Category: AJBlogs

Vibraphonist, pianist and bandleader Charlie Shoemake wrote the other day to relate an experience involving pianist Jimmy Rowles (1918-1996).

Uzbek song is not well known here (even the pop music is obscure), but it is well worth investigating. Here’s a sample from the singer Gulzoda, recorded at the WOMEX festival in Santiago de Compostela.

Daan Kleijn, Passages, (daankleijn)
Charles Lloyd And The Marvels + Lucinda Williams, Vanished Gardens (Blue Note)

“If you see 600 singers coming towards you, get out of the way.” That was lead conductor Simon Halsey’s advice to the capacity audience at New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine for the world premiere of JLA’s latest piece.

A second guest post by Penny Brill, Pittsburgh Symphony violist and alumna of the Community Engagement Training offered by ArtsEngaged. Here she continues her advocacy for musicians to participate in community engagement efforts.

Terry Riley’s 1964 ingenious, joyful and warm composition In C can now be performed by anyone with a laptop, regardless of their previous musical or technological experience, thanks to the Loyola University Technology Ensemble (LUTE), which has created an In C app. LUTE gave a demonstration concert in New Orleans this past Sunday, and Howard Mandel took part.

A look at the Art Institute of Chicago’s major summer exhibition, John Singer Sargent and Chicago’s Gilded Age.

Joseph Horowitz writes about the program he devised for the Brevard Music Festival about the second of the Leonard Bernstein-New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts: “What Makes Music American?”

Karrin Allyson, Some Of That Sunshine (kasrecords)
She wrote all 13 songs on this album, and it sounds as if she had the time of her life recording them.

JD Allen, Lovestone (Savant)
Allen is a successor to the great tenor saxophonist Ben Webster in terms of adoring both the melody and the lyric. He never strays far the songs’ spirits, keeping them alive with allusions to the melodies during his improvisations.