At Moe's with the East End guys ...

At Moe's with the East End guys ...

12:38 AM in Jazz Around Town, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
OK, I just made it for the end of the last set, but it was worth it... All Blues.
In addition to Pelt, O'Neal came with Bassist Paul Sikivie, drummer Sharif Zeban, and one of his piano students Dillon Meek (who was playing when I came in, you should remember this guy's name as I'm sure we'll be seeing it and hearing him again).
10:34 PM in Jazz Around Town, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The few of you who came out to hear René Marie at Exodus to Jazz were part of a wonderful night of music as her rich voice and beautifully written music fills the Lutheran Church of the Reformation (and a few eyes with tears...).


René Marie with Experiment in Truth—her fine trio with Kevin Bales, Piano; Kevin Hamilton; and Quentin Baxter—tearing up the house.
07:13 PM in Jazz Around Town, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
01:27 AM in Jazz Around Town, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Every year one of the treats that comes out of the Democrat & Chronicle's ever-growing coverage of the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival is the series of photo essays by Will Yurman and the "Jazz Stories" videos. [Update: Will Yurman is no longer part of the project as he has left Rochester to begin a gig at Penn State). The first of those videos, by Annette Lein (who has taken on the "Jazz Stories" project), was just released (I think today), with a short profile of talented bassist-vocalist Katie Ernst, who just graduated from Eastman School of Music, will stop off for a gig at the XRIJF on June 16th before continuing on her journey (are you heading back to Chicago area, Katie?). I've had an opportunity to see Katie play (and sing) and those of you who go to her Max gig are in for a treat. Her enthusiasm for music is infectious.
These videos and all of the XRIJF-related articles in the Democrat & Chronicle can be found on their redesigned site.
With so many ways of taking and sharing live video available, starting today, I'm starting a "regular" (admittedly, nothing has been much regular about my postings recently except for Wednesdays) post showcasing videos of performances of local jazz artists and groups or of artists/groups who have strong ties to the Rochester area. What better way than to bring you a video recently sent to me by NYC artist pianist Enoch Smith Jr., a Rochester native now living in New Jesey, Remembering Rochester:
While I have a lot of source material to work with, I'd appreciate being pointed to additional links, especially to performances from further back in Rochester's rich jazz history.
02:50 PM in Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I'm playing catch-up at work and here at home, so still digesting my thoughts on the 9th Rochester International Jazz Festival. Look for a series of posts on it in the near future. In the meantime, here's the listings for live jazz in and around Rochester for the next seven days. Now that the XRIJF is over, there are some other festivals nearby starting this weekend in Syracuse, Toronto and Saratoga.
We've compiled these listings from information obtained from the performing artists themselves and other sources. The aim is to give you a one stop place to find all your jazz in Rochester.The aim is to give you a one stop place to find all your jazz in Rochester. Only start times are listed, visit or call the venue for more details (the sites for many are in the right panel). Please forgive me for any discrepancies with reality and feel free to let me know what the problem is, and I'll get the corrections up on the site as soon as possible (click on the "Send an email to Jazz@Rochester" link). If you go out to hear a performance listed here, feel free to drop a comment to this post about how it went. I want to hear from you!
07:21 PM in Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Perhaps since the original deadline was getting close and there were only about 17 entries and to give bands and artists some more time to add their videos into the mix, the folks at the Rochester Jazz Star contest have extended the deadline for submitting videos to May 14th. There were 20 up there at the time I posted this.
I've been watching some of the videos and there is a wide variety of talent from around Rochester, including some folks you see around town (and in my listings) and others you may not have heard of ... yet.
The contest is brought to us by Rochester International Jazz Festival sponsor Xerox in conjunction with the festival. You can read more about the contest in my earlier post "Jazz festival sponsor Xerox brings jazz 'Idol' to Rochester in Jazz Star contest)".
