Lazaro Vega

The Windsor/Detroit Jazz Club will present a very special jazz concert of historical significance on Sunday, April 23, 2006: The concert will be a reunion of the New McKinney's Cotton Pickers. The New New McKinney's Cottonpickers will perform at the Troy Elks Club from 12:30 PM till 3:30 PM. The Troy Elks Club is located at 1451 E. Big Beaver Road in Troy, MI (just east of 1-75). The New New McKinney's Cotton Pickers is saxophonists: Dave Hutson, George Benson, Dave Flanagan and Ernie Rogers; cornetists Paul Klinger and Tom Saunders; trumpeter John Trudell; trombonist Al Winters; pianist Jim Dapogny; drummer Pete Siers; bassist Paul Keller; and banjoist Orrin Faeslin. The New New McKinney's Cotton Pickers will play music from the original 1928-1933 McKinney's Cotton Pickers book including arrangements and original compositions by Don Redman, John Nesbitt and Benny Carter. Special appearances by saxophonist Dave Hutson (co-leader and transcriber of the charts) who will return to Detroit from Oregon and banjoist Orrin Faeslin who will return from Minnesota. Tickets are available at the door.

Fred Hersch concert broadcast this Sunday -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday, April 16th at 7:00 p.m. as part of Foley Schuler’s “Jazz From Blue Lake Sunday” the solo piano performance of Fred Hersch at the Urban Institute For Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids will air as a full hour long concert. In honor of National Poetry Month Foley’s program will also feature Fred Hersch’s octet and two voices in musical settings for the poetry of Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass.” Tuesday, April 18th at 10:00 p.m. please tune in to “Jazz From Blue Lake” with Lazaro Vega for a live performance by The Wonderland Jazz Ensemble, the Grand Rapids based jazz quintet featuring saxophonists Tom Elferdink and Ken Morgan, with pianist Eric Thorne, bassist Jeff Beavan and drummer Mike VanLente. Their new CD “A Wish” is available by writing wonderlandjazz@earthlink.net .

Just saw A.J. in a promotional DVD for Anita O'Day's new Cd, "Indestructable."

An Evening Of Jazz And Improvised Music With THE REMPIS PERCUSSION QUARTET (482 Music/Chicago/members of The Vandermark 5, Triage and more!) http://www.482music.com/ http://www.482music.com/albums/482-1046.html featuring: DAVE REMPIS: saxophones ANTON HATWICH: bass TIM DAISY: drums FRANK ROSALY: drums "The name of Dave Rempis's latest group is fair warning: never before has the local saxophonist led a band that hit this hard. Bassist Anton Hatwich provides a stable fulcrum with his thrumming, insistent vamps, around which drummers Frank Rosaly and Tim Daisy, both on trap sets, play a dynamic array of swinging beats, interlocking Latin motifs, martial cadences, and nuanced, meterless textures. Even at full throttle the two drummers mesh precisely, despite their divergent styles: Rosaly's is fluid and sinuous, busy with double- kick flutters, while Daisy's is more spiky and agitated. Rempis sketches keening alto and tenor lines across the surface, taking a more overtly melodic tack than he does in Triage or his free-improv quartet with Jim Baker. At other times he switches to baritone and plunges down into the ensemble's dense and surging rhythms, using his horn like yet another percussion instrument--and it's then I start thinking this might be the best new jazz band in town. The set I caught a couple weeks ago at Hotti Biscotti created an unstoppable momentum with its seamless transitions, opening with a polyrhythmic whirlwind worthy of late- 60s Pharoah Sanders and building from there." - Bill Meyer, Chicago Reader Saturday, April 15, 2006 KRAFTBRAU BREWERY 402 E Kalamazoo Ave Kalamazoo, MI (269) 384-0288 www.kraftbraubrewery.com http://www.myspace.com/kraftbrau 9PM Doors 10PM Show 18 & Over $6.00 http://www.myspace.com/blackjack_productions

