Author: Bash Daily Group Archive Feed

You Can Listen To John Peel ‘s Records

http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
http://www.vinyloftheday.com/2014/09/15/can-listen-john-peel-s-records/

** YOU CAN LISTEN TO JOHN PEEL ‘S RECORDS
————————————————————
1 Star 2 Stars 3 Stars 4 Stars 5 Stars

http://www.vinyloftheday.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/10521332_10152618910464404_1839881796665286820_n.jpg

A new project allows you to listen to some of John Peel ‘s own records from the comfort of your own home. The John Peel Archive (http://www.johnpeelarchive.com/) have launched an online series of ‘Record Boxes’, which, looking at it, is basically a mixtape from your music nerd mate, covered in notes about the songs. With all the pictures of John Peel’s file cards, and his handwritten notes on the record sleeves (He wrote on the goddamn sleeves!), it’s a unique and informative insight into the great man’s own record collection.

The first ‘record box’ is curated by record producer Joe Boyd, who discovered Nick Drake, was there when Dylan went electric, and after watching the documentary, seems to have a story about absolutely everything that has happened in popular music since the ’60s. We think it’s worth taking a look: Joe Boyd’s record box (http://www.johnpeelarchive.com/joe-boyd/) .
[Source: TheFourOhFive (http://www.thefourohfive.com/) ]

Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=fdde076c5a) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=fdde076c5a&e=[UNIQID])

PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!

Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA

September 26, 2014 / No Comments / More

▶ Bettye LaVette tells some loud audience members what for – YouTube

http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBLKUnOnzLU&feature=youtu.be (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBLKUnOnzLU&feature=youtu.be)

July 15, 2014 @ The Jazz Cafe in London, Bettye performed Like A Rock, which is an intimate song. During the song an altercation broke out between a couple of audience members. When the song got to the solo, Bettye told them a few things in her own, inimitable style.

Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=40b73920aa) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=40b73920aa&e=[UNIQID])

Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA

September 25, 2014 / No Comments / More

▶ Bettye LaVette tells some loud audience members what for – YouTube

Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA

September 25, 2014 / No Comments / More

Richard Brody Lists His Perfect Jazz Recordings

http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/perfect-jazz-recordings

** Perfect Jazz Recordings
————————————————————
http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Brody-Perfect-Jazz-2-1200.jpgMax Roach, 1968. Credit Photograph by Guy Le Querrec/Magnum

My colleague Sasha Frere-Jones’s inspiring list of perfect recordings (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sasha-frere-jones/perfect-beat) threw down an implicit gauntlet: he expressly excluded jazz. (Though, as I know, he loves jazz, he focussed on the “extravagant, savagely filtered, chopped, and layered sound objects” of pop, emphasizing the technological interventions central to the genre but unacceptable to many jazz musicians and fans, for whom the performance is sacred.) Since I’m a jazz obsessive largely because of one recording—Eric Dolphy’s “Out There,” which I first heard on the radio in 1973, at the age of fifteen—I’m also an obsessive about recordings of jazz, and I’ll be damned if I don’t think that some of them are perfect.

The kind of perfection I’ve got in mind is specific to the art: as I noted on Twitter last week (https://twitter.com/tnyfrontrow/status/511670874916003840) , these tracks convey a sense of retrospective inevitability, or, as Jean-Luc Godard said of his 1962 film “Vivre Sa Vie,” of being “the definitive by chance.” In other words, my perfect recordings seem to possess an inner necessity, an idea that translates into an altogether different necessity: they’re necessary to me, personally. In his list, Frere-Jones explains that his perfect recordings “had to have had an acute and lasting effect on the community of musicians.” Mine had a lasting effect on me alone. But criticism, like art, depends on the notion that even the most subjective and individual experience can connect with that of others in different places, times, and circumstances, and there are several general principles at work in the impulses that motivate my choices.

In the early to mid-seventies, it was possible for an impecunious teen-ager to hear lots of live jazz in New York, thanks to the teeming loft scene—a few dollars for a cushion on the floor of Sam Rivers’s great Studio Rivbea (http://untappedcities.com/2014/05/15/the-hidden-history-of-24-bond-street-the-birthplace-of-nycs-diy-scene/) , at 24 Bond Street; a couple of dollars for a folding chair and a day of music at one or another dusty loft around Broadway and Spring; a stool at an ancient bar in a neighborhood only newly christened Tribeca (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B07E3DA1E39E73ABC4C51DFB767838F669EDE) , where, with no cover charge, the bartender let me nurse a single beer through two sets.

