Jazz journalists kept us the jazz buzz throughout May, as JJA members’ updates of their recent activities amply attest.
And the new JJAJazzAwards website hailed 2021JJA Jazz Awards winners.
Welcome to new members: Yuki Kimura, who covers jazz festivals in Japan and hopes to get to Taiwan, blogging at YORIKIDO – Wonders of Music and Mountains, and Jason Berry, videographer, filmmaker and historian whose new documentary City of a Million Dreams with clarinetist Dr Michael White, uses jazz funerals as a lens on the evolution of New Orleans.
Here’s what others have been up to:
Jane Ira Bloom performed with the NowNet Arts Ensemble: Synthesis Series livestream on Sun, May 23 with Yoon Sun Choi (voice), Julie Ferrara (oboe), Marty Ehrlich (woodwinds), Ned Rothenberg (woodwinds), James Zollar (trumpet), Ray Anderson (trombone), David Taylor (bass trombone), Mark Dresser (bass), Gerry Hemingway (percussion), Sarah Weaver (conductor, composer). This Ensemble premieres network arts works by composer Weaver for musicians in New York, California, and Switzerland performing together live via the internet.
Ken Franckling photographed and reviewed singer Denise Donatelli’s May 12 performance with the Naples Philharmonic Jazz Orchestra in Naples FL in his Jazz Notes blog. The socially distanced evening with Artist-Naples’ resident sextet, plus guitarist John Hart, was Donatelli’s first live performance in more than a year. Ken also blogged on the reopening of the live jazz scene in Savannah GA in late April.
Peter Gerler has recently published “On the Road with King Oliver,” a feature in the April 2021 Syncopated Times about finding an old cab driver who heard Oliver live in Georgia, 1936. Peter also continues working on his Oliver book.
Ted Gioia has launched a new music and culture newsletter on the Substack platform called Culture Notes of an Honest Broker, available for both free and paid subscriptions.
David Haney and Sound Shack Director Dave Storrs have partnered to bring the Sound Shack to New York for an installation/residency in early 2022. Haney, Storrs and Mark McGrath performed at the Parma Live Stage event on May 6 featuring classical works upended. Haney performed Zoom concerts on May 11, 18, and 20 with Cheryl Pyle (New York); Jorge Hernaez (Argentina); and Nora McCarthy; (New York), and has joined the National Association of Composers.
Richard Kamins began an interview series in April 2021 on “River Valley Rhythms,” heard the first and third (sometimes fifth) Thursday of the month at 4 p.m. on Wesleyan University radio station WESU-88.1FM and WESUFM.org. So far, he has interviewed blues guitarist Peter Parcek, saxophonist and composer Ted Nash, composer and Wesleyan professor Neely Bruce, composer and pianist Stephen Feifke, and Dan Blake, and has scheduled to interview James Brandon Lewis for his June 3 show.
Howard Mandel wrote about Delmark Records/Jazz Record Mart owner Bob Koester, who died at 88, for the Chicago Reader, and was interviewed for WLS Radio and the New York Times. He reviewed saxophonist Pierrick Pédron’s 50-50 for DownBeat, annotated Sharkskin by Acme Jazz Garage (band of JJA member Philip Booth), prepared prints by the late Lona Foote for exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, and supervised the roll-out of the new JJAJazzAwards.org website as well as editing content for it and for JJANews.org.
Dee Dee McNeil published several cover stories in May including “Leslie Baker: A Bass for all Seasons” in L.A. Jazz Scene and in the Quarterly Michigan History Magazine The Chronicle , the quarterly magazine of the Historical Society of Michigan one that featured the late trumpeter Marcus Belgrave. For her blog Music Memoirs she wrote of Detroit-based drummer George Davidson, and several reviews of newly released jazz CDs.
Steve Monroe’s Jazz Avenues editions for Twitter and Facebook for April into May 2021 included news on Jazz Appreciation Month; the JJA 2021 Jazz Heroes Herb Scott and Aaron Myers of the Capitol Hill Jazz Foundation, for Washington, D.C. and Henry Wong of An Die Musik, for Baltimore; and live streaming and live performance news on players including Carl Grubbs, Melissa Aldana, Charles Rahmat Woods, Kush Abadey, Sharon Clark, Roxy Coss, Nasar Abadey, Lenny Robinson and Tedd Baker.
Luciano Rossetti, photographer, with time during Covid-19 lockdowns, worked on his analog and digital archive. Every day on Instagram he posts a new photo from his archive. His photo of Mark Feldman appears on the cover of the May 2021 issue of The New York City Jazz Record and he wrote about his year for JJANews.org.
Sammy Stein has curated several articles from international jazz writers for the JJA and is producing a series of radio shows called “The Treasure Trove of Jazz” for U.S. station Jazz Bites Radio, based around the Jazz Repository — a collection of over 59,000 vintage vinyl and wax recordings. Finding hidden gems and getting information on artists like The Original Teddies, The Brown Brothers, and many more has proved an engaging project. Her book Pause, Play, Repeat has gotten some stellar reviews, too.
