Lazaro Vega

Petition on the future of Radio Netherlands Worldwide The Dutch government is planning cuts to Radio Netherlands Worldwide’s budget. It is not yet clear exactly what the consequences of these cuts will be for Radio Netherlands Worldwide. What is certain is that the Dutch international Service will lose a substantial amount of its funding. We distribute independent high-quality programs and independent news via radio and internet in ten languages. We endeavor to reach as many people as possible and to provide them with news and current affairs that they may otherwise not have access to. Much of this is done through you, our partner stations. We are an independent news organization which stands for democracy and free press. To the political decision-makers in The Hague, you are a very long way away. We believe it is of vital importance that Radio Netherlands Worldwide continues to provide news and current affairs and high-quality programs for you and for your listeners. That is why we are turning to you now with this urgent request: If you like to support Radio Netherlands Worldwide to be able to continue its work, if you agree that the rest of the world has the right to an international service like ours, please sign this petition and return it to us by email by June 20, 2011. This will be an enormous help to show the politicians in The Hague that your media organization values the work of RNW. ************************************************************************************************ Media Partners all over the world support Radio Netherlands Worldwide Name: Organization: Town / City Country: And if you please also tell us why you value the work of Radio Netherlands Worldwide: ************************************************************************************************************************ NOTE: We are aware that a questionnaire was sent out to all partners earlier this year. So far we have received 132 responses with comments and statements. These responses were intended for internal use at RNW only . Please indicate whether we can use these statements for our campaign as well? YES / NO Thank you very much for your valuable cooperation. We would also like to ask you to sign the petition on our campaign site which is stated in ten different languages: http://www.radionetherlands4u.nl Please feel free to inform your entire network about our campaign site. Best regards, Your colleagues at Radio Netherlands Worldwide.

On Sunday Detroit jazz trumpeter and educator Marcus Belgrave celebrated his 75th birthday. Tonight on Jazz From Blue Lake we'll celebrate, too, with recordings by Belgrave with Pete Siers, the Generations band, Geri Allen, Tommy Flanagan, Charles Mingus, and under his own name live at Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor. Hope you'll join us, 10 p.m. - 3 a.m. edt, http://www.bluelake.org/radio (many new releases, too).

Thought the deValk biography was helpful. He points to Chet Baker in Tokoyo (Evidence ECD 22158-2), a 1987 concert recording, as being one of Baker's great late period performances caught on record.

Yesterday I was checking out Fireball and noticed that Paul Brewer is listed as trombonist and co-composer with Bolton on a few of the pieces by the Tulsa prison band. Paul teaches at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids and is the father of jazz bassist Matt Brewer. Here's his response from his Facebook page: "I remember him well. We composed a song together ("Chano"). He was brilliant, but an incorrigible con. When I taught at the Joseph Harp Correctional Center where Dupree was incarcerated for about a year, he told me that I was the only person he could talk to. His musical gifts were so strong and his knowledge so deep that he kept me engaged for hours on end in conversations about music and other subjects that interested him (the prison officials let me visit him in his cell). His life was tragic, however. He never overcame the type of madness that kept in prison for so many years of his life. Drugs ruled him and his formidable intelligence was no match for his insatiable cravings for narcotics. Dupree was an existentialist in the deepest sense of the word and could articulate his philosophical postions in that regard as well as any professor I ever heard. And yet, there were so many times during rehearsals that I saw him smile with delight at something meaningful that I had played on the horn. So, in music at least, Dupree's existentialist leanings disappeared, yielding a deeply felt passion for the sublime in jazz. I played with him last in 1983 after he had been paroled. We were at jazz club on the black side of Oklahoma City (the east side). He played beautifully. And then I never saw him again. He died alone in 1993, I think. And no one claimed the body. Sad."

http://www.life.com/gallery/60811/unpublished-miles-davis-1958#index/0

Happy 80th birthday to jazz trumpeter Louis Smith who's called MI home since the 1960's after he came in off the road with Horace Silver. Balancing the technical fire of Clifford Brown and Fats Navarro with lyricism of Miles Davis, Smith developed his own sound and concept as you'll hear tonight on Jazz From Blue Lake, 10p-3a, www.bluelake.org/radio and WBLV FM 90.3 / WBLU FM 88.9. Hope you can join us.

Nice!

Recently Jazz From Blue Lake checked out the early New Orleans clarinetists Johnny Dodds and Jimmy Noone.Tonight and tomorrow we continue the thread with recordings by Edmond Hall tonight (mostly from the 1940's on Blue Note, yet also including an Esquire All Star Session with Coleman Hakins and Art Tatum, as well as Louis Armstrong's All Stars Live in Grand Rapids, and the Eddie Condon Town Hall Concerts) and Sidney Bechet tomorrow, 10 p.m.-3 a.m. edt www.bluelake.org/radio

Have had the pleasure of working with Gebhard a number of times "Live From Blue Lake" and recording him in performance in Grand Rapids. Thought this might be an article about his life as a "surf-sailor," those surf boards with sails on them. He loves that kind of stuff, and his son is involved in the skater/surf type sports as well.