At that time, I saw, in concert, many of my venerable heroes (Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Jackie McLean, Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie,) along with new ones (David Murray, Henry Threadgill, Oliver Lake, Anthony Braxton) and those in between (Archie Shepp, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Rivers himself). But I also knew that I was living through an age of discontinuity—that the world of rock that I had grown up loving was sorely squeezing the world of jazz that I newly loved, that jazz was changing under the influence of a new popular idiom, that I was catching the vestiges of a classic era that was becoming something else—not necessarily worse, but radically different. Jazz radio (commercial jazz radio) was adding more fusion to the playlists by the day, and I wasn’t pleased: I had been excited by la différence, and now found that it was increasingly being effaced.

A few years later, in college, I spoke with a musician friend whom I met in a twentieth-century-music class. Walking through the courtyard with him after an hour or so devoted to Schoenberg’s “Five Pieces for Orchestra” or Stravinsky’s “Symphony in Three Movements,” I asked what he wanted to do after college. His answer: to teach jazz in conservatory. “Jazz in conservatory?” I asked. “Is that done?” His answer was, “It will be”—and so it is (and he rapidly rose to the forefront of jazz education). Jazz—or, at least, the kind of jazz that I had gotten enthusiastic about—was becoming another variety of classical music.

In listing my own perfect recordings, I acknowledge a classicism that is intended as a spark to action—not a blind reverence for the past but a critical enthusiasm that should inspire the discovery of recent musicians and their work, that should build upon (or reject) the accidents of tradition and seek newer inspirations. I’d like to read the perfect-recordings lists of writers and musicians who are inside the scene, who know what isn’t yet known and who see the future of jazz. Frere-Jones limited his list to those made in his lifetime. I’m going to stand that notion nearly on its head and include only recordings made in or before 1973 (a few slide in just under the wire).

I put out a few handfuls of titles on Twitter; the only one from that batch that I have to sacrifice to this premise is Charles Mingus’s 1974 recording of “C Jam Blues,” live from Carnegie Hall. I should also mention Jackie McLean and Michael Carvin’s duet “De I Comahlee Ah (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q0aNvi9hUg) ,” also from 1974. (And this is a good place to note the singular importance of the Jazz Discography Project (http://www.jazzdisco.org/) ; it’s an online wonder.)

The simplest definition of the list I have pulled together is that it has nothing to do with historical significance, solely to do with my own memory. They’re not only recordings that I revisit often (though I do) but recordings that come unbidden, that remember themselves, so to speak—earworms that multiply into ideas of music as such. They’re not necessarily “the best” or even the most exemplary of their performers; they’re recordings that have taken me over. (A certain catchiness comes into play in a way that it wouldn’t in a pure evaluation of artistic merit.)

It’s in no way a representative list, not at all a roundup of the greats, some of whom are represented several times and some of whom don’t figure at all. (Some musicians, in their peak years, made only truly perfect recordings, one after the other; the recorded heritage of jazz, it should be reëmphasized, is an inestimably great and vast treasure.)

A few notes:
* With all recordings, the very sound of the recording plays a large role in the psychic image that the music creates—whether it’s the narrow but intimate stage of a cramped studio, a bootleg off-the-air with static that conjures the serendipity of the moment’s preservation, or even a studio with some reverb that artificially suggests a casual public space. Sound recording is itself as much an art as a technique, but sometimes its absolute artlessness is an aesthetic as well.
* I detect a discographical pattern—a peculiar number of first tracks of LPs, maybe a result of the happenstance of first impressions and frequent exposure, but also because producers and musicians would likely be aware of a special moment in the making.
* I detect a musicological pattern—drummers. Elvin Jones, Art Blakey, Sid Catlett, Max Roach, Arthur Taylor, Tony Williams, Sunny Murray, Sonny Greer, Jo Jones, Ed Blackwell, Roy Haynes, Dannie Richmond, Billy Higgins, Dennis Charles—when the music comes to mind, there’s a special place for the drums, which play in my mind like the architecture of jazz, the solid framework that gives the music its decisive form. Which is why …
* Idiom: bebop and after. I’ve noticed a preponderance of performances from the mid-forties onward. I think it’s because of the liberated role of the drum in the bebop and post-bop eras.
* I set myself a rule: no research (except to verify titles and takes), no attempt at comprehensiveness. (But I did tweak the Twitter list a little.)

