J.P. Jofre performs at the Morlacchi Theater with tiers of gilded boxes and a crystal chandelier hangs from the frescoed dome.
Credit / Courtesy Umbria Jazz Festival
Bix Factor is Mauricio Ottolini's music for his science fiction tale about a virus spreading among people who listen to bad TV music. His Sousaphonix ensemble performs it at the Umbria Jazz Festival.
Credit / Courtesy Umbria Jazz Festival
Ottolini's Sousaphonix features a dozen extraordinary musicians, a mini universe of instruments including toys, and imagination galore.
Credit / Courtesy Umbria Jazz Festival
The Umbria Festival discovered young bandoneonist J.P. Jofre from Argentina performing in Puerto Rico and then New York, where Jofre now lives.
The Umbria Festival in Italy turns 40 this summer. Umbria presents jazz indoors and out in two historic cities — Perugia in summer, Orvieto in winter. Marching bands parade; gospel choirs sing. Concerts start at noon, midnight and all the hours in between. (The New Year's Eve show in Orvieto begins at 1 a.m. on New Year's Day.) And the musicians can be delightfully unfamiliar, at least to American ears.
By 1928, Earl Hines was jazz's most revolutionary pianist, for two good reasons. His right hand played lines in bright, clear octaves that could cut through a band. His left hand had a mind of its own. Hines could play fast stride and boogie bass patterns, but then his southpaw would go rogue — it'd seem to step out of the picture altogether, only to slide back just in time.
Tootie Heath says the drummer's responsibility is to be happy. There's no better believer in the happiness ethic than Matt Wilson — and we're happy, too, grooving first to Heath, then Wilson, in highlights of sets from August and September 2012.
Every year, an all-star assemblage of today's jazz musicians called the SFJAZZ Collective picks a different all-time-great jazz composer to feature. The band then applies its own arrangements to that composer's tunes.
Originally published on Fri March 29, 2013 2:54 pm
The narrative of jazz history often credits the music as a powerful, progressive force for racial integration in American culture. But what about gender equality? On that score, jazz in its first few decades would have to be given a less than stellar grade.
In this Piano Jazz episode recorded in 1992, we remember the remarkable talents of Shirley Scott, the "Queen of the Organ," as she solos on "Skylark" and joins host Marian McPartland for a piano duet of "In a Mellow Tone."
