Jazz Notes and Phrases

Maryland (well, closer to DC actually) Summer Jazz Events

2009-07-16T11:56:00.004-04:00

JN&P thanks to Jeff Antoniuk, sax player extraordinaire and jazz educator, for the following information about some jazz workshops-linked-with-festivals down DC way. Hey, Baltimore, it's only a short drive to any of these so go, enjoy, and support live jazz in our region!

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Maryland Summer Jazz Festival is just around the corner!

In addition to being one of the mid-Atlantic's most popular and highest rated adult jazz camps, we are growing as a festival too. This year we have four headliner concerts, each with different music and performers.

I'd love to see you at one or more of them. It would be great to reconnect and I know you'll enjoy the concerts. We have some major names from around North America, including some local legends joining us on stage. Write down the dates, and I hope to see you soon!

www.marylandsummerjazz.com

July 21 Kick Off Concert at Blues Alley

1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW Washington, DC 20007

Featuring international trumpet sensation Ingrid Jensen with Jeff Antoniuk & the Jazz Update

at the nations premiere jazz club in Georgetown, Washington, DC. Hear originals by Jensen and

Antoniuk and covers by Freddie Hubbard, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and other greats.

Shows: 8 and 10:00 PM

Tickets: $25 plus tax and minimum.

Tickets are available from www.instantseats.com - THIS GIG WILL SELL OUT!

July 23 Free Outdoor Concert in Rockville Town Square

Co-sponsored by the City of Rockville, a free family oriented community concert

Featuring the Maryland Summer Jazz Quintet with some of the hottest jazz players

in the Mid Atlantic Region: drummer Frank Russo, bassist James King, Keyboard

player Jon Ozment and trumpeter Tim Stanley with saxophonist and band leader

Jeff Antoniuk. They’ll cover great tunes by Brubeck, Golson and Zawinul!

6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

FREE!

July 24 Double Dose of Jazz at Saint Mark Presbyterian Church

10701 Old Georgetown Road, Rockville, MD 20852

Attend the All Stars Concert or the Student concert or both with one ticket!

Featuring vocalist Alison Crockett, bassist Tom Baldwin and drummer Tony Martucci

with pianist Wade Beach, Antoniuk and Jensen. Hear inspired originals by Tom Baldwin

along with pieces by Oliver Nelson, Luiz Bonfa and Sonny Rollins and others! Our MC

is popular WPFW jazz radio host Candy Shannon.

7:00 PM Student Concert

8:15 PM All Stars Concert

Tickets: $15 advance, $20 at the door (if available), $5 for children 12 and under

Tickets are available in advance from www.instantseats.com

July 31 Double Dose of Jazz at Saint Mark Presbyterian Church

10701 Old Georgetown Road, Rockville, MD 20852

Attend the All Stars Concert or the Student concert or both with one ticket!

Features guitarist Tim Miller, trumpeter Tom Williams and bassist James King with Antoniuk,

Crockett and Martucci. Look forward to tunes by Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Chick Corea

and many more!”

7:00 PM Student Concert

8:15 PM All Stars Concert

Tickets: $15 advance, $20 at the door (if available), $5 for children 12 and under

Tickets are available in advance from www.instantseats.com

Don’t know which concert to attend? Come to all four or mix it up. Every concert is different with different players and tunes featured!

See the Faculty Page of www.marylandsummerjazz.com for artist biographies.

Updates from KCSM

2009-07-11T20:12:00.004-04:00

Well, things are moving with light speed at "The Mother Ship" in San Mateo--KCSM Jazz 91. A new blog and a new Jazz Forum to invite listener inputs. KCSM is also on Twitter and Facebook!! So--Jazz Notes and Phrases will wind down its feeble efforts to post something often and drop back to the occasional "Something Important To Say About Jazz" mode of operation. I won't take down this blog--other social media go only so far now that blogs are common--but for the most part I'll do day-to-day updates on the Jazz 91 blog or forum.

I'm working on a piece centered on the wonderful interview Lee Thomas did the other day with violinist/composer Regina Carter. Wow, what a musician and what a wise, warm person!! So stay tuned!!

Fantastic interview with Jazz West's Wayne Saroyan on KCSM today!!

2009-07-08T17:27:00.002-04:00

I was fortunate enough to catch Chris Cortez' terrific interview with Wayne Saroyan, webmaster and spiritual guide for Jazz West, the go-to website to get up-to-date jazz news from the Bay Area. I'm adding Wayne's blog to my blogroll!!!

Three Generations of Jazz Piano at Yoshi's

2009-07-02T20:48:00.003-04:00

What a night it must have been at Yoshi's last night!! Here's a photo gallery of the evening, courtesy of Ronald Davis, showing not only the terrific trio of pianists, Denny Zeitlin, Jon Jang, and Taylor Eigsti but several of KCSM Jazz 91's great announcers--and the station manager Marilyn Lawrence! Thanks again to the artists and to Yoshi's for helping close the funding gap for KCSM!

