For your listening pleasure, here's a Spotify playlist I put together of the artists and groups I've picked to hear at the 2024 Rochester International Jazz Festival, both those I heard and those I also noted in the Pick posts.  I tried to look for cuts from their most recent album to make sure it's more likely that what you hear here will be similar to what you'll hear (or have heard) at the RIJF.  They are basically nearly in date order for their appearances at the RIJF (or when I heard them, or will as the festival is just half over).  Once you get hooked, please give'em some love...

 

At the end of Jazz Appreciation Month, there is International Jazz Day. Although there are events throughout the country (and world), the flagship Jazz Day event, a spectacular All-Star Global Concert, which this year will feature an extraordinary selection of jazz performances from Austria to Zimbabwe, highlighting the power of jazz in bridging differences and promoting unity and peace through intercultural dialogue and collaboration.

MC Herbie Hancock will take viewers on a global tour of sights and sounds showcasing jazz in all its diversity. The live-streamed concert will feature performances from Beijing, China; Beirut, Lebanon; Casablanca, Morocco; Johannesburg, South Africa; Marondera, Zimbabwe; Paris, France; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Vienna, Austria; and Fairbanks, Honolulu, New York, San Francisco and Washington, DC, USA. It features performances by some of the world’s most accomplished jazz artists, including Cyrille Aimée (France), Ambrose Akinmusire (USA), Thana Alexa (Croatia), John Beasley (USA), Dee Dee Bridgewater (USA), Bill Charlap (USA), Emmet Cohen (USA), Tom Gansch (Austria), Christian McBride (USA), Sérgio Mendes (Brazil), Marcus Miller (USA), Thandi Ntuli (South Africa), Dianne Reeves (USA), Antonio Sánchez (Mexico), Walter Smith III (USA), Somi (Rwanda) and Mike Stern (USA), among others. Renowned Mbira player Musekiwa Chingodza (Zimbabwe) will duet with Oran Etkin (Israel) on baritone clarinet; the Blue Note China Jazz Orchestra joins the Global Concert from Beijing; and JazzWomenAfrica celebrate from Casablanca. More information is available on jazzday.com.

Boston-based trombonist Brian Thomas, originally from Rochester, is releasing his first solo album On The Bone, which features a composition by the late Roger Eckers, Turn On (a cut from a 1972 Eckers record), which Thomas recorded in his memory of Eckers, who passed away on March 23 last year at 78. "Dr. Eckers was the first person to hand me a trombone at Crane Elementary School and was my band director at Rush-Henrietta High School," says Thomas, who is. "so thankful to have worked with Dr. Eckers and for his continued support and encouragement as I became a professional musician and music educator." Former Eckers student Scott Mayo of Earth Wind & Fire and The Voice also joins Brian on the track, adding a soulful sax solo that they think would make Doc proud. Mayo recalls "I miss him so much and am thankful fo ho he prepared me to be a professional." The album includes 5 additional original soul jazz compositions backed a classic organ trio and percussion rhythm section. 

The new album was available as a CD as of January 27th, and is also available to buy as a digital album (or by track) on Bandcamp (I've embedded it below and Turn On is the first cut). In coordination with Eckers' wife, Brian will be contributing 100% of the proceeds from sales of the Turn On track in Roger Eckers' memory to the University of Rochester Eastman School of Music, Performing Arts Medicine (if you want to send something more, you can send it to P.O. Box 270032, Rochester, NY. 14627-0032).

Dave Chisholm straddles a number of arts. He is an accomplished trumpet player, composer, and educator who lives and gigs in several genres around Rochester (well, pre-pandemic, that is...), where he received his doctorate in jazz trumpet from the Eastman School of Music in 2013. He is also a talented cartoonist who uses that art, combined with music, to tell stories that can draw you in and teach you something about something few outside the world of music or jazz could reach on their own. In 2017, I wrote here about his graphic novel Instrumental that followed jazz trumpeter Tom as he seeks to reach the next level in his art ... at a dear cost. This month, Chisholm is publishing a new graphic novel Chasin’ the Bird: Charlie Parker in Californi, 144 pages commissioned by the Charlie Parker estate with Instrumental’s publisher Z2 Comics in celebration of the Centennial of Bird’s birth. It explores the period beginning in 1945 during which Parker traveled to California with a band put together by his friend Dizzy Gillespie for a residence at a well-known club in LA.

