Of the 32 formal concerts in the Library of Congress 2009-2010 season only two or three are jazz-related. Does this say something about the nation’s commitment to jazz, our “rare and valuable national American treasure”?
Year of the Blues Images calendar, 2010
“This Old World’s In A Hell Of A Fix,” a 1931 sermon by Rev. Dr. J. Gordon McPherson, called “The Black Billy Sunday,” gives title and theme to the 7th annual Blues Images wall calendar, complete with artwork from the collectible Paramount and Brunswick “race records” of the late ’20s and early ’30s. The package includes a cd of 18 deep blues from back in the day, including two unreleased sides featuring guitarist Blind Blake and rarities by Papa Charlie Jackson and Henry Townsend, among others.Â
  
Mr. Teachout gets the word: Jazz’s Swing Era popularity past
Biographer of H L. Mencken and (coming soon) Louis Armstrong, ArtsJournal blogger and scribe for the Wall Street Journal Terry Teachout has raised a fuss by pointing to the National Endowment for the Arts‘ study citing declines in jazz audiences from 2002 to 2008 (and indeed from 1982 to 2008). That this data was released in June and been reported on earlier, elsewhere, (like at Jazz.com by editor Ted Gioia) without getting much attention suggests either the broad reach and high profile of Murdock-owned media or it’s August and a writer getting outraged about ho-hum “news” can stir otherwise becalmed straits.Â
But seriously: Mr. Teachout has stumbled into a very old trap, forecasting the death of jazz.
Paeans to Hank Jones
My profile of pianist Hank Jones, who turned 91 on July 31, is in the August issue of Down Beat and excerpted here. Space limitations disallowed any of the resounding shout-outs I asked for from a bevy of musicians to make the print edition: No such problem on the web! So read what several pianists with styles of their own, and one of Hank’s most admiring collaborators, Â have to say about an eminently modest but extraordinarily accomplished gentleman.Â
Meet the Composer grants — not for improvisers
Pursuant to online debates about whether grants and fellowships are good for jazz — here’s a report on the non-profit Meet the Composer‘s choice of 31 recipients for $300,000 towards realization of commissions. Only one jazz-related project among them: composer-guitarist Joel Harrison, commissioned by the Brooklyn-based organization Connection Works, to write for a large ensemble. However, three principals of the new music collect Bang on a Can, as well as celebrated veteran composers Meredith Monk and Steve Reich, and the music theater artist Stew (“Passing Strange,” Spike Lee’s movie of which is scheduled for mid-August release) are grants winners.
best review ever of Miles Ornette Cecil — Jazz Beyond Jazz
I’m humbled by writer-poet-performance artist Kirpal Gordon‘s appreciation of and insight into my book on the avant garde through the models of Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, in the just-posted NOLA issue of Big Bridge magazine. He’s captured my intent and says I accomplished what I meant to. See if you agree.Â
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Summertime, and the listening should be easy
My latest column in City Arts-New York is now online, with pick hits for free August concerts in NYC. I don’t suggest the season’s not right for serious,
substantial music, just that we would appreciate the surrounding
circumstances being comfortable and hassle-free. Here’s the opening graph, meant to set the tone and keep you reading — and notes about the Caramoor jazz fest in suburban Westchester.
Backlash against grants for jazz?
Nate Chinen, estimable New York Times music journalist, questions the effect of grants like the $253,000 announced by Chamber Music America for jazz composers: Are applicants pressed to create overly grand and pc projects? Ottawa Citizen blogger Peter Hum asks why Canada’s government supports jazz at all.
But Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra leader Arturo O’Farrill has been commissioned to write a Latin jazz orchestra piece in honor of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Are grants and government support bad for jazz?
Earma Thompson, unheralded piano jazz star, dies at 86
A Chicago mainstay, whose efforts supported local and touring musicians starting in the early ’40s but who didn’t record under her own name until 2004, Earma Thompson deserves to be celebrated as an outstanding example of how women have participated in jazz often more than is acknowledged, from behind the scenes. As the Chicago Tribune’s Howard Reich wrote in his July 16 obituary of this significant pianist and salon — not saloon — keeper, “Earma Thompson never really had a chance to become famous.”
www,JazzChicago.net/jazzfest.html
Mandela Day African music fest, Brooklyn
Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Cyndi Lauper with Li’l Kim, Dave Stewart and French first-lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy celebrated Nobel laureate Nelson Mandela‘s 91st birthday July 18 at a heavily reported Radio City Music Hall concert, but in Prospect Park Nigeria’s King Sunny Adé headlined a free five-act, seven-hour pan-African Celebrate Brooklyn! show drawing some 20,000 people. No reviews have been forthcoming, but hey, it was pretty nice, so you should know.
Fast impressions, new jazz ‘n’ out cds
I’m determined to try to survey unusual and promising new jazz-and-beyond cds with regularity — here are responses (not in-depth reviews) to only half-a-dozen grabbed off my teetering in-pile almost at random, plus related diversions. The scale: 5 stars “You gotta hear this”; 4 – “very interesting, if interested in this sort of thing”; 3 — “middling, ok fun, consistent”; 2 – “flawed, somehow worthy”; 1 “never mind, really.”
On magazine’s circulation figures
Jazz Times was credited with 100,000 circulation in virtually all press accounts of its recent transfer of ownership — which with annual subscription rate of nearly $24 per year suggests annual income from readership alone (there’s income from ads, too) easily be in excess of $2 million dollars.
But as I noted in my last posting, the circulation figure is not verified by the non-profit Audit Bureau of Circulation or anyone else. It comes from Jazz Times advertising department, which of course sells ads on the basis of how many eyeballs can be said to be perusing them. The whole question of jazz mag circulation is murky — surprising, at a time when I can chart by the hour the exact number of hits of readers on this blog, and even figure out where they come from. Here is correspondence on jazz mag circulation claims I received from Frank Alkyer, the publisher of 75-year-old Down Beat magazine, Jazz Times‘ rival (which has a $26.99 annual sub rate for 12 issues; JT puts out 10 and an education supplement). Alkyer says Down Beat’s circulation is currently 70,000.
Short end of Jazz Times’ good news
The quick revival of magazine Jazz Times by Madavor Media is a good thing, but freelance contributors whose work has already been published are being told that they’ll be paid only 50% of amounts due.
“Those checks are going out this week,” according to an email sent by Lee Mergener, JT’s editor-in-chief who is being retained during the transition in ownership, along with managing editor Evan Haga and two ad representatives. Mergner’s memo continues, “Madavor only acquired the assets, not the liabilities, of the company, leaving JazzTimes‘ previous ownership to settle its debts as best it can.”