Frere-Jones put up five times forty; I’m putting up those that first came to mind unbidden, as a start, yielding to the improvisational principle. (The number is sixty-six.) You can listen to many of the tracks on Spotify (https://play.spotify.com/user/richardalanbrody/playlist/3JW6l1UkD1tilb6sCV9dRu) . For most of the remainder, I’ve included YouTube links below.

1. Eric Dolphy, “Out There”
2. Herbie Hancock, “Maiden Voyage”
3. Archie Shepp/Bill Dixon Quartet, “Peace”
4. Fletcher Henderson, “Hocus Pocus,” second take
5. John Kirby Sextet, “Blue Skies”
6. Grant Green, “Tico Tico”
7. Bud Powell, “Cleopatra’s Dream”
8. Mary Lou Williams and Her Kansas City Seven, “Harmony Blues” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_9k1h_ynYI)
9. Walt Dickerson/Sun Ra: “Bacon and Eggs”
10. Clifford Jordan Quartet, “Shoulders”
11. Julius Hemphill, “The Hard Blues” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_ZVpCUULzg)
12. Count Basie, “Volcano”
13. Pinetop Smith, “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie”
14. Count Basie/Jimmy Rushing: “Goin’ to Chicago Blues”
15. Dick Twardzik, “Yellow Tango” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzHbqhPHErI)
16. Johnny Hodges, “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be”
17. Albert Ayler, “Holy Ghost”
18. Max Roach, “Chi-Chi” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDraKjEdilc)
19. Clifford Brown/Max Roach, “Joy Spring”
20. Thelonious Monk, “Well, You Needn’t” (from “Monk’s Music”)
21. Elmo Hope, “Hot Sauce”
22. Elvin Jones/Richard Davis, “Shiny Stockings”
23. Jimmy Witherspoon, “No Rollin’ Blues” (live at the 1959 Monterey Jazz Festival)
24. Cecil Taylor, “Johnny Come Lately”
25. John Kirby Sextet, “St. Louis Blues”
26. Sonny Rollins and the Modern Jazz Quartet, “Bags’ Groove”
27. Sonny Rollins, “Old Devil Moon”
28. Sonny Rollins, “We Kiss in a Shadow”
29. John Coltrane, “India”
30. John Coltrane, “Blue Train”
31. Duke Ellington, “Rockin’ in Rhythm” (OKeh)
32. Jabbo Smith, “Jazz Battle”
33. Tyrone Washington, “Natural Essence” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLitE_ewLus)
34. Charlie Christian, “Swing to Bop”
35. Freddie Hubbard, “Gypsy Blue”
36. Pharoah Sanders, “Thembi”
37. Duke Ellington, “Boy Meets Horn” (V-Disc) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPSgyUbARC4)
38. Duke Ellington, “Chelsea Bridge” (1941)
39. Grant Green, “Talkin’ About J.C.”
40. Lester Young, “I Never Knew,” first take
41. Jackie McLean, “Five Will Get You Ten”
42. Wes Montgomery, “Impressions” (live in Paris, 1965)
43. Herbie Nichols, “Love, Gloom, Cash, Love”
44. Duke Ellington/Charles Mingus/Max Roach, “Very Special”
45. Art Tatum, “Willow Weep for Me”
46. Ahmad Jamal, “What’s New”
47. Ahmad Jamal, “The Party’s Over”
48. Ahmad Jamal, “Bogota” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTBOXvEfPcg)
49. Harold Land/Bobby Hutcherson, “The Creators”
50. Dinah Washington, “September in the Rain”
51. Louis Armstrong, “Potato Head Blues”
52. Gary Bartz, “I’ve Known Rivers”
53. Charles Tolliver/Music Inc.: “Wilpan’s”
54. Charlie Parker, “Thriving on a Riff”
55. Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie, “Hot House” (from “The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever”)
56. Ornette Coleman, “Fifth of Beethoven”
57. Ornette Coleman, “Comme Il Faut” (from “Crisis”) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlEhvLwvT8Q)
58. Rahsaan Roland Kirk, “You’ll Never Get to Heaven”
59. Rahsaan Roland Kirk/Al Hibbler, “Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me”
60. Charles Mingus, “Opus 4”
61. Fats Navarro, “Good Bait (No. 1)”
62. Jimmy Yancey, “Yancey Special” (from “Chicago Piano Vol. 1”)
63. Miles Davis, “Bags’ Groove,” first take
64. Miles Davis, “My Funny Valentine” (title track)
65. Andy Kirk, “Christopher Columbus”
66. Eric Dolphy, “Miss Ann” (from “Last Date”) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge4j3s3TVTA)

