Lazaro Vega

Well David, Last night about 1:30 in the morning I got a call from a young woman listener who requested some Freddie Webster. She said after hearing the program he became her favorite musician. We have maybe four pieces with his music on it: three by Frank Socolow with Bud Powell, and the Sarah Vaughn "You're Not the Kind." So I played those, but that's it. She was sad to hear his music is so hard to find, but I sent her off in search of the archive where she's planning on downloading the program. This is exactly the kind of audience affirmation we were looking for by putting your show on at Blue Lake. Lazaro

There's Harry Carney with strings, and Ben Webster with strings, some of which Ellington had a hand in, and some that Strayhorn did.....Night Creature jumps to mind as an orchestra meets the jazz ensemble piece, as well as a version of Harlem.

Ondas means "waves" in Spanish. Was talking to someone the other day, a radio head, who says the gamble didn't work because Stern's FM listenership, which numbered in the millions, did not follow him over to satellite radio...the percentage that followed him is shockingly low...cha-ching, bye to the bling... I've notice, too, XM has a variety of jazz formats, one of which is supposed to push it some, but what I've heard is mostly "freebop" or music that ducks between inside and outside, no outright aesthetically driven experimentation or embrace of the grand tradition of black experimentalism in American music since 1923.

Nice. I forgot about that Getz/Dailey version of Spring Can....

The band will be interviewed on WEMU in Ypsilanti today at 12:30 p.m. They play tonight at The Firefly Club in Ann Arbor. This version of the Frank 'N' Joe Show is rockin' -- all original music, electric guitars, electric bass, percussion based off the djembe. Lyrically delving into the politics of compromise. Had a GREAT time with the band last night. LV

Congratulations. It's been a long retail road.

Ornette has made strong statements about music and sexuality, and he comes down on the side that sex is a disruptive force in the music's purity of expression. Whether he suceeds in this is debateable, but that is one of his intentions.

On the subject, Geri's appearance with Ornette Coleman, whose music is intentionally androgenous (sp), should complicate the issue.

Interesting comment about Lil Hardin, who was a more "schooled" musician than Louis at that stage of the game. Though the ensembles are cool, and the layout of the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens is clear, it's the improvised music that keeps my attention, the solos. Is this review under discussion about Geri's last Telarc album with DeJohnette? That disc, and the recent Charles Lloyd CD, do float between "inside" and "outside" playing effortlessly. But that is anything but "chick" music. It's more challenging than, say, the way Maria Schneider moves between inside and outside.

Friday, June 16th at 10 p.m. Jazz From Blue Lake presents guitarist extraordinaire Frank Vignola with drummer Joe Ascione in “The Frank and Joe Show” (see www.franknjoe.com ) live from our studios at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. With two acoustic guitars and two djembes (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djembe) this version of the Frank and Joe Show promises great swing. Vignola is heard every Monday night at the Iridium in New York as a member of Les Paul’s band. Thanks to Family Budget Service of Grand Rapids and The Weathervane Inn of Montague for underwriting this performance. The Frank and Joe Show will be heard live in Grand Rapids on Thursday, June 15th at Schuler Books and Music 28th Street Store at 7 p.m. (see http://www.schulerbooks.com/).

Guy walks into a music store. Clerk says, "May I help you." Guy looks past him, casts his eyes around the material on the peg board behind the counter, looks in the case, turns around and looks over the room, then turns back and says, "I'll take one realistic inflatible Ginger Lynn doll, two large tubes of K-y and as many volumes you have of Big Legs magazine." The clerk, half laughing but mostly nervous, says,"Ah, this is a music store fella, we have nothing like that here." Guy says, "Yeah, I know, but I was too embarrassed to ask for a set of banjo strings."

Me too. In fact I'm ripping the seque from Berger's "Moneybusiness" to Eldar's "Straight No Chaser" and riffing on it with some Monk material, Amiri Baraka reciting poetry to Monk melodies with Malachi Thompson's Freebop Band, and Fred Hersch playing "Round Midnight" live in Grand Rapids during a program this Sunday night.....stealing from the best...taking Wayne Shorter's advice.....

The Art Ensemble will never go away! A timeless band.

"Same and other, or, paraphrasing Lampedusa, change everything not that nothing changes (and maybe the reverse, too-up to a dizziness of sets of mirrors). Or : always closer (to the theme sometimes) to go further, or so far (from every premeditated melody) to come near one another in the triangle field..." Diagram that clausal beast, read it back in the voice of Jean Arthur, and you've got a play -- "Stutters of Ignoratioelenchi and Inexperience"; or "Ghostly Tail Chasing: The Sacroiliac Dance."

Anyone else get the Bud Freeman?

Don't know about the records, but he'll be playing live on Blue Lake Public Radio this Wednesday as part of Joel Harrison's quartet. That will stream live starting at 10 p.m. edt.

