Louis Armstrong Unissued Recording to be Unveiled
JazzTimes announces a gathering on April 30 (International Jazz Day) at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, Queens, heralding the discovery of a previously unknown performance of Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues.” Unfortunately, it’s not an alternate take of the June 28, 1928 masterpiece recorded for OKeh, considered one of the most significant jazz performances ever put to wax, but fortunately, it’s still Armstrong, it’s still the “West End Blues” and it’s the last surviving presentation of this piece by Louis, recorded while he was in concert at Feedomland (a defunct park in the Bronx) back in 1961. Dan Morgenstern, who was there on that day, will be a guest speaker reminiscing about the event.
-Scott Wenzel
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Earl Hines On NPR
One of our most current releases, Classic Earl Hines Sessions 1928-1945, gets the Fresh Air treatment over NPR stations hosted by Kevin Whitehead. He captures the essence of this set zeroing in on Earl’s solo work as well as discussing the diversities of each of the big bands.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Paul Bley Blindfold Test
This highly extended blindfold test with Ted Panken finds Paul Bley in irascible, riotous form. It is by no means unusual to find musicians challenging the limitations of the “blindfold test” format; here, Bley prods Panken, the tester, to give him something challenging to listen to and digest \u2014 not so different, after all, from what intelligent and perceptive listeners to the art form should demand.
-Nick Moy
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Wayne Shorter and Joe Lovano: A Provocative Conversation
This recent conversation by two masters bridges the generation gap for tenor saxophonists and for Blue Note artists. Wayne Shorter and Joe Lovano converse about what means the most to them: music and the human condition.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Maria Schneider Records Her New Orchestral Songs with Dawn Upshaw
Composer and leader Maria Schneider covers new creative terrain in her latest project, a set of orchestral songs she wrote and recorded with the great singer and new music proponent Dawn Upshaw. Schneider and Upshaw talk about their collaboration, and the new ground they each explored, in this interview with Leonard Lopate.
-Nick Moy
(Photo, L-R: Dawn Upshaw, Maria Schneider. Credit: Jimmy and Dena Katz)
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LaMonte Young and his Masterpiece
New music composer LaMonte Young, routinely named in the company of Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley as one of the fathers of American minimalism, may have outdone them all in terms of sheer scope, demand for concentration, and potential for profound revelation in his six-hour plus masterpiece The Well Tuned Piano. Tom Service offers this encouraging and helpful guide to what he calls “one of the great achievements of 20th-century music.” (Also, read about how the paths of Young and Eric Dolphy crossed.)
-Nick Moy
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Remembering Bebo Valdes, Cuban Music Titan
The Latin jazz world lost one of its key figures with the passing of Bebo Valdes on March 22 at age 94. Valdes, one of the greatest pianists in the history of Cuban popular music, drew gracefully from such disparate sources as Yoruba, western Baroque music and Tatum to forge his unique and deeply influential voice. Larry Blumenfeld tells us more about the impact Valdes registered on Latin music as we know it today.
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Saving the John Coltrane House in Philadelphia
This is a very cool article about Coltrane’s house in North Philly, where he lived from 1952 to ’58 when he moved to New York City. It’s gratifying to see the street named in his honor and the house declared a landmark. I lived in Philly from 1966 to ’70 and these photos remind me of what a three-story city Philadelphia was. I’m sure that’s no longer the case.
-Michael Cuscuna
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How Manfred Eicher Carved His Path for ECM
Francis Marmande spoke to Manfred Eicher who is approaching 70 and whose ECM label is 44 years old and the subject of a retrospective exhibit in Eicher’s home base of Munich. Eicher has kept his label active and relevant despite all sorts of obstacles by just sticking to his guns and letting his own taste direct the sound and look of the label. It’s amazing to consider that he has issued over 1500 albums!
-Michael Cuscuna
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David Amram: About Poet Gregory Corso
A classical conductor, a jazz French hornist and a composer, David Amram was in the middle of the ‘50s jazz scene, a member of the beat generation and involved in the ‘60s folk and protest movements. His reminiscences in JazzWax on poet Gregory Corso are priceless. I’m reminded of a morning Amram and I watched the sun come up at the bar in Bradley’s on University Place, where I listened to David talk animatedly about Lord Buckley for an hour!
-Michael Cuscuna
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