14 January 2016
Joe Haider / Donny McCaslin
Ralf Dombrowski talks to the German-Swiss pianist Joe Haider (born in Darmstadt, not Mannheim!) about the Munich jazz scene of the 1960s, about jazz and alcohol, about friendly and not so friendly musicians he had to accompany while being the house pianist at Domicile jazz club in Munich, about record sales then and now, about not daring to change anything by Thelonious Monk, and about his latest album, recorded for his 80th birthday, which for some numbers has a string quartet as accompaniment ( Süddeutsche Zeitung). --- Andrian Kreye reports about the saxophonist Donny McCaslin and how he got to be featured on David Bowie's last album released just two days before the pop hero's death last week ( Süddeutsche Zeitung).
15 January 2016
Coco Schumann / Richard Howell
Michaela Haas reports about the German guitarist Coco Schumann who survived the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, played in the Ghetto Swingers band in Theresienstadt and for the SS hangmen in Auschwitz, and who sees himself as "a musician who survived the concentration camps", not "a Holocaust survivor who happens to make music" ( The Huffington Post). --- Andrew Gilbert talks to the saxophonist Richard Howell about the Bay Area jazz scene around San Francisco, about his band Sudden Changes, about playing with his saxophone colleague Charles McNeal, but also reports about the other musicians in the band and about Howell's son, the 17-year-old drummer Ele Howell who recently sat in for trumpeter Christian Scott's drummer for a gig at Yoshi's ( KQED).
16 January 2016
Bobby Hsu / Gunter Hampel
Peter Hum talks to the Canadian saxophonist Bobby Hsu about his latest project interpreting songs by the composer Stephen Sondheim, about the jazz repertoire in general, about his current band as well as about him sending a copy of his Sondheim album to the composer but having yet to receive a response from him ( Ottawa Citizen). --- Udo Hinz attends a lecture by the German bass clarinetist and vibraphonist Gunter Hampel about the roots of jazz, about the political implications of the music, about his experiences when living and working in New York, about jazz as a spiritual act, as well as about the chances to use jazz improvisation to involve some of the refugees of recent months and thus help to change society ( Göttinger Tageblatt ).
17 January 2016
Pop / David Bowie
Malte Borgmann and Mara Wecker see a comeback of jazz as an important color in pop music for 2016 and think this has to do with the political atmosphere of our times as well as with a new willingness of the audience to accept instrumentalists on stage who take a musical risk ( Bayerischer Rundfunk). --- Hans Hielscher takes up the subject in his tribute to the late David Bowie and reports that while Bowie saw himself as a pop musician he always admired the "jazz gods" ( Spiegel Online).
18 January 2016
Joshua White / Benny Goodman
George Varga talks to the pianist Joshua White about growing up with a deep appreciation for classical music and only coming to jazz at the age of 17, about his love for the jazz tradition but trying to celebrate it from a 2016 perspective, about his fascination with the recordings of Art Tatum, as well as about not being in a hurry to record his own debut album ( San Diego Union-Tribune). --- Jon Hancock has published a free online update to his book documentation about Benny Goodman 's 1938 Carnegie Hall concert ( BG 1938).
Stefan Winter / Esquire All Stars
Ulrich Steinmetzger talks to the German producer Stefan Winter about the 30th anniversary of his record producing activities, first with JMT, later with Winter & Winter, about his ambition to get listeners surprised by the music they hear, as well as about his sound sculptures which have already been presented in several museums ( Thüringische Landeszeitung ). --- David Quirk reports about the Esquire jazz concert at the Metropolitan Opera House on Broadway and 39th Street in New York which took place in January 1944 and featured stars such as Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Art Tatum and others, and even a radio hookup with Benny Goodman who was in a studio in Hollywood ( New York Daily News).
... what else ...
Stefan Hentz reflects about the cultural and political implications of the changes at Hamburg's Elbjazz festival ( Kultur-Port). --- Herbert Heil talks to Dieter Arlet, the trumpeter of the German Wiesbadener Juristenband ( Wiesbadener Kurier ). --- Nate Chinen hears the guitarist Miles Okazami at the Jazz Gallery in New York ( New York Times). --- Raimund Meisenberger reports about a preliminary decision by Bayerischer Rundfunk not to televise the concerts at the Burghausen Jazzwoche in Germany because of budget cuts at the public TV station ( Burghauser Anzeiger ). --- Ben Ratliff ( New York Times) and Nate Chinen ( New York Times) attend the Winter Jazzfest in New York. --- The Italian guitarist Gigi Cifarelli was tested positive for doping and banned for four years from amateur cycling competitions ( Cycling Weekly).
Obituaries
We learned of the passing of the British organist Alan Haven at the age of 80.
Last Week at the Jazzinstitut
Last Wednesday all the staff of the Jazzinstitut including our volunteers and our current intern attended the exhibition "I Got Rhythm. Kunst und Jazz seit 1920" at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Sven Beckstette, one of the exhibition's curators, led us through the show, after which we walked through a second time, with the excellent audio guides which not only included explanations about the paintings but also music sound files directly connected to the art work giving us new perspectives of the influence of jazz on visual arts in the 20th and beginning 21st century. The exhibition runs until March 2016 and is highly recommended; last Wednesday we were pleasantly surprised by the many interested visitors. The show will end with a small festival on 5th and 6th March featuring China Moses, Peter Brötzmann, Rüdiger Carl + Sven-Ake Johansson, as well as Alexander von Schlippenbach and the Rolf Kühn Unit.
This Wednesday (20 January, 7:30pm) we will stage another edition of the Mainz JazzTalks at the Johannes Gutenberg University, a joint venture between the music and the musicology departments of Mainz University and the Jazzinstitut Darmstadt. The subject of the 3rd Mainz JazzTalk is: "'No, It's a Woman's World, Too!' Why jazz no longer is just men's domain..." The discussion follows the subject of our Jazzforum conference last October focusing on "Gender and Identity in Jazz" and asks about the position of women in all areas of today's jazz scene. Yes, there may be more and more women musicians, and we also notice a change in the audience, but where are the female journalists, festival promoters, scholars, and why are there only two female musicians in the three publicly-funded German radio big bands? Guests of this edition of the Mainz JazzTalks are the saxophonist Angelika Niescier (Cologne), the club and festival organizer Nadin Deventer (Jazzfest Berlin) and the editor Christine Stephan (Jazzthetik magazine, Münster). The Mainz JazzTalks, moderated by Wolfram Knauer, try to connect theoretical and practical discourses, and thus the event will be musically framed by students playing several pieces connected to the subject.
The Mainz JazzTalks will be recorded for public broadcast. The recording and the editorial work will be done by students at the music and the musicology departments of University Mainz, under tutorship of Julia Neupert, an experienced radio editor for SWR public radio. The final show will be broadcast on 1 March 2016 at 9pm on SWR 2 radio.
You are cordially invited to the 3rd Main JazzTalk, which is free for all: Wednesday, 20 January 2016, 7:30pm, Roter Saal, Hochschule für Musik, Jakob-Welder-Weg 28, 55128 Mainz.
This Friday (22 January, 8:30pm) the Dutch pianist Jasper van't Hof as well as the Swiss percussionist Reto Weber will be guests at our 112th JazzTalk concert at the Jazzinstitut's intimate concert space.
No comments:
Post a Comment