Looking forward to it, Ghost. Sunday night's line-up: 6 p.m. Jazz Profiles featuring Ahmad Jamal 7-8 p.m. Our recording of The Wonderland Jazz Ensemble performing live April 18th. A West Michigan based two saxophone and rhythm band, including music by Sun Ra ("Lullabye For Realville") and other classics. 8-10 p.m. Jazz From Blue Lake Sunday with yours truely. From 8 to 9 p.m. its Sunday jazz, that is Mary Stallings singing "A Sunday Kind of Love," a Buddy Rich mid-1950's Verve session playing "Sunday," music from Willie Pickens devotional album, David Murray's album "Speaking in Tongues" with Fontella Bass, etc. A big chunck of the 9 p.m hour will be spent on variations of "How High the Moon" including "Ornithology," "Solar" and "Satellite." 10 p.m. Night Lights. (web stream blocked) Hope our listeners enjoy the new line-up.

You're welcom Skid. After many listeners requested the info in writing that they'd heard on the air we HAD to do it. Will update the Datebook on-line this weekend and include the concerts in the park series in Spring Lake, Grand Haven and Scully's World Class Jazz Mini-tours, which will include Arno with Organissimo again this summer. Yipeeee.

Gato Barbieri, "Europa," from "Caliente."

Back in the decade of sex John Klemmer's "Touch" and Grover Washington's "Mr. Magic" made the scene with incense and some good cheap Jamacian in an apple pipe.

Last summer Lesley and I were in Europe. The small French seaport of Collioure put together a retrospective of everything Henri Matisse and his friends painted in that town during their year there, 1905-06, and they pulled together works from across the globe. What didn't fit in Collioure was exhibited in a nearby town. The show was called the Birth of Fauvism. http://www.abcgallery.com/M/matisse/matisse136.html After that part of our trip we were in Barcelona where the Picasso museum opened up much more after understanding the leaps the French took. I mean, his paintings are laid out room by room chronologically, and after "the French room" his paintings changed dramatically as he became the mature Picasso. Was sad not to make it to the Joan Miro institute in Barcelona. There was a Calder sculpture out front. As you may know Calder's "Le Grand Vitesse" is located in downtown Grand Rapids. As a nine year old I recall sitting about four feet away from him during the dedication ceremony. My mother hauled us down there early before the thousands of people showed up. Calder was there early, too, and monkeyed around with my sisters, who would have been 8 and 6, until the dignataries made him stop and deal with the fauldeeraw. My mom was embarassed that she couldn't control her girls, but Calder was laughing his ass off with them.

Sorry about that Randy. All of the listener feed back we've read on "Listen Here" was negative. Not that it was a lot, but it was all negative. Not one letter in support of the program. And Wilke...Yes, he's my first choice, but when Public Radio International split from Minnesota Public Radio the cost of Wilke's program hit a price we can't sustain for over night jazz programming. Almost the price of a new staff position. Blue Lake was one of the first stations to broadcast Wilke and we kept him for more than 20 years. If THEY hadn't changed we would have stayed with it. So our Sunday night programming last week was: 6 p.m., Listen Here; 7-10 p.m. Jazz From Blue Lake with Foley Schuler; 10 p.m. Jazz Profiles. Starting this Sunday, 6 p.m. Jazz Profiles; 7-10 p.m. Jazz From Blue Lake with Lazaro Vega; 10 p.m. Night Lights.

