• Jason Crane recently announced the launch of a partnership of his podcast The Jazz Session with the website All About Jazz. The Jazz Session will be featured on the home page at allaboutjazz.com and they'll be working together in other ways, such as coverage from jazz festivals. Jason gives great interview ... so check it out as this new relationship develops.
• While I'm not the only one who uses Take Five for a regular post in the jazz blog world, there's a new jazz blog in town brought to us by National Public Radio called A Blog Supreme. They're also doing a Friday jazz links post, called the Friday Link Dump. The more the merrier....
• The Jazz Journalists Association has announced the finalists for the 13th Annual JJA Jazz Awards to be held on June 16th at the Jazz Standard in NYC. There are 42 categories of awards, including the top jazz blogs. Nope, I cannot even say that it was wonderful just to be nominated....
• Marc Myers starts out his post in JazzWax on the Top 10 Jazz Ironies with "Like the music itself, the history of jazz is loaded with irony. Stuff happens for strange reasons, or there are coincidences that are spring-loaded with unsaid meaning and hidden messages."
• Howard Mandel raises the question in Jazz Beyond Jazz of where women are as jazz listeners, noting:

  The problem is that no one in the jazz world, with the exception of jazz educators, has pleasantly invited women to partake of the music. Rather than being marketed to, women have been neglectfully, perhaps unconsciously, shut out.

  He makes a great plea for inclusion (and it's not just women who are excluded) and for jazz and jazz venues to being welcoming to women, finishing "Maybe we'll all listen first and identify the gender of creators later, if ever." Hear, hear ....!

So take five and explore. Let me know what you think in the comments ....There will be five more next week.