A New Website Devoted to Supporting Live Jazz

2009-07-02T12:28:00.002-04:00

While the Jazz Ambassadors are all devoted to keeping KCSM on the air and commercial-free, we never lose sight of the importance of supporting live jazz performances. Our man in Columbia, SC, JA Milton Cooley, just sent me this link to a website down his way that's all about live jazz. And note the modest level of support requested from viewers--$5. I'll add Skipp Pearson's site to the blog list on Notes and Phrases. Thanks, Milton!

Does Anybody REALLY Listen to "The Radio" Any More?

2009-06-23T12:15:00.013-04:00

That's right; "the radio;" when I was a kid (A. T. or ante televisio), "the radio" was a thing--a box, sometimes small, sometimes big enough to be part of the living room decor--and what you were able to listen to was worth paying attention to.

I've been cruising the blogosphere looking for stories about what role radio plays in our lives today. It's pretty depressing out there--concepts like "drive-time radio," those dismal broadcasts that try to perk up unhappy drivers with colorless commodified music-by-the-yard and mindless chatter, between bulletins about the latest traffic snarls and fender-benders--and commercials, commercials, COMMERCIALS!!! (On "commodity music," this poor schlumpf takes a long, long time to conclude that the answer to "free music" is...commercials! Arrrgggh!!)

This low-grade moronic programming tells us a lot about how much of radio isn't worth anybody's time. And of course so-called "talk radio" is so uniformly bad-nasty I don't have anything printable to say about that crud. Every once in a while, though, I run across an item that captures the magic of what radio can still mean--to the person behind the mike and to her listeners, as they still make a magic connection through a microphone, a transmitter (or webcast), and a loudspeaker or a set of ear-buds. Alas, like the Alabama blogger's eulogy for his personal radio hero Bert Bank (and Major Bank was quite a guy!!) these stories are often about the "used-to bees," which my granny kept reminding me "aren't flying any more." And the writer has moved on into TV--he gives the weather reports on a network TV station in Birmingham Alabama now. A big step down from those magic nights on WTBC that he writes about on his blog!!

The reason for this long lead-in is to remind you that radio worth listening to is alive and well out there--and now thanks to the World Wide Web, you don't need to be concerned becausf it's a 250-watt AM station--you can listen anywhere, any time, and "the radio" can be your laptop, your iTunes player or other MP3-ready portable device.

For my money (literally and figuratively), KCSM Jazz 91 is THE premier radio station worth listening to today. And we should really all pay at least a small admission fee to keep hearing their incomparable jazz collection played just for us.

KCSM needs our financial support to keep that web stream of great jazz flowing all over the world. So--take a few minutes now to "turn your dial" to KCSM.org--listen, enjoy, and then pay your admission to this Great Jazz Music Hall of the World!! Thanks--you'll get your money's worth, I gare-ON-tee!!

KCSM Benefit at Yoshi's in Oakland: Recollections of Dr. Denny Zeitlin

2009-06-20T21:09:00.012-04:00

The world's finest jazz radio station, KCSM Jazz 91 in San Mateo, CA unfortunately fell short of its spring fundrasing goal. Personally I think the drive did surprisingly well considering the current economic climate--but the station also needs more financial support from listeners because of budget cuts at its host college and other factors.

Fortunately, Yoshi's--Oakland--one of the great jazz venues--is graciously hosting a fund-raiser for KCSM on June 30 to help close the funding gap. And what a program!! Three of today's greatest jazz pianists--(Dr.) Denny Zeitlin, Jon Jang, and Taylor Eigsti, are generously giving a benefit performance (two shows, 8 and 10 p.m.) to help out!!

The co-appearance of these amazing jazz talents provides a great example of the universality of jazz. Jang has woven both cultural and musical threads from his Chinese heritage into his music; Eigsti has adapted modern recording techniques to enrich his jazz performances; and Zeitlin continues to excite audiences with new musical insights that may well spring from his deep understanding of the role of creativity in the human psyche.

I have a special fondness for Denny Zeitlin. He and I are both alumni of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, graduating at about the same time. I got reacquainted with him after he moved to UC San Francisco for his psychiatric residency and, later, a faculty position. I vividly and warmly recall Denny playing jazz piano to soothe strung-out, psychically lost young people who had taken refuge in a space he created at UCSF in the late 1960s. The facility required no registration, had no bureaucratic barriers, and those who came were free to leave at any time. It was just a safe place for these waifs to escape the chaos of Haight-Ashbury for a little while. I was deeply moved by what this haven revealed about the extent of Dr. Zeitlin's unselfish caring for these young adventurers as they tried to cope with the turbulence of those long-ago days.

These three wonderful musicians also show how jazz appeals to us no matter our ages. Zeitlin (and I!) are in our eighth decades of life; Jang is a generation behind us and Eigsti is in his twenties.

I salute these gifted musicians for their generosity, their willingness to use their gifts to attract support for KCSM. I thank Yoshi's for hosting the event. And I encourage all jazz lovers who can possibly do so to attend this never-to-be-repeated event. But...that's the way jazz is, isn't it? Always fresh, always new.

The Dupont Clifford Brown Jazz Festival Coming Up!