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/dat.../023113682X.HTM The Velvet Lounge On Late Chicago Jazz Gerald Majer "Gerald Majer's propulsive, rhythmic essays celebrate the history and spirit of jazz. Like a seasoned improviser, he varies and syncopates his delivery, casting rim-shot fragments against long, slalomlike sentences—pushing, probing, and staying on the run through fast-track narrative and lyric measure. The prose fluidly shifts between earthy vernacular and reflective mood swing. And yet Majer's technical gifts as an essayist never betray or eclipse the emotional heart of these engaging, memorable meditations." —Sascha Feinstein, author, Misterioso; editor, Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz and Literature "The Velvet Lounge is a book like none other. Part memoir, part homage, Gerald Majer's remarkable odyssey through the world of late Chicago jazz is a haunted, vertiginous account of both the music and the lives it was made from. This is finally a book about soul—no, about the soul—rapt by essence and experiment. Majer writes with an exhilarating passion and a rare elegance, and his book is sure to be a classic." —J. D. McClatchy, author of Hazmat: Poems "Interesting descriptions of the jazz scene emerge--most notably in the chapter on the Velvet Lounge." —Library Journal "His descriptions actually make you want to hear again--or listen to for the first time--the music described." —Ken Waxman, jazzword.com "A quietly visionary autobiography, the story of a life and of a complex, ugly/beautiful city." —Sunday Herald "Far closer to capturing the experience of listening to music than any jazz book you've read this year." —Matthew Lurie "He is a virtuoso writer, wrapping the reader in his lush descriptions of concerts." —Elizabeth Hoover, Chicago Tribune "A quietly visionary autobiography, the story of a life and of a complex, ugly/beautiful city." —Brian Morton, Sunday Herald (Scotland) "A deeply moving memoir in tune with the rhythms of jazz music itself and its influence on American society." —James A. Cox, Midwest Book Review "A deeply moving memoir in tune with the rhythms of music itself and its influence on society." —James A. Cox Troubled urban neighborhoods and jazz-club havens were the backdrop of Gerald Majer's life growing up in sixties and seventies Chicago. The Velvet Lounge, an original hybrid of memoir, biography, and musical description, reflects this history and pursues a sustained meditation on jazz along with a probing exploration of race and class and how they defined the material and psychic divides of a city. With the instrument of a supple, lyrical prose style, Majer elaborates the book's themes through literary and intellectual forays as carefully constructed and as passionately articulated as a jazz master's solo. Throughout the work, issues of identity and culture, art and politics achieve a rare immediacy, as does the music itself. In portraits of Jimmy Smith, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Sun Ra, and others, Gerald Majer conveys the drama and artistry of their music as well as the personal hardships many of them endured. Vivid descriptions and telling historical anecdotes explore the music's richness through a variety of political, social, and philosophical contexts. The Velvet Lounge, named after the famous Chicago club, is also one of the few works to consider the music of such avant-garde jazz musicians as Fred Anderson, Andrew Hill, and Roscoe Mitchell. In doing so, Majer builds a bridge from the traditionalist view of jazz to the world of contemporary innovators, casts a new light on the music and its makers, and traces connections between jazz art and postmodernist thought. Present throughout Majer's spirited encounters with the worlds of jazz is Majer himself. We hear and appreciate the music through his individual sensibilities and experiences. Majer recounts growing up in racially divided Chicago—his trips to the famed Maxwell Street market, his wanderings among its legendary jazz clubs, his riding the El, and his working in a jukebox factory. We witness his awakening to the music at a crossroads of the intimately personal and the intellectually provocative. Contents Jug Eyes Stitt's Time Proxima Ra Monstrosioso Batterie The Velvet Lounge Le Serpent Qui Danse Dreaming of Roscoe Mitchell Intuitive Research Beings Discography About the Author Gerald Majer is professor of English at Villa Julie College. His poetry and essays have appeared in a variety of journals including, Callaloo, The Georgia Review, and The Yale Review.

Hey Ogie, http://www.wyce.org/ The stream sounds great. LV

Hey Scott, After late morning listening to College of Dupage, caught Terry Gross on GVU today, the Jackie Mac interview, and heard your high powered marketing department in action for the funder. Though they work hard, I'd like to think the station turnaround is because of you, Werf. I hear your program everynight on the drive to work. Who were those people screaming on the air tonight? WEEEEeeeeeeee!!!!!!