Wheel of Fortune. Yes, Rare Genius on Concord. And yes to the quote being lifted from Bob Blumenthal's 2003 RVG series "Let Freedom Ring" liner notes. Thanks for listening, David. I think we're going to put another program on in the hour right before yours Sunday nights. It comes out of Nashville and is called "Jazz on the Side."

Alto saxophonist/bandleader/composer Jackie McLean is featured in the first 20 minutes of each hour tonight during Jazz From Blue Lake ( www.bluelake.org/radio ). For this broadcast his apprenticeship period with Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Charles Mingus and Prestige Records is by passed so as to focus on the recordings he made as a leader for Blue Note Records between 1959 and 1967. We'll hear some music from his second great period, including "Round Midnight" recorded in Belgium in 1991 and "Little Melonae" with Japanese pianist Junko Onishi in 1995, but the main focus of tonight's broadcast will be on J-Mac's transition from Charlie Parker protege/hard bop master to explorer as improvisor aware of developments from Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane. New records, too, in the other 40 to 30 minutes of each hour. From the liner note to "Let Freedom Ring," McLean is quoted talking about his controversial sound: "Whenever I get with Hank Jones and ask him to tune me up, he'll always hit B flat rather than A," McLean joked wile discussing his tone in 1997 [with Bob Blumenthal], then continued in a more serious vein. "Some people would prefer music to be a kingdom, with someone at the helm defining what to do; but jazz is a the perfect example of democracy. You could line me up with Phil Woods, Lee Konitz, Gary Bartz and Kenny Garrett, tell us to hit C, and get five different spins on the same note. We all have our own perceptions. My life has been sweet and sour, bittersweet, and I'm interpreting my experience. I'm a sugar free saxophonist."

Very well done. Haven't heard that J.J. Johnson recording.

The bass sound isn't that kind of direct mic, over exposed fret board sound that the 1980's engineers went to the mattresses over. And, much more importantly, what Larry said about the rhythm section's performance is on the money and isn't the music, ultimately, why we listen to recordings? Or is it all about the technology? That's where the first negative review at Amazon misses the boat. And, no, whatever sound is on the record should not take away from the music being played. "All Music" is not on an acoustical recording from 1923 and generations of listeners and critics managed to tease out the brilliance of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band despite "technical limitations" (a relative term which seems more appropriate to Mozart's time than Armstrong's). If anyone did any careful listening to "All Music" they'd have noticed the piano, not the bass. It was a war, according to the war stories I've heard from Chuck, between the heat and humidity of the studio and keeping an already troubled instrument in tune. Levy makes the junker sing, which is a miracle in and of itself, let alone Warne and Lou able to stay as closely together as they did throughout the heads with the freakin' wires gradually changing pitch. Chuck and the engineer also captured the sort of textural dynamics of Warne's sound in all it's subtle gradations allowing us a close to live experience. As far as the music is concerned, Marsh's "Subconscious-Lee" should be hailed as one of the greatest captured performances on "What is this Things Called Love"-changes ever.

Thanks folks. Working this morning as it is fundraiser time. Had a great celebration last summer with the Lakeshore Big Band and Arno Marsh's quartet with Randy, who was nice enough to record part of it for me (Arno's version of "These Foolish Things" was so together!). Played my trumpet for the first time with a rhythm section in a jazz setting this past Wednesday. An open mic jazz jam session. The guys were great, but man I sucked, bad. And they kept asking me to come back up. Fall down, get up. This isn't free form, it's standards and blues, so...fall down and get up. I'm game. Gotta go through this if you want to climb that hill. And for the third time ever will play in church again this Sunday morning. The trumpet has become like cigarettes to me: I keep wanting to sneek out and punt a few hits on it whenever I can.

Thanks guys. Bailey did study with the same classical instructer as Noone, and some say he was influenced by him. Have not heard the Williams session with Bailey, so, will have do some comparison listening.....

Looking at the October 1923 session of Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and the booklet to the CD reissue "Off the Record" lists Buster Bailey as the clarinetist on "London Cafe Blues," "Camp Meeting Blues," and "New Orleans Stomp," with Noone listed as only playing on "Chattanooga Stomp." The notes only say "The Columbia sessions are also marked by some questions concerning dates, rejected titles and the identity of clarinetists. Apparently recorded over two days...." And that's it. Wondering if there's any other research to back this up, and, upon listening, if the Bailey identification holds up (if so, Gunther Schuller did a nice job of complimenting Bailey in Early Jazz).