Through recollections of those who crossed his path during this time on the West Coast, interviews with Bird, biographies, and other real and imagined situations and conversations, Chisholm builds a story that tries to capture this time in Bird’s life, the effect of his obsessions and the drugs, and sources of Bird’s musical genius. As Chisholm recounted in a recent interview with Publisher’s Weekly:

A huge part of the Charlie Parker story is the myth-building, legends, the impossible tall tales that could not be true, but could be true, and all the different versions of the same story—like a Rashomon kind of storytelling…. So there’s the legend side of Charlie Parker, versus the reality of Charlie Parker. So that angle led me to the storytelling method used in the book, where there’s a series of vignettes; each one from the point of view of someone whose life intersected with Charlie’s during that time.

As with Instrumental, I sat down and consumed a PDF of Chasin' the Bird in one sitting with a soundtrack of Bird playing on the stereo to accompany the images (Chisholm had written and performed a soundtrack for Instrumental). Again, I was lost in the story and images. A hour or so (and a few LP sides…) later I had learned so much about Parker's short life and felt like I had peeked behind a curtain to get some understanding of his compositions and playing. Each vignette is drawn in a different style and through these changes in style, Chisholm explores Bird’s life and his music and through this approach tries to fulfill the reason that the Parker estate had commissioned him, again as told to Publisher’s Weekly: "to reach people who wouldn't otherwise find Charlie Parker’s music” through a medium that he thought would help to synchronize the "temporal aspect of music, versus the temporal aspect of a still drawing.”

Chasin the Bird will be published in mid-October and I encourage you to get a copy of Chasin' the Bird, slap a Parker LP or disk (or stream) on your ears and dive in. It’s worth the ride. Here’s a link on Chisholm’s site for more info and links or you can order direct from Z2 Comics or your favorite online content provider.

The jazz website AllAboutJazz.com  has create a Project Livestream Jazz, including a global jazz livestream calendar to help you jazz cats get your fill of live jazz while maintaining social distance, but more importantly to help support jazz artists in this crazy new world that COVID-19 has brought upon us. I'm adding it to JazzRochester in a new page for which you will find a "Livestreams" link at the top of this site at the right.  

Check out the calendar and support AAJ if you can. The Live From Our Living Rooms Festival and fundraiser starts tonight (including Chick Corea and other major artists). Some of the livestream concerts are free, others request donations, others will require you pay for your virtual "seat". 

You'll notice that some local artists have already added upcoming events to the calendar.  Hope to see more.  There's a link at the bottom to submit to new events to Jazz Near You.  I'll still share local events separately on JazzRochester and its channels so let me know about them. 

Laura Dubin and her husband are inviting you into their "virtual jazz club" to hear them play have been live-streaming concerts from Laura's Facebook music page every night at 8:30 pm EST.  You do not need to have a Facebook account to watch. If you prefer she's also uploading the same videos to her YouTube channel each night after they finish performing and they’re be on Laura's website as well, along with ways to become a patron. Drop them some cash if you like what you hear.... Here's where to watch:

• Click here to watch on Facebook (don't forget to "like")
• Click here to watch on YouTube (don't forget to Subscribe)

 The videos remain available to watch on Facebook if you've missed them.

The Jon Seiger Trio (featuring Stephen Parisi and Eric Metzgar) will be performing a Facebook Live livestreaming happy hour concert on Friday, April 3rd from 4:00 to 6:00 pm (EDT) at Jon Seiger's Facebook Page for two hours of great music...swing-jazz-big band-jump-blues-Dixieland-New Orleans-OKOM...as well as the usual jokes, stories, and jazz anecdotes. See more about the concert on his Facebook Event here.

Anyone else out there with a local jazz livestreaming event?  Let us know via email.  

I’m going to do something different here. A review of sorts, which is something I don’t do very much on JazzRochester. Why? Because one of Rochester’s jazz musicians, trumpeter Dave Chisholm, has pulled together a project that brings together sight and sound in a unique and compelling way and I wanted to share it with you. I’ve been acquainted with Dave since he was a student a the Eastman School of Music. He used to play with the pick up band of ESM jazz students who had a regular hit years back at Havana Moe’s (my local haunt due to an affinity for the occasional cigar). I remember Dave “trading fours” one night with trumpeter Jeremy Pelt when he came by Moe's after a gig in town (and the sidelong glances of admiration Dave got on his playing….). 