I caught that Fresh Air today on WGVU. That was nice, especially the segments on Bud Powell and Miles. This came across the Jazz Programmer's list from Stevebop : In 1993 Jackie McLean was awarded a "Jazz Achievment Award" by the New England Foundation for the Arts. Part of that award was to have a half hour radio documentary produced about him. I was luky eough to be chosen to co-produce that program. The show is all Jackie, in his own voice and words and music talking about his life and career . This show is now available on demand from the WGBH website Go to: www.wgbh.org/jazz Under the color photo logo is a list of five current on-demand jazz features. You'll find our tribute to Jackie there. Please spread the word to your friends about it's availability Enjoy! Steve Schwartz Jazz from Studio Four Friday, 8p-midnight WGBH, 89.7FM, Boston www.wgbh.org/jazz www.wgbhblogs.org/jazz Had a good talk with pianist Hod O'Brien lately who admires Schaap, talking about how as a young person Schaap took a questionairre around to various artists in his neighborhood, Buck Clayton, etc. I can see why Schapp is so well loved in New York, and with the long, long history of the station championing all kinds of different jazz in depth, how they've become the gold standard for non-commercial jazz radio. All that being said it's a basic thing -- you're either listening to a talk show about jazz or you're listening to a music program. When Phil comes on it becomes the former and should be marketed that way. Interviews are great, but lectures -- you'll find a smaller audience for that no matter where you live (and no matter who's doing the talking).

Nice web site. I've had several Chicago residents who summer in West Michigan say they listen to The College of Dupage station everyday.

Very well then. Points taken. Which station are you talking about: "Instead of celebrating the full market signal station that broadcasts jazz between 16-20 hours per day in Chicago" ? I haven't heard WDCB.

A lot is changing. Frankly, I can't imagine WBEZ's news talk reflecting the character or personality of Chicago the way WGN does. But I'm sure it will fill an information void. That radio, of all things, is turning it's back on real music after their long involved history together speaks to bigger changes in society. For instance the major news media's inability to report the news, leaving a huge vacuum for NPR to fill, which they have, and people are paying attention. Through the Clinton administration his popularity during the Monica Lewinsky ordeal stayed around 70 per cent, and every wag on t.v. was saying off with his head. Today Bush's ratings are the lowest of a President since the depression and the pundits waive his bullshit off. T.V. news is insulated from the American public, and NPR's programs, despite their attempts at covering pop culture, are worthwhile for mearly doing the old job description of "journalist." The investment in culture and public education that America (and Americans) made after WWII is nearly run it's course. Public Radio's committment to fine arts music programming was part of that investment. So were the tremendous music programs in the high schools of Chicago, Detroit and Philly, to name just three. And the independant thinking engendered by such an educated populace is anathama to the locked steps of our time. I believe jazz music can change people's lives, inform them of inner depths and outer communion, tell people instinctually how to detect falsehoods surrounding the gluttony of power, and imbue them with a sense of cultural history, of place and righteous purpose. Maybe the NPR news model can do the same thing in a different way. But I doubt it. Opinion today is an expendable commodity used primarily to consolidate power, not reveal truth, while music and art are timeless and at their best ONLY deal with the truth. WBEZ's choice was to take the easy way out.

