Jazz

App is first of its kind for perf rights org The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, the performing rights organization made up of approximately 390,000 members, has announced the launch of ASCAP Mobile, an application for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The app, which bowed Wednesday on Apple's App Store, will allow members to log onto their online accounts, view royalty statements and follow up on ASCAP news. According to ASCAP, it's currently the only performing rights organization to provide an app, although BMI announced in May that it had launched a mobile version of its website for phones...

Mary Wilson Catalina Jazz Club. The legendary singer and a founding member of the Supremes, performs a series of solo shows September 5, 2010 7:30 p.m. Earth, Wind and Fire Hollywood Bowl Four decades strong, the R&B luminaries Earth, Wind and Fire show no signs of slowing down. For the first time, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members will perform with a full orchestra, which Thomas Wilkins will conduct. These performances are among the Bowl's final summer fireworks shows...

Sweet and Hot Music Festival The 15th annual jazz festival dedicated to the classic sound of swinging jazz, big bands and blues returns. The jazz bash will place in the luxe Los Angeles Airport Marriott Hotel over the Labor Day Weekend, September 3, 4, 5 and 6th 2010. It's going to be an awesome gathering of familiar faces and brand new acts especially selected for your listening and dancing pleasure...

Performing In Concert! Two Big Nights! At IRON DOOR SALOON/Sept. 17, 18 "Natasha James can certainly kick up the dust with a jukebox-worthy saloon song about drinking or life on the edge. She can also paint a poignant lyrical portrait of life in America, complete with all its blemishes. However, she is at her finest when she is doing a little bit of both while adding a touch of the blues." American Songwriters Magazine...

Check in for highlights from the 2-day festival at AAJ! Videographer c: Rich Bradway and photographer c: Kristophe Diaz provide daily coverage from the 2010 e: Tanglewood Jazz Festival and readers can view footage and photos at All About Jazz...

All About Jazz is celebrating Lars Danielsson's birthday today! Lars DanielssonThe bassist Lars Danielsson is reknown and admired in the International Jazz world for his lyrical but groovy playing... more Website | Photos | Articles Follow Lars Danielsson...

By Steve Provizer Tom, one of our commentors, speculates about Coltrane's contribution to the fracturing of the jazz audience and the concomitant loss of jazz audience in the early 1960's. This fracturing was certainly underway before the early 60's; chiefly through Ornette and somewhat via Cecil Taylor and Dolphy, but for several reasons-and for better or worse- Coltrane was most responsible for this process...

By Ted Joans Sometimes he was cool like an eternalblue flame burning in the old KansasCity nunnerySometimes he was happy 'til he'd thinkabout his birth place and its bloodstained clay hills and crow-filled treesMost times he was blowin' on the wonderfultenor sax of his, preachin' in very cooltones, shouting only to remind you ofa certain point in his blue messagesHe was our president as well as the ministerof soul stirring Jazz, he knew what heblew, and he did what a prez should do,wail, wail, wail. There were many ofthem to follow him and most of them werefair&#151but they never spoke so eloquentlyin so a far out funky air.Our prez done died, he know'd this would come.but death has only booked him, alongsideBird, Art Tatum, and other heavenly wailers.Angels of Jazz&#151they don't die&#151they livethey live&#151in hipsters like you and I...

When fans attend a performance by the Chicago rap stars Common or Kanye West (or, for that matter, the hip-hop princess BeyoncA(C) or the neo-soul crooner Maxwell), they expect certain things: powerful choreography, glitzy peripherals like lights and props and the headliner on video screens in gigantic detail...

In the beginning, Stash Records specialized in songs from the '20s, '30s and '40s that dealt with drugs and sex. The first Stash compilation of old recordings, in 1976, was called Reefer Songs. Another of the label's big sellers was Copulatin' Blues. Eventually, founder Bernie Brightman, began making original recordings by jazz artists, including singer Chris Connor and pianist Hilton Ruiz. To his eternal credit (he died in 2003), Brightman also recorded two albums by Anita Gravine, an artist whose talent justifies wide fame but who has remained an insiders' favorite. Here is my mini-review of one of her Stash LPs, from the July, 1986 issue of Texas Monthly.Anita Gravine, I Always Knew (Stash ST 255). An experienced but little-known singer whose second album is even better than her first, Gravine handles both ballad and up-tempo songs with ease of voice production and rhythmic assurance. Mike Abene's arrangements are stimulatingly unclichA(C)d. The album is further graced by the trumpet solos of Tom Harrell. All of the above outdo themselves on a wonderful fugitive from the forties, "The Coffee Song...