The Business Music fans give Chicago Public Radio static about its new programming plan. Mike Widell and Hillel Frankel have started a petition to ask WBEZ not to abandon music programming. By Deanna Isaacs thebusiness@chicagoreader.com No examples of the new concept, which apparently falls somewhere between public access TV and This American Life, were offered. WBEZ general manager Torey Malatia had to face the music last week at a meeting of Chicago Public Radio's Community Advisory Council at Columbia College. He was scheduled to air his latest programming plans in the flesh for the first time, and an audience of about 70 was waiting to take him on. Last summer he'd announced that CPR would launch a second Chicago-area broadcast stream on 89.5 that would be all music, while 'BEZ would go all talk. Then while the public was digesting that news, he had a change of heart. In a letter posted a month ago on 'BEZ's Web site, he made a drastically different announcement: all music programs would be dropped from both stations. Beginning in 2007, CPR would be nothing but jabber. That news prompted entertainment lawyer Hillel Frankel and jazz fan Mike Widell to create a protest Web site, savethemusiconwbez.org, which features a heated blog and a relatively tame online petition demanding that the "proposed programming changes be discussed and debated publicly . . . rather than allow a few individuals to unilaterally effect drastic change." Frankel says Malatia's plan will be detrimental to local venues, musicians, and music festivals, all of which "rely on 'BEZ to get the word out," a vital function that "only works in the context of a music program." By last week the petition had drawn 2,600 signatures with what Frankel says was minimal publicity. At the meeting Ron Jones, CPR's vice president of programming, attempted to summarize the changes for the council members, some of whom wondered aloud if there couldn't have been a less drastic solution. "We'll create a public affairs service, 24-7, for WBEZ," Jones said, "and a new service that isn't found anywhere else in radio [for 89.5]. That service will consist of not programs but a series of modules that depict life in the community. We're working toward the notion of listener generated programming. We're looking to attract nontraditional listeners. Our new service won't have a music format, but will contain lots of music in creative ways." (Partial translation, later provided by Jones: "You'll be able to hear musicians talk about their music.") Malatia opened his own remarks by "reminding" the council that "we got to this point of view philosophically together. In 2000 we all engaged in a review of our strategic plan-a number of representatives from the Advisory Council participated-reflecting on whether we were indeed performing relevant service to our community." The 2000 census pointed to the growing diversity of the community, Malatia said, but our programming was not reflecting that in any way whatsoever." 'BEZ, with an estimated 600,000 listeners, is serving just a sliver of its 7.6 million member community, he continued, and research shows others are not listening because of style barriers and what he described as an "embarrassing" lack of relevance. And given recent changes in the industry-including consolidation, which has resulted in less local news and public affairs coverage, and the rise of Internet and satellite radio-the "notion of taking the second asset and turning that into an eclectic music station became much less appealing." Instead, Malatia said, "we decided to be the place that brings people together, to specialize in public service, and to focus our attention and energy on one expertise." WBEZ will continue to carry national and international coverage while 89.5 will be "entirely local and regional" and will use acquisitions from independent producers. "We think this is the right thing to do with our mission," he added, quoting a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation statement that had inspired him: "If radio is not a healing and reconciling force . . . then we have failed." Then he took off on his own: "We're building a service that's going to be a resource for every single member of this community. The course is set, and I say that speaking for all staff, speaking for all board. The task is a noble one." That elicited a fiery reply from Pete Kimball, the first audience member to grab his two minutes of floor time: "The last time I got told there was a noble goal-we should trust that everything had been thought of, and you'll love it when you see it-we ended up in Iraq." Oak Park resident Larry Spivack warned that CPR is "going to lose thousands and thousands of subscribers." Others complained that the programming was narrowing even as its spectrum was increasing, that occasional and unpredictable use of music would drive the music audience away, and that nobody at CPR had bothered to ask listeners and station members what they want. When asked if this was a done deal or if there was still room for input, Malatia replied, "This is a done deal in which you have input." Only Alva Lewis, a newcomer to Chicago, said the changes were a good idea, noting her belief that public radio is there to give us not what we want but what we need. No examples of the new concept, which apparently falls somewhere between public access TV and This American Life, were offered, and its fuzziness brought charges of rhetoric without substance. At press time, the plan hadn't been announced or discussed on the CPR airwaves. Critics of former music director Chris Heim (who was let go when the new plan was announced) opined that Malatia, who ignored complaints about her programming for years, was now throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Mark Ruffin, who was fired as a 'BEZ on-air personality in 2000, said Listen Here, the jazz talk show he cohosts with Reader contributor Neil Tesser, is broadcast in 86 cities but "can't get on the air here." HotHouse director Marguerite Horberg brought up Chicago's "historical role in the development of jazz and blues," and Bob Koester, founder of Delmark Records and owner of the Jazz Record Mart, said if there's been a decline in contributions from jazz listeners over the years "it's because you've ruined the programming. Chicago's the number one or two center for avant-garde jazz, and you don't play it." Frankel and Widell say they'll step up their efforts now, and hope to have thousands more signatures by the next 'BEZ board meeting, scheduled for 8 AM Friday, June 16, at the station's Navy Pier offices. "We want to give people a chance to express themselves on this," says Widell. "It is supposed to be public radio.

Yes, that info was printed during his Presidency. Brotzmann was aware of the comment the last time he came through Kalamazoo, he had a wide eyed chuckle over it.

Up for the Joel Harrison, and update at the web site www.bluelake.org, and this addition: Friday, June 16th at 10 p.m. Jazz From Blue Lake presents guitarist extraordinaire Frank Vignola with drummer Joe Ascione in “The Frank and Joe Show” (see www.franknjoe.com ) live from our studios at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. With two acoustic guitars and two djembes (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djembe) this version of the Frank and Joe Show promises great swing. Vignola is heard every Monday night at the Iridium in New York as a member of Les Paul’s band. Thanks to Family Budget Service of Grand Rapids and The Weathervane Inn of Montague for underwritting this performance. The Frank and Joe Show will be heard live in Grand Rapids on Thursday, June 15th at Schuler Books and Music 28th Street Store at 7 p.m. (see http://www.schulerbooks.com/ ).