07:55 PM in Local Artists, Other Events, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I'm always finding new links to put out there for you, but sometimes I just don't get them into a post. You can also find occasional links on Twitter and the Jazz@Rochester Facebook page, some of which may be repeated here, but not all. So here are a few more... I'll look at my feeds and find some more soon.
If you have a jazz link to share with the Rochester jazz community and beyond, send me an email by clicking on the Send an email to Jazz@Rochester link in the left panel.
07:42 PM in Riffing the Jazz Links, Sites to Check Out, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Please shelter this sister from the house of bondage till five OClock this afternoon - She will then be sent on to the land of freedom. Yours Truly Fredk
These words scrawled by abolitionist Frederick Douglass on a note to give safe passage on the Underground Railroad to a slave moving north to Canada are among other powerful words, culled from Douglass's speeches and writings and combined with the music that sprang from the African-American experience, in the wonderful new CD A Sky With More Stars, set to music by Philadelphia-based jazz bassist/composer Tyrone Brown, who has performed and recorded with Grover Washington, Jr., Max Roach and Odean Pope.
The CD sets spoken word passages of Douglass’s writings and speeches with music composed by Brown and violinist John Blake and performed by an ensemble that also includes Bill Meek on piano, Craig McIver on drums, Melissa Locati, Beth Dzwil, Ron Lipscomb and Germaine Ingram. Douglass’s words are spoken by Paul Burgett. The idea for the CD came from Richard Peek, director of the Rare Books and Special Collection at the Rush Rhees Library at the University of Rochester, which currently has a an exhibit on "Douglass in Rochester."
For more coverage of the CD, check out Jack Garner's January 22nd article CD combines power of Frederick Douglass, jazz ensemble in the D&C, Lee Mergner's article for JazzTimes.com Tyrone Brown Album Salutes Frederick Douglass, and Ron Netsky's review of the CD in City Newspaper. Additionally, Tom Hampson will play the entire CD on his radio show, Mostly Jazz, this weekend on WXXI AM1370 from 7:00 to 8:00 pm on Saturday, and repeating on WRUR FM88.5 from 8:00 to 9:00 PM on Sunday.
You can buy A Sky with No Stars from Amazon, directly from Tyrone Brown's publisher Dreambox Media, or from local record shops like the Bop Shop.
09:16 PM in CD Reviews, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
07:21 PM in Sites to Check Out, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The Newport Jazz Festival (and folk festival as well) seemed to be on their last legs recently, but legendary jazz promoter George Wein, stepped in with the health care products company CareFusion to save them. In honor of Newport, now George Wein's CareFusion Jazz Festival 55, which begins today in about 10 minutes, I'm going to give you five links related to this legendary festival. So...Take Five:
So take five and explore. Let me know what you think in the comments ....There will be five more next week.
Another weekend of festivals and summer (well, almost...) here in Rochester, but I have some more jazz links for you to check out:
So take five and explore. Let me know what you think in the comments ....There will be five more next week.
08:16 PM in Sites to Check Out, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
One of the things that you discover during the Rochester International Jazz Festival is that many of the high school jazz ensembles around here have "chops" way beyond those that my high school group had back in the 70s. I'm always impressed by them both as groups and some of the individual players.
I was recently contacted about a new documentary film called Chops. The film is about one high school jazz band's experience at the Essentially Ellington high school jazz competition, following them from their hometown of Jacksonville, Florida to NYC to participate in the 11th annual competition at Lincoln Center. The film has been endorsed by Jazz at Lincoln Center where the competition and festival is held and was screened there, film festivals throughout the country. One cool aspect about this film is how its makers and distributors are promoting it (in addition to contacting jazz blogs, that is). As jazz festivals and publications are hurting in today's economy, the film's distributor has set Chops up to be a great fund raising tool for jazz-related organizations, distributing it through a screening approach that allows anyone who hosts a screening to keep 100% of the proceeds from a screening. You can view the trailer for Chops at its official website and check out their unique approach to the screenings. There is also a page on Facebook to get updates about the film.