LOL, Rostasi Ken: "But I doubt that the management's decision was made without serious review of these matters, vs. potential opportunities with alternative programming." After my paranoid ramblings about WUOM this might sound equally as off base, but I DO doubt management's choices...right now, and for the last many years, the NPR network management in Washington is trumpeting the news model and local management is eating it up. Sometimes without thinking about anything other than making more money. A good local example is Werf's station, WGVU, which nixed it's day time jazz several years ago to chase the siren song of the news model, not thinking they'd be doing the same thing that WUOM was doing in the same market. It really took the air out of the place and now, at long last, they may have recovered from the change, that is, re-won an audience and their support. But it was clear in the first several years after they made the switch that they lost their audience and their funding but, you know, hubris and ego come into play, and they just sat there betting on the come because that's what NPR in Washington said would happen. Ghost and I are in a similar boat. Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp is not going to change formats. That's the message in all of our fundraising campaigns. The result is, of course, we stay small. Our budget is $780,000 a year and we have a full time staff of 7. That's a pretty tight ship for a 100,000 watt station. And there's a quite a bit of competition for public radio listeners in Grand Rapids. They can hear the NPR stations from Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, Mount Pleasent, maybe East Lansing, as well as Werf's station at Grand Valley State University, Blue Lake and a small but well loved community station, WYCE. Ann Arbor has WEMU, too, but they can also hear WDET. In general public radio in Michigan is diverse and competitive enough to make things interesting. Thank God for people who listen to and care about music.

Rotasi, Daddy-O Dailey was the handle this annonymous person used when speaking to me. Ken, I really don't think BEZ's numbers were bad for local programming, and their fundraising during jazz was powerful. The station was raising good money. While what you're saying is true, greed before mission comes into play with this choice. And it's not like they don't have options to keep jazz. See below.... I would say yell and scream. Write them letters and tell them that they're turning their back on more than just a "small but devouted" following. Chicago Sun-Times All that jazz gives way to all public affairs April 6, 2006 BY LESLIE BALDACCI Staff Reporter Chicago public radio station WBEZ-FM (91.5) is eliminating music programming next year when its signal strength increases nearly tenfold and it switches to an all-public affairs format, the station's staff was told Wednesday. Gone will be the jazz programs that now run Monday through Thursday from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., Friday night's world music lineup and Sunday afternoon's jazz programming. As first reported by Sun-Times media columnist Rob Feder, Chicago Public Radio has been planning to broadcast two full-time programming services on separate frequencies. The move became possible with the acquisition of WBEW-FM (91.5) in Chesterton, Ind., and WBEQ-FM (90.7) in southwest suburban Morris. The station had considered moving music to the second station, but they are taking the riskier step of doing public affairs on those two stations as well, said Daniel Ash, the station's vice president of strategic communication. "The WBEW and WBEQ signals will be rooted in public affairs, with the sensibility of attracting a more diverse and a bit younger audience," Ash said. He said WBEZ's music programs, about a third of the station's schedule, have "a small but loyal audience." About two-thirds of the station's schedule already is news, talk, arts, culture and National Public Radio programs. In coming weeks, the station will form creative teams to address new programming, Ash said.

http://www.slate.com/id/2139316/

I had a long e-mail exchange with an anonymous radio insider in Chicago last summer, one "Daddy-o Dailey," who first wrote to tell me I'm pathetic for doing the Dog and Pony show publicizing Jazz From Blue Lake on the web. And to question my knocking the programming on WBEZ as too mainstreamed and dislocalized for Chicago's jazz scene ( I said some things over at Chi-Improv). This person, obviously a radio professional, talked about WBEZ's listenership being tremendous following their switch from "the old WBEZ" of Neil Tesser days to the more recent progamming model, and mentioned to do that, bring up their general listenership, was the only way to keep the less expensive over night network news from the BBC, or other programs, at bay. Looks like they lost the battle. The NPR news model is incredibly popular. There's no denying that. Morning Edition and All Things Considered are the most listened to drive time programs on radio right now. Arbitron. In a sense this is the finale of what was once a great jazz station, when they used to program jazz in the day. When they lost that jazz was never going to recover. You cut the legs out from under the program (the day population) and then complain that the program can't run. As much as I may have disagreed with some of the choices they made in their music progamming I would never have wished jazz to go away. Was just hoping they'd get broader in the historical and stylistic reach they covered. Back in the 80's it was fun to hear the new Concords or Milestones or Steeplechases or Delmarks on the radio as you drove in for the Chicago Jazz Festival. WBEZ's national broadcasts of the Chicago Jazz Festival were some of their greatest accomplishments.

I'm pickin' up good vibrations...this has been great...but I can't believe I've spent HALF my life on the air at Blue Lake..... No, let's all celebrate Duke's birthday for two days at the end of the month!