The project is Instrumental, a graphic novel and accompanying CD of music that Dave wrote and recorded with a great band, which accompanies the story as it unfolds on the panels. As the publisher's squib for Instrumental sets out, the story is about Tom, who is:

A solid, but not great, musician. While his bandmates are happy to play gigs for themselves at their own clubs, drinking free beer and shooting the breeze, Tom aches for the next level, whatever that is. And as musicians are wont to do in magical fables, he meets a mysterious stranger with a seemingly simple offer: take a battered old trumpet for free, and just enjoy it, no exchanges and no strings. Whenever Tom plays it, the extraordinary music blows away his growing throngs of fans, and deadly mishaps start to follow. Tom may not have sold his soul for the music of the heavens, but he seems to have bargained away something much more serious. Created by jazz musician Dave Chisholm, Instrumental is a high-spirited, suspenseful, formally inventive, visually musical graphic novel, an epic yet intimate riff on our longing search for what’s next.

I never was much of a comic book reader in my youth (except for Mad Magazine, I guess).  I’ve known about graphic novels since 1986’s Maus by Art Spiegelman, but somehow had never actually experienced one. I say “experienced” as my encounters with novels have been a text-only experience (sometimes with a few accompanying images). I’m an editor in real life, a recovering lawyer working with authors who write books for other lawyers, which are decidedly text-based, and are often quite a boring experience. As a graphic novel (I hesitate to use the word “comic” as the story is not comedic), Instrumental takes the genre one step further by including a CD of music that is meant to be listened to while reading the text and seeing images.

After receiving a review copy from Dave’s publisher Z2 Comics, I sat down to “read” it. I consumed Instrumental in a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon and the experience was new and compelling. The story is dark, the images full of motion, becoming dream-like as Tom plays the horn and his playing becomes more like what he's hearing in his head, the crowds come out to hear. It turns supernatural and lethal to some of those who hear the horn, who start coming apart in a Salvador Dali sort of way, leaving Tom with a choice.

In addition to the great images (see a panel of the band playing below and the aforementioned melting listener), the story and accompanying jazz “soundtrack” written to go with those images made the experience come together through every sense but touch (other than turning the page...).  It is a unique reading experience. Instrumental is coming out in late May and in the Rochester area, you should be able to get it at Comics Etc. or Pulp Nouveau in Canandaigua, or you can order it on Amazon (affiliate link).  Check it out!

Well, another April has passed without much special happening on the Jazz Appreciation Month front here in Rochester.  I would like to see what we can do about that next year ... anyone with me?  

Well, the culmination of Jazz Appreciation Month is International Jazz Day and the all-star concert that is broadcast live from somewhere on the globe. You can watch the 2017 International Jazz Day All-Star Global Concert, live from Havana, Cuba right here on JazzRochester (OK, it's on YouTube...). The link goes live at  8:30 pm ET with the concert starting at 9:00.  Enjoy!!

 

I was recently contacted by LA graphic designer Gage Nguyen who has designed the Evolution of Jazz infographic poster below for Jazz Appreciation Month (that's April if you weren't already aware) and is using Kickstarter to fund its production and distribution.  I like these infographic images and, in the spirit of Jazz Appreciation Month I thought I'd share with my readers.  Now, I realize that one may disagree on where individual artists are placed in the diagram, wish that it went past 1970 (jazz did ...), or believe that jazz has not "evolved" at all from its beginnings (or somewhere else along the timeline). You can put a big red arrow on your copy on where your listening preferences reside... 

If you'd like to either a 18x24" and 24x36" poster of this (or some stickers with the Armstrong quote), then head on over to Gage's Evolution of Jazz Poster page on Kickstarter and help make it a reality. 

 

Following an interview with XRIJF producers John Nugent and Marc Iacona, there is short segment on the climate for jazz around Rochester with yours truly and bassist (and ESM prof) Jeff Campbell on this vidoe from WXXI-TV's Need to Knowprogram, hosted by Hélène Biandudi Hofer.    

While I think I have a face for radio and as an editor and writer I am more comfortable with the written word, Jeff more than made up for it. It was an adventure and I thank WXXI and Hélène for giving me the opportunity. I'll have to work on my commentator chops in the remote chance that I'll be invited back.... 