09:19 PM in Sites to Check Out, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
There's a lot going on out there in the coverage of this year's Rochester International Jazz Festival, so check it out. Here's a video montage from the opening night, brought to you by the Democrat & Chronicle:
Of course, the D&C is also doing the multimedia page they have had in the past on their site, including Wil Yurman's Jazz Tales where Yurman mixes great images of artists with short interviews (as of this writing, only Peter King is there, but there will be more each day). Anna Reguero and other D&C arts writers are posting about the jazz fest in the HerRochester Arts Blog.
05:00 PM in RIJF 2009, Rochester International Jazz Festival, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Click on the bar below to hear a live moblog from the 2009 Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival in Rochester, New York. Over at Christ Church for Peter King Quartet ...
08:37 PM in RIJF 2009, Rochester International Jazz Festival, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Click on the bar below to hear a live moblog from the 2009 Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival in Rochester, New York.
Hoofing (and huffing and puffing...gotta get more exercise) over to hear Billy Bang Quintet at the new venue, the Xerox Auditorium....
06:07 PM in RIJF 2009, Rochester International Jazz Festival, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Click on the bar below to hear a live moblog from the 2009 Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival in Rochester, New York.
The festival opens on Jazz Street ...
04:33 PM in RIJF 2009, Rochester International Jazz Festival, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
08:54 PM in RIJF 2008, Rochester International Jazz Festival, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
There is a lot of interesting stuff out there about jazz and I've done a bit of surfing the past few days and found some interesting places to visit. So . . . Take Five:
So take five and explore. Let me know what you think in the comments ....There will be five more next week.
11:15 PM in Sites to Check Out, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
It's Take Five Friday and I have a fresh batch of links for you to sample:
So take five and explore. Let me know what you think in the comments ....There will be five more next week.
It's Take Five Friday (almost Saturday, but I had a thing...) and a fresh batch of links for you:
So take five and explore. Let me know what you think in the comments ....There will be five more next week.
It's Take Five Friday and a fresh batch of links for you:
Actually, I have no idea where they're at. I had Brazilian YouTube hijack my browser for awhile... When it happened again this week, I started wondering why all the jazz videos were coming up on Brazil's YouTube.So take five and explore. Let me know what you think in the comments....There will be five more next week.
10:58 AM in Sites to Check Out, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I love to add pictures to the posts on this blog, but have a lousy camera and always forget to bring it to gigs anyway. A number of blogs that I've come across have created image pools to draw new images from and I thought . . . why not? . . . I'd love to start highlighting images taken by readers on Jazz@Rochester. So I created the Jazz@Rochester image pool on Flickr (I think you need to have a Flickr account to do so).
If you take some images at a gig or have jazz-oriented pictures that you'd like to share with other Jazz@Rochester readers, then I invite you to come by join the group. To get things started, I've posted a few of the Listings "wordles" and some images that I've taken from the past couple of years at jazz gigs. Make sure that you take a look at the group rules and make sure you indicate how you would like attribution when you leave images (if you don't, I'll use your Flickr ID anyway). Let me know what you think in the comments.
So, if you're interested, visit the image pool, take a dip, leave an image or two.
08:28 PM in Sites to Check Out, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I thought I'd start a new regular post on Fridays, which I've decided to call Take Five Friday and designed a special image (with a deep bow to the Dave Brubeck Quartet album Time Out on which Paul Desmond's Take Five is found). Each Friday, I'll do a post with five links to jazz-oriented sites and sounds I've come across out there in the wide world of the "interwebs" that were unique, made me stop and listen or read, or I thought my be interesting. Here is the first set:
So take five and explore. Let me know what you think in the comments....There will be five more next week.