Werf, you're fundraising!!! Chuck, thanks. Done.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- April 4, 2006 TV Review | 'Legends of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis' 'Legends of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis' Lets Musicians Do the Talking By BEN RATLIFF The publicity for "Legends of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis," a new 13-part series of half-hour shows on public television, boasts that it is the first regular network jazz series of its kind in more than 40 years. That means a perform-a-song and talk-to-the-host kind of show, as opposed to a Ken Burns-like exposition of history. It refers specifically to "Jazz Scene, U.S.A.," a program produced by Steve Allen and broadcast in 1962. "Legends of Jazz" could have learned from the visual effectiveness of that show, or from good recent examples of studio-filmed jazz like the film "Calle 54." Instead, it wastes a great opportunity with a rictus grin: it is cheerily glib, aggressively middle-of-the-road, deferential toward the past yet purposefully vague enough to be nearly ahistorical, as if this were a quality to be desired. The host is the pianist Ramsey Lewis, and the format remains the same in each episode: each guest plays a song, the guests play together, and then Mr. Lewis joins them on a version of the show's theme. Whatever spontaneity may have been in the filmed conversations has been largely excised: the interviews are twitchy with edits. His questions, along the lines of "What made you want to pick up the trumpet?," are doggedly polite, basic and weirdly resistant to subtlety and insight. The guitar episode features Jim Hall with Pat Metheny, and it's probably the series at its best. The idea, generally, is to pair an older master with a younger figure. (Mr. Hall is 75, Mr. Metheny 51.) The mild-looking Mr. Hall is brave enough to utter actual thoughts: first he claims to harbor no nostalgia for the past, then he casually mentions that Ben Webster taught him how to breathe through the guitar like a saxophonist. And bang! comes the edit. (Jazz is so cerebral, you know. It scares people.) But both musicians' performances are worth watching. There's a sense of digging in, and Mr. Metheny brings his regular trio, with the bassist Christian McBride and the drummer Antonio Sanchez. "The Golden Horns," the trumpet episode that opens the series, represents the show at its worst. The lineage here is Clark Terry, Roy Hargrove and Chris Botti. Clark Terry is one of the best improvising musicians alive; he comes from the generation that grew up in big bands, and he possesses all the secrets about sound and tone and rhythm in jazz, not to mention balancing art and commerce. Mr. Hargrove came along almost 50 years later, in the early 1990's, dealing with post-bop and funk and Cuban music; he has a commitment to maintaining working bands and encouraging younger players. On the other hand, Mr. Botti, a former sideman for Paul Simon and Sting and a trumpet player of middling talent, has been successfully marketed as a romantic player of standards. This show has no business insinuating that a line of artistic accomplishment connects these three players. Yet without context, you very well might believe that it does: Mr. Botti's performance of "My Funny Valentine" is markedly better filmed than the others, with a darker set and blue lighting from the bottom up. Mr. Lewis is better when dealing with practiced pluralists: the it's-all-good wing of jazz musicians, like Mr. Botti, the singer Jane Monheit and the keyboardist George Duke. Accordingly, smooth jazz — here it's called "contemporary jazz" — gets an episode of its own. If "Legends of Jazz" were a series about the reality of the jazz business, or about the range of things perceived and marketed as jazz, this would seem like a good idea. But this is apparently a show about the greatest living jazz musicians. The series was produced by WTTW in Chicago and LRSmedia, a company including Mr. Lewis and Larry Rosen, who used to run the profitable pop-jazz label GRP Records. After GRP, for a few years in the mid-90's, Mr. Rosen ran a multimedia company called N2K. Nearly every time there's a questionable inclusion on the show, it's a former GRP or N2K artist: Mr. Botti, David Sanborn, Lee Ritenour, Ms. Monheit, Marcus Miller, Al Jarreau. But parsing the show's conversations and second-guessing its list of performers may be the wrong approach. It does put a decent number of excellent musicians on national television. (Others include Eddie Palmieri, Dave Brubeck, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Benny Golson, Chris Potter and Marcus Strickland.) Still, that isn't enough. The ultimate test of jazz on television is whether the music comes across in a hostile medium — how well it suggests the excitement of performance. What made "Jazz Scene U.S.A." so powerful definitely was not the musicians' short interactions with the host, Oscar Brown Jr. It was the direction and the lighting. You saw amazing camera angles, sustained long enough to allow concentration: a view from under Jimmy Smith's forearm, or from the polish on a snare drum, or an aerial shot showing a pianist's chord voicings. The cameramen got you inside the music and rendered the musicians' faces sympathetic and fascinating. Here, the camerawork involves constant, thoughtless slow swirls around the musicians, a lot of dull full-figure head-on shots from 10 feet away, and ugly baths of mixed, colored lights. The walls of the set bring to mind a hotel lobby, busy with wood and textile patterns. The graphics — in an Art Deco typeface that suggests something like the Cotton Club in the 1920's — are corny and badly handled. In all its mainstreaming and common-denominator sense, the show seems to want to deny that jazz is something people care deeply about. But jazz is deep. It is about sound and resonance and great passion. There is a reason people become nearly religious about it. You'd hardly know from watching this. Legends of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis PBS, beginning this month; check local listings Larry Rosen and Ramsey Lewis, creators and executive producers; Nicolette Ferri, producer; produced by LRSmedia and WTTW. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Thanks for all the well wishes, and the link to the babes. Hey, what's up with that? Werf, are you buyin'? You all are welcome to join Blue Lake tonight (log on before 10 p.m. to avoid the "block") for the music of Duke Jordan. I'll never forget the Saturday morning in 1983 when I was on the radio playing Air after having played some Leo Smith when this head appears in the glass cutout of the studio door, and this young girl is looking through the glass wall from the next door studio. I'm like, huh? "Hello, I'm Chuck Nessa, and this is my daughter Carla." It was just so strange that the Steeplechase rep. from Chicago, who had one of the hippest independant labels ever, was standing in our building in the Manistee National Forest.... Actually one of the first things Nessa hipped me to, before we both moved to Whitehall, was the Buck Clayton All Stars with Jimmy Rushing on Steeplechase. In 1979 I had no idea who Dickie Wells was. I still have that double album promo copy he sent when I was doing student radio at Michigan State. And you're right Nessa, I'll be 46 on April 30th so that was exactly half my age ago. Holy shit!