Our Point of View, a supergroup of contemporary Blue Note Records artists—including Robert Glasper, Lionel Loueke and Ambrose Akinmusire—gathered together at Le Poussin Rouge in NYC for a program of originals and Blue Note classics, and NPR captured it for us for for the Jazz Night in America Wednesday broadcasts last week ....

Trumpeter Mike Kaupa recently threw a couple of YouTube videos over Jazz@Rochester's virtual threshold. First up is one with the Institute for Creative Music as Mike shows his chops in the DIY community:

 

Next up is a questionable clip advertising a "Failed Middle Aged Jazz Musician" doll... (wait for it ... had to leave the first part in to give you the full flavor):

 

 

While I'll choose the music video I post here, I'm not adverse to you throwing an interesting jazz video my way.  Just check in the Sound & VIsion category to make sure I haven't already published a link.

What looks to be a full set of great music with the second Quintet in 1967 with Miles Davis joined by Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams:

 

If you know where this concert was filmed, let us know in the comments. 

Jazz at Lincoln Center has just started up a new series of its "Night in the Life" videos, which are short webisodes following a jazz artist or group around for a day. A new one started up with bassist Christian McBride and his trio mates pianist Christian Sands and drummer Ullyses S. Owens (BTW, USO will be here in February with some Friends for a special Valentine's Day concert for Exodus to Jazz). Here's the first of the new series of videos to start you off:

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and Cécile McLorin Salvant turned up at the Jefferson Regional Medical Center to serenade jazz legend Clark Terry, who turned 94 yesterday with a swingin version of the birthday song:

 

 

I'm always on the prowl for new ways to connect and provide you with jazz-related links that I've either come across or have been made hip to recently ...

• Although Spring and Summer may seem a long way off (well, OK, they are...), radio station Jazz 90.1 recently announced the 2015 return of its popular jazz cruises aboard the historic Colonial Belle in Fairport on Monday May 18th, June 8th, July 13th and August 17th.
• For those of us of a certain age, we still "wax" nostalgic for the days of vinyl.  Back at the end of October over on Marc Myers' JazzWax blog, he provided those of you who are younger a glimpse into the manufacture of those black discs of sumptuous sounds in How Records Were Made. 
• I refer to jazz musicians in these pages as "artists," and that they are, but as the Boston-based Brilliant Corners blog points out in a short, but provocative, post they are also entertainers. Is paying too much attention to the "art" side of jazz rather than the toe-tapping entertainment side undermining its audience? I'd love to know what you thought after reading Jazz Musician: Entertainer or Artist?  Add a comment below...
• Jazz at Lincoln Center has been putting out a webseries called on the life of a working jazz musician in New York City called A Day In the Life, which in documentary-style explores the multiple facets of a jazz musician's (Kyle Poole) life during the span of a day.  Below is the first of the series on YouTube and there are at least 3 more available (and I'm sure you can find the rest on YouTube after watching  below...):

 

I'm always finding new jazz links to put out there for you. They won't always get into these posts, but I'll usually share them on the Jazz@Rochester Twitter or the Facebook pages. If you have a jazz link to share here with the Rochester jazz community and beyond, send us an email by clicking on the Contact Us button below the banner.

Eastman grad and Rochester (now in LA) favorite Mike Cottone competed in this year's Thelonius Monk Trumpet Competition and was a semifinalist. Chicagoan Marquis Hill went on to win, but Mike killed it anyway. Here's his performance (Mike starts at 4:08:13, followed by competition winner Hill or you can watch the whole 5+ hours of music from the beginning):

 

Recently, while looking around at the WGMC Jazz 90.1 website, I ran across a video produced by local Rochester filmmaker Dave Esposito, who has recently released a documentary showcasing Jazz90.1. Called “School for Jazz: The Jazz 90.1 Story,” the video celebrates the station’s 40th anniversary. Esposito and Agricola Media spent nearly four months shooting the project in an effort to showcase Jazz90.1’s history, and important place in the Rochester and international jazz scene. The video takes viewers on a tour and shows the history of Jazz90.1.  Here's the video... give it a look:

Jazz 90.1  is one of the few remaining 24/7/365 jazz stations (well, nearly 24/7/365, with a little polka, Italian, blues and other music interests thrown in) in the U.S. and unlike most commercial stations, still based on live (mostly volunteer) disc jockeys, who provide tastes of a wide variety of jazz and other music. Like this blog, Jazz 90.1 promotes live jazz and blues from artists across the Rochester area and is an important part of the local jazz community.  As I live near Cobbs Hill and suffer from interference with their signal, I have to get my jazz radio over the interwebs, so even if you don't live in Rochester or are out of town, you can stream one of their DJ's shows live at any time.

