson University, New Jersey, after a six-month suspension of station broadcasting due to the covid-19 pandemic.
Wilbert Sostre, JJA member, producer, program host and author of Boricua Jazz La Historia del Jazz Puertorriqueño (2019), originated the program on Radio Vieques in June 2018, where it was broadcast until November 2019, then moved to Brave New Radio. It paused in March 2020 due to pandemic-mitigating restrictions, and restarted November 2020 after a forced pause due to the Covid pandemic.
Upon resumption, says Sostre, the show became about “some of the best new music we couldn’t play when we were off the air. The first theme on that edition was ‘Little Suede Shoes’ by Fred Hersch and Miguel Zenón.”
Virgil Mihaiu, JJA member in Romania who wrote on this page about the 24th edition of Romania’s Gărâna Jazz Festival held in early August, sent word, drolly: “By virtue of my emcee status at several previous editions, of the ’emergency format’ of the Transilvania Jazz Festival, November 13 and 14.”
14.” The festival was established in 2007 to “promote Cluj-Napoca and the Romanian cultural values, encourage participation in jazz events and
develop cultural exchange and international dialogue, through the universal language of jazz that transcends generations.” There are almost three hours of unique programing, sets evidently recorded in the unmasked, as usual-distanced musicians’ home studios or improvised stages, from both Day One and Day Two on YouTube.
On November 13, Canadian flutist-saxophonist Jane Bunnett and Maqueque, Quebecois musician Norman Raymond, New York-based Arturo O’Farrill of the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and Alliance, South Bronx rappers Rebel Diaz (comprising the Chilean-born brothers Rodrigo Venegas, aka RodStarz, and Gonzalo Venegas, aka GI)
joined the Cuban Rumba band Orquesta de Camara and young musicians from the Havana Chamber Orchestra, among many others, in a concert promoting “solidarity to end the U.S. Blockade of Cuba. Hothouse Global, friend and occasional collaborator with the JJA, was among the co-sponsors, webcasting the event on Hothouse Global on twitch.tv.
And the EFG London Jazz Festival, Friday Nov. 13 to Sunday Nov. 22, pivoted to online presentation, with 129 live streams featuring more than 700 musicians. Highlights include performances by internationalists Tigran Hamasyan, Linda May Han Oh, Emile Parisien & Vincent Peirani, newly emerging musicians from Switzerland, Lithuania, Sweden, a Turkish event promoted as “psychedelic,” and current UK stars such as Shabaka
Hutchings, Emma-Jean Thackray, Ashley Henry, Nikki Yeoh, Bill Laurance, Rosie Turton, Sarathy Korwar, Camilla George and Tenderlonious.
There was also a series of talks called ARTicle 10: Conversations in the era of Black Lives Matter; Jazz Yoga with multi-instrumentalist Shri Sriram playing live with yoga teacher Constanza Ruff, and PALATIUM, a show by performance artist Gaika, highlighting Black visionaries amid contemporary electronics a backdrop of experimental film.
The entire EFG London Jazz Festival can be accessed at efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk/broadcast. Jazz fans currently spending more time on their screens than in clubs or concert halls may miss in-person fare, but music from all over the globe has never been more available.