2009-06-09T17:54:00.003-04:00

For all you jazz fans along the Amtrak Northeast Corridor, I just learned that the 21st annual Dupont Clifford Brown Jazz Festival is scheduled to happen in Wilmington, DE next week (June 15-21.) The brilliant, precocious jazz trumpeter and composer Clifford Brown, whose career tragically ended in a fatal car crash when he was only 25, was born in Wilmington in 1930.

If you listen to KCSM, you know that Clifford's son, Clifford Brown Jr., is one of their volunteer announcers. He hosts Mid-Day Jazz from 10-2 (Pacific time) every Tuesday and Thursday, and the music he selects and plays is truly an tribute to his Dad's memory--every single program. Clifford is also a friend of mine on Facebook--and one of the nicest guys I've ever met on the Web.

So--if you live here on the Atlantic coast and have some vacation time next week, take the train to Wilmington and enjoy live jazz at Rodney Square in downtown Wilmington. Jazz Notes and Phrases salutes the City of Wilmington and Dupont for continuing to sponsor the festival. There's nothing like hearing great jazz performed live--and all the events at the festival are free! More information at 1-800-489-6664 or go to VisitWilmingtonDE.com on your browser.

Now We Getting TO It!

2009-06-06T00:02:00.004-04:00

Oh, did I mis-speak earlier!!! Kathleen Lawton wasn't into "Crazy 'Bout the Blues;" or not yet. She was just getting her groove on with "Jazz Oasis!"

Now she is down with the blues--and it's smokin' in here!!! Opening with a tribute to the great GREAT blues singer Koko Taylor, who just passed. "Wang Dang Doodle." You gotta love it. Good night from Baltimore!!

More Latin Jazz--and Haden

2009-06-05T23:34:00.008-04:00

Once again, Charlie Haden plays Latin jazz on Kathleen's "Crazy 'Bout The Blues" on KCSM. "Noche de Ronda." Can we ever get enough of Charlie? And the great collaborations--Pat Metheney, Quartet West with Harris, Broadbent, Higgins and Marable. What music!! What a jazz musician!!!

The "Other" Jazz Ambassdors

2009-06-05T23:02:00.003-04:00

We really need to acknowledge, right out front, that the Kansas City jazz community coined the phrase "Jazz Ambassadors"--and put it right in the label of their great magazine about Kansas City jazz and the vibrant live jazz scene there. So--hats off to KC and all the great musicians there!! Join us in the online jazz community at KCSM Jazz 91, between live gigs at 18th and Vine and Jardine's! We love what you do.

More on Jazz History

2009-06-05T22:52:00.005-04:00

This blog will shy away from "Shameless Commerce," as Click and Clack call it. Yet, listening to the priceless collectors' items that KCSM has in its vast archive of jazz, I feel a need to plug a local business, Daedalus Books and Records, that has a whole lot of great jazz on sale at a very reasonable price. Yes, a lot of it's repackaged but for the price they charge I'm satisfied. The recession has hurt Daedalus and they don't deserve it at all! I'm going to go out of my way to get them into a marketing arrangement with KCSM; that'll bring their revenues up to snuff!!!

Jazz History All Day and Every Day

2009-06-05T22:30:00.003-04:00

Now Kathleen is playing a cut from a Lionel Hampton reissue named "Mostly Ballads." The beautiful French song "Autumn Leaves."

Who knows when "Hamp" recorded this? Amazon can't help you out--it's a reissue. But the KCSM announcers know the music they play and where it came from and who created it--and they can tell you all about it if you're interested. And I believe a lot of jazz educators as well as just we jazz lovers need to keep them on the air and on the web so they can preserve the history of jazz just for us!

What lovely lovely evening music on KCSM!

2009-06-05T22:13:00.004-04:00

Kathleen Lawton is just one of the highly individual announcers on KCSM in San Mateo. Already this evening I've heard two lovely versions of "Solamente Una Vez," one by Charlie Haden and another by Raquel Bitton!

My late brother-in-law introduced me to Latin jazz, and it was one of my first experiences of this universal musical form--so of course I love it!! But...now Kathleen has segued (effortlessly and smoothly) to Shelley Berg's fantastic piano solo of "My One and Only Love."

Where else in the whole wide world can anyone hear such wonderful sounds, all within a few minutes of one another, and all free of commercial noise? Nowhere. NO-where else.

Join me--enjoy a never-repeated Lawton experience--and keep tuning in to KCSM wherever you are! (The stream works on your mobile devices too--forget iTunes and let the experts do the work for you!!)

Saluting the KCSM Jazz Ambassadors!

2009-06-05T17:53:00.003-04:00

In this first post, let me salute a small but growing group of jazz lovers who are "spreading the love of jazz" on behalf of our favorite all-jazz all-the-time web radio station; KCSM.org ! We come from many backgrounds but share our love of good jazz and are dedicated to keeping KCSM streaming jazz over the Web and commercial-free. And if you don't think that all good music is being threatened, just read this news release from a European university!! I can't imagine how horrible this stuff would be--like Muzak to the 100th power!!