As Jazz 90.1 gets no public funding, the station is always in need of support. I'm a member and I hope you are, too.  If not, why not throw some cash their way?  They need other stuff too.  

Not seeing these Live Shots as often, I know, but braved the weather to see Barry Altschul Trio with Jon Irabagon & Joe Fonda, brought to you by Bop Arts @ the Lovin Cup....

Hope you're having a great labor(less) day... Thought I'd celebrate it a bit by listening to a favorite—Nat Adderley's Work Song and share it with you:

I am trying to implement a new email suscription option (I hope) using another service that should be more reliable. Some of you may have seen a new box pop up on the blog for a bit. It's gone now until I figure out a few things. If you see it again, you won't have to do anything. Current subscribers will be automatically resubscribed to the new service.

In 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. opened the Berlin Jazz Festival with the speech, "On the Importance of Jazz." Jazz may have changed over the years, but his words still ring true today. To honor Martin Luther King's legacy and the March on Washington and "Dream" speech we commemorate today, I'm sharing a video recently made by Area artists presenting King's speech.

 

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

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). 

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.

Live in Hochstein Performance Hall kicking off the Exodus To Jazz season...

Johnny O'Neal wow'd the crowd with a tribute to Hank Jones....

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.

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.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

• Ted Nicolosi & Shared Genes @ Bistro 135, 6:30 pm
• Roof of the Night @ Little Theatre Cafe, 7:30 pm
• Mike Allen @ Lemoncello, 8:30 pm
• Filthy Funk All-Star Jam @ Lovin' Cup, 9:00 pm

Friday, June 25, 2010

• The Westview Project with Nick Brust @ Big Tree Inn, 46 Main St, Geneseo, 5:00 pm
• Ted Nicolosi & Shared Genes @ TC Hooligans-Webster, 5:30 pm
• Bobby Dibaudo Trio @ Bistro 135, 6:00 pm
• Ryan T Carey & El Rojo Jazz Band @ Thali of India, 7:00 pm
• Nostalgic Reunion @ Port of Pittsford Park, 7:00 pm
• Deborah Magone @ Little Theatre Cafe, 8:30 pm
• Fred Costello & Co. with Ted Losito @ Charlotte Harbor Fest, 8:30 pm
• The Moho Collective with Gary McNulty @ Boulder Coffee Co., 8:30 pm
• Shades of Grey @ Lemoncello, 9:30 pm

Saturday, June 26, 2010

• Footnote @ Rochester Harbor and Carousel Fest, Rochester NY, 6:00 pm
• Janet Beanman @ Bistro 135, 7:00 pm
• Ted Nicolosi & Shared Genes @ Jasmine's Asian Fusion, 7:30 pm
• Annie Wells @ Little Theatre Cafe, 8:30 pm
• Four on the Floor Quartet @ McArdle's, 1355 Fairport Rd Fairport, NY, 8:30 pm
• East End Jazz Boys @ Havana Moes, 9:30 pm
• Fred Costello & Co. with Ted Losito @ Charlotte Harbor Fest, 9:30 pm

Sunday, June 27, 2010

• Troup Street Jazz Jam Session @ Beale Street Cafe, 6:00 pm
• Bill Slater @ The Lodge at Woodcliff, 11:30 am
• Moondance @ Lovin' Cup, 7:00 pm
• Fred Costello & Co. with Ted Losito @ Charlotte Harbor Fest, 4:30 pm

Monday, June 28, 2010

• The White Hots @ Little Theatre Cafe, 7:30 pm
• Dave Rivello Jazz Ensemble @ Kilbourn Hall, Eastman School of Music, 7:30 pm

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

• Brad Batz @ Bistro 135, 6:30 pm
• Eastman Jazz Faculty Quartet @ Kilbourn Hall, Eastman School of Music, 7:30 pm

