"The Avant-Garde Plays the Great American Songbook"

[ghost of miles]

This week on Night Lights it's "The Avant-Garde Plays the Great American Songbook." The jazz pioneers of the 1960s--artists such as Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and others--all came up in the entertainment world of the 1940s and 50s, when what we know now as the Great American Songbook was taking hold in the musical canon. Although we think of these musicians today as groundbreaking innovators who abandoned traditional song form, they all knew it, respected it, and in many cases genuinely liked it. In this program we'll hear Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, and Arthur Schwartz as interpreted by the above players and Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, and Sonny Rollins. "The Avant-Garde Plays the Great American Songbook" airs Saturday, Nov. 18 at 11:05 p.m. EST on WFIU, at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville, and at 10 p.m. EST Sunday evening on Michigan's Blue Lake Public Radio. The program will be posted Monday afternoon in the Night Lights archives.

Next week: "Mary Lou Williams' Zodiac Suite."

Edited November 3, 2010 by ghost of miles

[ghost of miles]

This program is now archived.

Edited November 3, 2010 by ghost of miles

[Guy Berger]

No Rod Stewart?

Guy

[ghost of miles]

No Rod Stewart?

Guy

He didn't quite make the cut--but if I ever find those long-rumored sides the Faces did with Ayler...

[ghost of miles]

This week on Night Lights it's "The Avant-Garde Plays the Great American Songbook." The jazz pioneers of the 1960s--artists such as Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and others--all came up in the entertainment world of the 1940s and 50s, when what we know now as the Great American Songbook was taking hold in the musical canon. Although we think of these musicians today as groundbreaking innovators who abandoned traditional song form, they all knew it, respected it, and in many cases genuinely liked it. In this program we'll hear Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, and Arthur Schwartz as interpreted by the above players and Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, and Sonny Rollins. "The Avant-Garde Plays the Great American Songbook" airs Saturday, Nov. 18 at 11:05 p.m. EST on WFIU, at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville, and at 10 p.m. EST Sunday evening on Michigan's Blue Lake Public Radio. The program will be posted Monday afternoon in the Night Lights archives.

We re-aired The Avant-Garde Plays the Great American Songbook this past week; it remains archived for online listening.