08:00 AM in Sites to Check Out, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Local public radio station Jazz 90.1 has kicked off its Fall 2008 membership campaign to support jazz radio. Jazz90.1 receives no funding from the Greece Central School District, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the state or federal government. Therefore, the station has to come to the jazz listeners in Rochester periodically to help raise their operating budget and get through the year. And no. . . they probably won't spend it on headphones....
Consider supporting Jazz90.1 with a donation at any level. They've eve got "thank you" gifts (and they aren't those tote bags either).To make a pledge of support, call 585.966.5299, toll free to 1.800.790.0415, or you can pledge securely by clicking here.
08:00 AM in Other Events, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Our local PBS station, WXXI will begin broadcasting performances from the 2007 Rochester International Jazz Festival in high definition on Sunday at 7:00 pm on WXXI-HD 1011/DT21.2 and PBS-HD. The show, has played on PBS stations nationwide, but will now be presented in high-definition. The series is six-hour long episodes shot in the historic Kilbourn Hall at the Eastman School of Music, including:
Check the schedule. They did the same for the 2008 RIJF, so we look forward to seeing those films.
Jazz90.1 members (i.e., those of us who forked over a donation in the past year and have a MemberCard) can enjoy some great jazz in and on films this weekend in "A Prelude to the Jazz Festival" at the Eastman House's Dryden Theatre at a discount. The films are being presented with support from the Rochester International Jazz Festival. The films will include:
Jazz 90.1 members will be admitted at the museum member price of $4 each. Just show your current MemberCard at the box office to receive the discount. (Actually, Jazz90.1 members can now enjoy Dryden Theatre movies at the discount price of $4 all year around).
In honor of April, which is Jazz Appreciation Month , LRSmedia is debuting starting today the television show Legends of Jazz Presents the 2007 NEA Jazz Masters as a special webcast premiere in conjunction with the entire online jazz community. This one-hour television special, soon to come to your local PBS station hosted by 2007 NEA Jazz Master Ramsey Lewis on his Legends of Jazz program, will feature conversation and musical performances by bandleader and pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi, trombonist Curtis Fuller, vocalist Jimmy Scott, flutist Frank Wess, and saxophonist Phil Woods. Special guest and co-host Nancy Wilson will interview Ramsey Lewis about his music, 50-year career and his selection as an NEA Jazz Master. The special is co-produced by LRSmedia and Chicago's WTTW National Productions. It is filmed in state-of-the-art high definition.
The NEA Jazz Masters Awards are the highest honors that the U.S. government bestows upon jazz musicians and are given in recognition of the jazz—one of America's greatest gifts to the world. As Lewis says, "This special 2007 NEA Jazz Masters program, like the others in our Legends of Jazz series, provides not only exciting performances, but showcases that unique energy sparked when great artists respond to each other in conversation and through music."
In conjunction with Jazz Appreciation Month, LRSmedia is making the program available to websites around the world. More than 50 websites will participate in this amazing online event by embedding a video player on their website. Unfortunately, the embedded player requires too wide a berth to host on my site, so you'll have to travel to the Legends of Jazz site to watch the show by clicking on the image below. Or you can wait until it's on television...its up to you.
Jazz 90.1, our local jazz radio station (and one of the few left in the country), is going to start its Spring 2008 Membership Campaign on March 12th. I'm going to pony up, so please show your supportand help them reach their goal of $50,000 for the drive, which will be running from the 12th until the goal is met. The station relies on your support to stay on the air. All donations are tax deductible.
If you make your online donation to Jazz90.1 between now (actually it was last Wednesday, but I just saw the email) and Wednesday March 12th at 6:00 am, you can get a special bonus CD or DVD from the Jazz 90.1 prize closet in addition to the thank you gifts they are making available at each level. Those interested can also make pledges by calling (585) 966-5299, 1-800-790-0415, or pledge securely on line at www.jazz901.org, where you can listen live any time, anywhere.
05:00 PM in Other Events, Sound and Vision | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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If you have images of jazz from or related to the Rochester, NY area jazz scene, please sign up as a member of the Pool.