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

• Simon Fletcher Quartet @ Bistro 135, 6:00 pm
• Andy Stobie and the Greater Finger Lakes Jazz Orchestra @ Yates County Courthouse summer concert series, Penn Yan, NY, 6:30 pm
• Gilad Atzmon & Rich Siegel @ Billsboro Winery, 4760 W Lake Rd, Geneva, NY, 7:00 pm
• AMP @ Little Theatre Cafe, 7:30 pm
• Paul Hofmann @ Kilbourn Hall, Eastman School of Music, 7:30 pm
• Paradigm Shift @ Pomodoro's Grill & Wine Bar, 8:00 pm

Heads Up ... Look for these Jazz Gigs in the Future

• Bop Arts presents Paul Smoker Notet @ Bop Shop Atrium, 274 N. Goodman St, Rochester, 8:00 pm
• The Marcus Roberts Trio with RPO in "Red, White & Boom" @ CMAC, July 3, 7:30 pm
• Najee, Tom Browne, Roy Ayers, and Jimmie Highsmith Jr. in “Sax in the City” @ Riverside Festival Site, Gates, July 21, 5:00 pm, Music, 7:00 pm

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!

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)".

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.

• At the Tritone Jazz Fantasy Camps, adult "jazz players and singers learn and play in a friendly, non-threatening environment, supported by a faculty of caring, professional jazz musician/educators and surrounded by kindred spirits" at a summer camp. There's one in the Rochester area July 25-30 at Nazareth College ... Jazz at Naz.
• If you want to know what's up on the Latin jazz scene, check out Chip Boaz's Latin Jazz Corner blog.
• TwitJazz.net was created recently to help build community among the growing numbers of folks from the jazz world—jazz fans, musicians, presenters, writers, and promoters (including yours truly)—who have established a presence on Twitter. The blog is being managed by a recent entry from D.C. @MaryamLovesJazz and veteran Pacific Northwest trombonist and jazz tweeter David Marriott (@RedRaspus) to help folks find more Twitter love for jazz. You can track and add to the conversations by using the hashtag #twitjazznet.
• My friends in the local group Margaret Explosion have been recording their live shows for quite awhile and have made some of those recordings and cuts from some of their CDs available online for streaming and download. If you caught their gigs at The Little or elsewhere you know they are a great group of musicians making some unique sounds.
• As I noted before, if you were unaware of it April is Jazz Appreciation Month, brought to you by the Smithsonian Institution. One of my jazz friends on Twitter has been doing some great things with it on her new blog Elements of Jazz.

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.

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.

Thought you might want to check out jazz site JazzCorner's JazzVision, which is the first videosharing site dedicated solely to jazz and blues videos for users to watch and even upload. Sign up is free if you want to join. Currently there are more than 1,200 videos, such as this one of the Dave Holland Quintet doing live at the 2002 Newport Jazz Festival with Robin Eubanks, Billy Kilson, Steve Nelson, Dave Holland, Chris Potter. You can search or browse by artist,instrument, groups, type of jazz, or even festivals (although RIJF hasn't uploaded any....).

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:

• While you check these out, why don't you listen to the festival itself? Like they did with the Newport Folk Festival last weekend, performances from Newport will be webcast live on National Public Radio website today from 11:45-2:00 pm and tomorrow from 12:00-6:00 pm.
• You can download a 12-track sampler of performers who will be playing Newport this weekend through NPR (and iTunes) as well here. These twelve tracks show the wide range of jazz artists that Wein is bringing together for Newport this year from Roy Haynes to the Vandermark 5, who appeared here Thursday night at the Bop Shop Atrium.
• Follow live coverage of the festival on Twitter by following NPR's @blogsupreme or the #newportjazz "hashtag" feed.
• Watch and listen to 10 minutes from Louis Armstrong's 1958 set at Newport.
• Back to NPR, where you'll find archives of the performances (including some that are not being broadcast, I think) if you can't catch them live. National Public Radio is really doing this up well. Perhaps we can interest them in the 2010 Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival?