Dear Lazaro, We are devastated by the loss of the irreplaceable violin legend Billy Bang - his spirit, his music, his presence. Now he has joined with other angels o f music Maria Arias and Billy Bang's children have asked Arts For Art to set up the Billy Bang Memorial Fund to help with funeral costs. For those who would like to contribute, Please mail your tax deductible contribution to Arts for Art at 107 Suffolk Street, NYC, NY 10002. You can also make a contribution on the AFA paypal account on the contribute page www.visionfestival.org Please make a note whichever way that you contribute, this is for the Billy Bang Memorial Fund. This fund will not be mentioned on the AFA contribute page / as it is a temporary fund. Thank you Patricia and William Parker ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tuesday April 19th, 2011 Viewing at the Funeral Home 11am-8pm Benta Funeral Home 630 St Nicholas Avenue [corner of 141st St] NY NY 10030 212-281-8850 Wednesday April 20th 2011 Funeral Service 9am-10am-viewing 10am-11:30am--Funeral Service Mount Olivet Baptist Church 201 Lenox Avenue [ corner of 119th St.] NY NY 10027 212-864-1155 Burial at Woodlawn Cemetery Immediately following the service [around 1pm] Webster Avenue and 233rd St Bronx, New York 10470 718-920-0500

Bang was the nicest cat, and ready to GO whenever he came around Chicago to play with Kahil El'Zabar. They appeared in duo at the UICA in Grand Rapids (when UICA was housed in the old bank building), then played a hippie joint called Arco Iris with Tri-Factor (Bang, Bluiett and El'Zabar). Blue Lake Public Radio recorded that for broadcast, a rather rambling evening. When Bang returned to Grand Rapids in 2003 with a quintet featuring Frank Lowe we arranged a recording for broadcast that was eventually issued on Justin Time records. Talked to Mark Helias about Bang this winter. I mean, in Viet Nam he wasn't a desk jockey, at all -- he was doing the dirty work of war. It profoundly affected him. Thankfully there was redemption in music. As the song says, let's have faith he's now "At Play in the Fields of the Lord." God Bless, Bang -- thanks for the great vibrations.

Ruby Braff may have been a difficult, opinionated, perfectionist of an artist -- but I'm sorry I never heard him live or had the chance to bring him into Grand Rapids. His stylistically omnivorous music is relaxed and swinging, with a keen sense of Louis Armstrong's primacy to the jazz tradition and the subsequent dimensions of his style as developed in Bunny Bergian, Bobby Hackett and Buck Clayton. The fact that he recorded with Roy Eldridge and can, depending on the record, evoke Miles Davis or even Dizzy makes him a master within the tradition. His humor with low notes in later years sort of wipes the slate clean of all the "difficult artist" aura. Tonight Jazz From Blue Lake spends part of each hour on Ruby Braff, plus music by Ken Peplowski and Shelly Berg who appear this weekend in Kalamazoo, and new cds 10 p-3 a www.bluelake.org/radio

McCoy was really on for a recent concert in Grand Rapids, too, though the accompanying musicians weren't as up as he was -- and he called a GREAT set list.

(This is probably too simple for the organissimo community. It was written for a broad audience on FB) In jazz 'soloing' there can be a tendency to lean on practiced patterns that fit certain melodic and/or harmonic forms, allowing a player to sound good though not really be 'in the moment' per se. Henry Threadgill, following the examples of Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman, seeks to continually challenge his band members to truly improvise. He often employs unusual instrumental combinations, and has developed a system of intervals to build solos from, as well as many other composer-led suggestions. Check him out. Henry Threadgill tonight on Jazz From Blue Lake, 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. via www.bluelake.org/radio In addition, at midnight, we'll hear two new Nessa Records releases -- the Anthony Braxton/John McDonough duet recording; and a reissue of Roscoe Mitchell's 1967 quartet; plus a bit of "Air Time" with Threadgill ("Keep Right On Playing Through the Mirror Over the Water," a sort of avant-guard jazz study in crescendo). Late tonight, after 2 a.m., we'll dip into three new limited edition releases from Gerry Hemmingway's Auricle label, including a cross cultural meeting with the Korean komungo player Jin Hi Kim. A komungo is a six foot long zither with six silk strings. If you're up in about an hour, hope you can join us.

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/cambridge/2011/02/after_29_years_stereo_jack_shu.html

Yup. You can send out way more free ones then you'd actually sell......

After that fall and broken hip he retired from international touring. I thought maybe Alyn Shipton mentioned Sir George would sometimes play around London for fun, but was pretty much retired.