Wasn't that cool? Man, how could Fats not know he made some of the most beautiful sounds in jazz? His sounds and the balance in his improvisations. Classic. What's up with the Chinatown soundtrack. Must be out of print. Brownie, thanks. 46, Bix, on April 30th. Rounding the corner towards 50 gives me pause.....

Oska T An Oscar For Treadwell Jumpin' with Symphony Sid Line for Lyons Avila and Tequila .... A local bassist named Dave Spring wrote and recorded a tune called "One for Lazaro." While m.c.ing a concert the band sprang it and that was a great personal moment. Good tune, too. ---- Treadwell was one of the greats. Listening to voices of his generation one could learn so much not only about the music but about how to connect with an audience and do well by the art form.

Always loved Rasey's playing on the sound track to "Chinatown." http://csis.pace.edu/~varden/navarro/UanRaseyInterview.html

I see Ghost has put this up over in Jazz in Print, too.

Thanks a lot.

(Steve Schwartz quote from JPL) "Very sad news for the jazz radio community. Oscar had recently, August 2005, gone back on the air at WVXU in Cincinnati. All of his programs are archived on the website below. So long, Oska T." Radio Personality, Jazz Historian Oscar Treadwell Dead At 79 I regret to announce that my uncle, Arthur K. Pedersen, A.K.A. OSCAR TREADWELL, passed away today, April 1, 2006. He fell ill on Thursday, and was hospitalized until he passed today. His four children were by his side. According to his wishes, his remains will be donated to scientific study. I am unaware of any planned memorial services at this time. Paul Evans Pedersen, Jr. Hammonton, NJ COOKBEAUX@aol.com Visit website: http://www.oscartreadwell.com/