What the Brain Can Tell Us About Art
This New York Times story with multiple links to other stories comes just in time, if you ask me. DNA came along too late to save the destruction of lives but in time to save scores of innocent convicts from more prison times and undeserved punishment. Now, studies into the science and chemistry of the brain come as man stands on the precipice of complete irrationality in every corner of this planet.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Read MoreJohn Coltrane: Giant Steps
Wow, this is a riveting transcription of Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” that unfolds as the music is being played. It reminds me how miserably I failed at being able to sight read and how thoroughly amazed I am at what Coltrane played and at how someone could commit it to musical notation in less than ten years of time! Have fun, watch this and be amazed.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Jazz Conversations: Ornette Coleman
This December 1981 interview with Ornette Coleman by Eric Jackson is a gem. Ornette, whose conversations can sometimes sound like James Joyce being read aloud, is focused and on point throughout.
-Michael Cuscuna
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The Story of the Baroness and the Jazz Musicians
The legend of Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, or Nica, friend to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and other jazz luminaries, has loomed large over the history of modern jazz. Publication several years ago of the book Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats, under the Baroness’s name, amplified that legend. In a more recent biography just published in the United States, The Baroness: the Search for Nica, the Rebellious Rothschild, Hannah Rothschild explores the life of her great-aunt; and in this CNN profile of the Baroness and the legend, Hannah Rothschild airs some of her findings about her fabled relative.
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Shuggie Otis, Past and Present
On the occasion of the re-release of his influential 1974 album Inspiration Information, with tons of subsequent, previously unreleased music on a second disc, Shuggie Otis is making a comeback and has been touring recently. (For more on his comeback, see this New York Times article.) The son of Johnny Otis and son-in-law of former employer Gerald Wilson, Shuggie Otis remains a killer guitarist and innovative songwriter. Give this release a first listen on this NPR site.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Read MoreI was continuing to shrink. To become … what? The infinitesimal? What was I? Still a human being? Or was I the man of the future?
The amazing closing monologue of The Incredible Shrinking Man is Hollywood screenwriting at its best or so we thought until Ed Wood wrote and directed “Plan Nine From Outer Space” two years later. Of course, in the ensuing decades, great minds like Irwin Corey and Glenn Beck have raised the bar of logic and eloquence even higher.
-Michael Cuscuna
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How Jazz Scared the Nazis
As jazz enters its second century as an art form, historians and writers compile more evidence that what some listeners and musicians find invigorating and liberating about jazz sometimes seems frightening and dangerous to others’ need for control. Find out what scared Nazis about jazz, and what they tried to do about it when the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia. From Open Culture.
-Nick Moy
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Sun Ra’s Pathways through the 1970s
Sun Ra, by his attestation, may not have been of this world, but he was most certainly in this world during the 1970s; and like others who inhabited the space commonly associated with jazz during those times, his pathways grazed musical trends of the day. This NPR feature, by Jeff Golick and Jeff Jackson of Destination: OUT, points to five recordings documenting Sun Ra’s travels during that period.
-Nick Moy
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Vijay Iyer and his New Work on the Hindu Spring Festival
As Vijay Iyer’s April 27 Carnegie Hall headline debut approaches, Iyer’s work, particularly the premiere of his new multimedia work Radhe Radhe, Rites of Holi (the spring festival of colors) during this year’s observance of Holi, has caught the attention of the Hindustan Times. Here’s Anirudh Bhattacharyyaa’s take from Mumbai on Iyer, his work and what he has accomplished. (Photo: Jimmy Katz)
-Nick Moy
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Read MoreFacebook And The CIA
The Onion’s take on how Facebook is saving the government money.
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