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:

• In case you hadn't heard, local jazzman Fred Costello, who has played the organ during Amerks hockey games for 32 seasons, was recently told his services would no longer be needed. On the bright side for Costello, as he noted in the D&C article on his departure, Costello will “be able to play more with my jazz band in local clubs this winter”.
• Back in June, NPR's weekly Take Five jazz sampler did a story on the evolution of the song Strange Fruit, a powerful protest against the lynchings of blacks and racism made famous by Billie Holiday who, with her pianist Sonny White, refashioned the poem and music of Abel Meeropol into Billie's deep cry of outrage that many of us know. Many have recorded this song. NPR's Take Five gives you five of them: Billie Holiday (of course), Nina Simone, Jeff Buckley, Rene Marie, and the Labor Camp Orchestra.
• On Jazz.com's The Dozens, jazz writer Ted Panken explores twelve essential Gil Evans tracks selected by his assistant from 1985 to his death and multiple-Grammy winning composer in her own right, Maria Schneider.
• There are a lot of good jazz blogs out there, so I'll keep pointing them out, especially those written by jazz writers with much more under their caps than the writer of this one—like Fred Kaplan's blog Jazz Messenger on the Stereophile site.
• Earlier this year three videos of a 1956 TV performance by the Dave Brubeck Quartet materialized showing the group after Brubeck became famous after a TIME magazine cover story but before Joe Morello and Eugene Wright replaced Joe Dodge and Norman Bates on drums and bass. Doug Ramsey, who has more than a passing acquaintance with Brubeck through his exploration of the life and music of Paul Desmond, links to these three videos and provides some context in O Rare Dave Brubeck on Rifftides.

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

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.

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.

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 ...

Live Jazz@Rochester Updates from RIJF

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....

Live Jazz@Rochester Updates from RIJF

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 ...

Live Jazz@Rochester Updates from XRIJF

Mostly Jazz Host Tom Hampson, heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on WXXI AM1370, will be in the studio to present the final episode of WXXI’s 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival (RIJF) series. Hampson, who was involved in the 1970s WXXI production of the At the Top jazz series, and this month will be celebrating his 50th year of playing jazz on the radio in Rochester, will introduce the final episode of the RIJF series on the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival, which airs tomorrow, June 2 at 9:30 p.m. on WXXI-TV21. The Rochester International Jazz Festival series was shot during last year's festival. Shot in high-definition and recorded in the historic Kilbourn Hall at the Eastman School of Music, the series tries to capture the essence of the Rochester International Jazz Festival. This final episode includes selections from Catherine Russell, Slide Hampton, and The Bad Plus, and provides sights and sounds in and around the nine-day festival.

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:

• One of the clubs that I really wanted to check out last time I was in New York City was Smalls, which is one of the great places to catch cutting edge jazz in the Big Apple. Never made it there, but now I can at least listen to sets from Smalls because they have put a huge number of them (and live video of sets when they're going on, too) on their website.
• As you'll notice I don't do the jazz criticism much here, if at all. This week I came across the beginnings of a conversation, started by the new jazz blog at National Public Radio, A Blog Supreme and the Thriving on a Riff blog out of Ottawa, about the "grade inflation" and other issues surrounding jazz criticism and why you see so few posts panning a jazz CD.
• I think Steve Bowie has been doing the jazz blog Blog-O-Jazz, where he collects various emphemera of jazz, about the same amount of time that I've been doing Jazz@Rochester.
• We all have the economy in mind and recently National Public Radio teamed up with WDUQ in Pittsburgh, PA, to bring us the jazz and blues of "Hard Up: Jazz for Empty Pockets." Don't know if I can say "enjoy," but check out the "Take Five" selections of Mose Allison, Robert Walter, Jimmie Witherspoon, Art Tatum, and Jimmy Smith. 
• Got this clip from YouTube of the Bill Tiberio Band playing the tune "Return of the King" with his band including Geoff Smith, Phil Lake, Joe Chiappone, and Scott Bradley, piano and composer of the tune. The video was recorded in the Fairport High School orchestra room.

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 I have a fresh batch of links for you to sample:

• I'm not the only place where you'll find Take Five.  Although not necessarily on Friday, NPR's Take Five: A Weekly Jazz Sampler is meant to help you to get to know jazz fives songs at a time.
• Going on a trip somewhere, here's CNN's list of nine great jazz joints across the world.
• It's hard to get a blog started and especially one like Improvised Communications, which is setting up shop to promote creative improvised music. Tom Kohn at the Bop Shop will probably be a reader, so will I.
• Mark Grube shares his thoughts about the Cassandra Wilson concert at the State Theater in Ithaca last Sunday in 'Til There Was You in his blog over at WXXI.
• You've seen the big pictures around downtown Rochester. They're the result of the Big Picture Rochester project. There's a photo essay on BPR's site showing them putting up the one with Wynton Marsalis and Bob Sneider from the Rochester International Jazz Festival, at the Rochester Plaza Hotel.