This week, we've got some video clips of singer Michael Franks, who's coming to St. Louis on Thursday, September 16 to perform at the Ameristar Casino St. Charles' Bottleneck Blues Bar. Known for his gentle crooning, lyrical wordplay, and fondness for Latin and Brazilian rhythms, Franks started as a folk singer before turning to jazz in the early 1970s. He made one self-titled record before beginning a 20-year association with the Warner Brothers label, where he had a series of pop crossover hits with songs including "Popsicle Toes," "The Lady Wants To Know," "Monkey See, Monkey Do" and "Your Secret's Safe With Me." Franks has recorded with with jazz musicians such as David Sanborn, Larry Carlton, and Joe Sample and Wilton Felder of The Crusaders, and his songs have been performed by The Manhattan Transfer, Patti Labelle, Carmen McRae, Diana Krall, Shirley Bassey, and many others. In recent years, Franks has made albums for Windham Hill, Rhino, and Koch, which issued his most recent CD Rendezvous in Rio back in 2006...

Jamaican-American saxophonist Phillip "Doc" Martin is among 40 Smooth Jazz stars set to shine at the 24th Catalina Island JazzTrax Festival over 3 weekends beginning September 30 in the spectacular Avalon Casino Ballroom (Looking out to Sea) and unplugged under the nighttime skies at the Wrigley's Ranch on exquisite California island...

A consensus seems to be growing that Los Angeles is in the midst of a renaissance for independent music. In a recent Sunday feature, we set out to discover just how it is that while the major labels continue to suffer layoffs and severe sales losses, this city's scrappy, savvy, taste-driven indie imprints have, in fact, been thriving...

More than 25 years after producing "Thriller," Quincy Jones is still looking for ways to reinvent the music experience. The legendary producer has teamed with professional audio company AKG to launch a line of headphones. Dubbed the Quincy Jones Signature Line, the collection of headphones will be a mix of in-ear, over-ears and on-ear minis set for release in October. Jones said the partnership isn't something new, as he's been using AKG headphones exclusively for years now...

Standup comic Robert Schimmel, a frequent guest on Howard Stern's radio show, has died after suffering serious injuries in a car accident. He was 60. Schimmel's spokesman, Howard Bragman, says Schimmel died Friday evening in a Phoenix hospital. Schimmel was a passenger Thursday in a car driven by his 19-year-old daughter Aliyah. Bragman says Aliyah Schimmel swerved to avoid another car and the vehicle she was driving rolled to the side of the freeway. Bragman says she is hospitalized in stable condition...

The September online edition of JAZZ and BLUES FLORIDA has been posted. This month's features include: m: Larry Coryell- Winning Spin "Prime Picks" Bird Dog Bobby Blues Band m: Doug Carn John Yarling Randy Bernsen Saxophones Gone Wild: Mike MacArthur, Jarred Armstrong, Gene Cannon, Alan Darcy, Tim Eddy, Mike Gibilisco, Valerie Gillespie, Jerry Kenney, Jeremy Powell, Austin Vickrey, Dave Reinhardt; Jeremy Carter and The Saxophobia Sax Quartet South Florida Blues Society's Harmonica Blowoff m: Taj Mahal and The Phantom Blues Band...

All About Jazz is celebrating Dave Liebman's birthday today! Dave LiebmanDavid Liebman was born in Brooklyn, New York on September 4, 1946. He began classical piano lessons at the age of nine and saxophone by twelve... more Website | Photos | Articles Follow Dave Liebman...

"Interactivity" has been a hot topic of conversation in the music industry lately. In everything from music videos to live shows to, um, pinball, musicians and businesses are trying to figure out not only how to make their music more of a two-way street, but whether they actually can or should. There is a fair amount of skepticism about whether interactivity is what fans want...

By Mark Saleski A friend of mine, who is just beginning to dip his toe into the pool of jazz, asked me if I thought he was "ready" for Bitches Brew. That's a tricky question, no matter who is doing the asking. The generic answer, suitable for use in nearly any situation, is a definite "maybe." Some might say it's a mighty big leap from Kind Of Blue to Bitches Brew. Indeed, the two albums sound nothing like each other, with the former's genius slowly revealed in the subtleties of modal interplay while the latter makes a much more strident, funky, and loud statement...

Enjoy podcasts of this weekend's performers at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, including Laurence Hogbood, Donal Fox and Maya Beiser, by clicking here. For a full schedule of performances of this year's Tanglewood Jazz Festival, click here. For year round jazz in Massachusetts, visit MassJazz.com...