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:

• Howard Mandel searches for joyous music after the election of Obama, but "can't think of a movement akin to the bells ringing in Tchaikovsky's '1812 Overture' in the repertoire of Miles, Ornette, Cecil or Coltrane, Mingus, Monk, Bird and Diz, or Ellington, Basie and Goodman . . . . Jazz seems to temper its joy with the thought that the struggle continues and it's folly to forget that for even a moment." Read The jazz of victory and celebration in Mandel's Jazz Beyond Jazz blog.
• Another favorite of mine, Rifftides, opened my eyes to the fact that one of the characters of the story of my earlier life in Chicago, Studs Terkel, wrote a book Giants of Jazz, published in 1957, that ends with Coltrane who was just emerging. I didn't know that! Doug Ramsey's post has some great links to learn more about this amazing individual spirit.
• In case you missed it, "Over the Rainbow," played by ukelele sensation Jake Shimabukuro at last year's Rochester International Jazz Festival.
• As the Jazz Impact website says, "[g]ood jazz and high performance business depend on creativity, agility, empathy and flexibility."  Jazz Impact is a company that uses jazz to teach businesses and their employees the skills of collaboration.
• The sweet Ms. Ella Fitzgerald sings "Useless Landscape" by Jobim in Montreux in 1969 with Tommy Flanagan.
  

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:

• The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, which has a mission to offer public school-based jazz education programs for young people around the world, has begun a series of online animated Journeys Into Jazz to teach kids about jazz. The host is Herbie Hancock and uses his Memorized Logarhythmic Deporter to Yesteryear (or MeLoDY) to transport kids back to the roots of jazz.
• Just some Brazilians in a garage on a farm with their guitars and a tractor holding down the beat on Sweet Georgia Brown (with thanks to Mike Kaupa and Carl Atkins). 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.
• The website/blog of the Esencia Latina Radio program on Jazz 90.1, which details everything happening in the world of salsa, merengue, bachata, etc., every Saturday from 6-10am NY Time on Jazz 90.1
• You think I have a lot of links, you should check out the links on Kurt Elling's site.
• A community with some sax appeal ... Saxophone People.

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

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.

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:

• Doug Ramsey reviews McCoy Tyner's new disc Guitars on Rifftides.
• Chatting With Jimmy Cobb, Kind of Blue's Last Surviving Player: Remembering the greatest jazz album of all time, 50 years on (by Rob Trucks in The Village Voice, Oct. 8, 2008).
• A jazz blog, This Shape of Jazz, with the musings of Matthew Ditullo about different albums primarily from the 1960s of the avant-garde, but also touches on bop, hard-bop, soul jazz and post-bop.
• Howard Mandel describes a recent bit of fun that Steven Colbert poked at jazz in Jazz Beyond Jazz.
• Billie Holiday singing Fine and Mellow in 1957 with a historic lineup of greats, including Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Gerry Mulligan, Roy Eldridge, Doc Cheatham, Vic Dickenson, Danny Barker, Milt Hinton, and Mal Waldron.

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

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.

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:

• Bill Frisell Trio: 7 p.m. Sunday, July 20th, 4 a.m. Monday and 11 p.m. July 25th.
• Geri Allen Trio: 7 p.m. on July 27th, July 28th at 4 a.m. and 11 p.m. Aug. 1. We interviewed Geri Allen last year.
• Harry Allen Quartet: 7 p.m. on Aug. 3rd and 11 p.m. Aug. 8th.
• Christian Scott Band: 7 p.m. on Aug. 4th, 4 a.m. on Aug. 11 and 11 p.m. Aug. 15.
• James Moody: 7 p.m. Aug. 17, 4 a.m. Aug. 18 and 11 p.m. Aug. 22.
• Don Byron’s Ivey Divey: 7 p.m. on Aug. 24th, 4 a.m. on Aug. 25th and 11 p.m. on Aug. 29.

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:

• Friday, June 6th at 8:00 pm: The Silent Partner (Elliot Gould & Christopher Plummer) with a score by Oscar Peterson.
• Saturday, June 7th at 8:00 pm: Let's Get Lost (biopic on Chet Baker).
• Sunday, June 8th at 7:00 pm: Elevator to the Gallows (Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet) with a score by Miles Davis, preceded Jammin with the Blues (Lester Young, Illinois Jacquet, Jo Jones, and other jazz greats).

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).