*
*
*
* mailto:?subject=From%20newyorker.com:%20Perfect%20Jazz%20Recordings&body=My%20colleague%20Sasha%20Frere-Jones%E2%80%99s%20inspiring%C2%A0list%20of%20perfect%20recordings%C2%A0threw%20down%20an%20implicit%20gauntlet:%20he%20expressly%20excluded%20jazz.%20(Though,%20as%20I%20know,%20he%20loves%20jazz,%20he%20focussed%20on%20the%20%E2%80%9Cextravagant,%20savagely%20filtered,%20chopped,%20and%20layered%20sound%20objects%E2%80%9D%20of%20pop,%20emphasizing%20the%20%E2%80%8Btechnological%20interventions%20central%20to%20the%20genre%C2%A0but%20unacceptable…%0A%0AContinue%20reading%20at%20http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/perfect-jazz-recordings
*

Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=b87dc9e377) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=b87dc9e377&e=[UNIQID])

Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA

September 24, 2014 / No Comments / More

Richard Brody Lists His Perfect Jazz Recordings

Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA

September 24, 2014 / No Comments / More

Kenny Wheeler, Influential Sound in Jazz, Dies at 84 – NYTimes.com

** Kenny Wheeler, Influential Sound in Jazz, Dies at 84
————————————————————

Photo
Kenny Wheeler at the Jazz Standard in New York in 2011. Credit Jennifer Taylor for The New York Times

Kenny Wheeler (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV8P6Th8zAU) , a jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer who was as comfortable improvising with uncompromising avant-gardists like the saxophonist Anthony Braxton as he was writing challenging arrangements for a big band, died on Thursday in London. He was 84.

His death was announced by the Royal Academy of Music (http://www.ram.ac.uk/news?nid=468) in London, where Mr. Wheeler had founded Junior Jazz, a course of study for teenagers. He had been in failing health for several months.

Mr. Wheeler was, Nate Chinen noted in a 2011 concert review (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/arts/music/kenny-wheeler-at-festival-of-new-trumpet-music-review.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C{%221%22%3A%22RI%3A10%22}) in The New York Times, a “quietly influential” artist whose music “doesn’t really clamor for attention.” He himself did not do much clamoring: Famously self-effacing — he once referred to his compositions as “soppy romantic melodies with a bit of chaos” — he spent much of the early part of his career as an anonymous session player in the recording studios of London and did not reach a wide international audience until he was in his mid-40s.

The album that belatedly thrust him into the spotlight was “Gnu High,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myKkvyOxYXA) recorded in 1975 for the ECM label with an all-star supporting cast of Keith Jarrett on piano, Dave Holland on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums.

By the time he recorded “Gnu High,” Mr. Wheeler had been working for several years with Mr. Braxton and was best known in jazz circles as an exponent of free improvisation. “Gnu High” was the first showcase for his work as a composer since 1968, when the John Dankworth big band recorded his “Windmill Tiller,” a collection of pieces inspired by “Don Quixote.” (The character of Don Quixote appealed to him, Mr. Wheeler said, because “he seemed to be one of the great losers to me.”)

Critics hailed the ingenuity of Mr. Wheeler’s compositions, which were unfailingly melodic but often veered in unexpected directions, and the understated grace of his playing, which was characterized by the jazz scholar Barry Kernfeld as “clear, relaxed and lyrical, and marked by a wide-ranging harmonic and rhythmic imagination.” He recorded prolifically for ECM, both as a leader and as a member of the collective trioAzimuth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scJ_cSvgFBM) with the pianist John Taylor and the vocalist Norma Winstone.

Most of his records featured small groups, but he also had the occasional opportunity to write for a broader instrumental palette (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBRumrdDil8) on albums like “Music for Large and Small Ensembles” (1990), displaying as much of a debt to composers like Paul Hindemith as to the conventions of big-band jazz.

Mr. Wheeler was a member of Mr. Holland’s quintet from 1982 to 1987 and also performed or recorded with the Globe Unity Orchestra, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and other groups. Among his most acclaimed albums was “Angel Song” (1996) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLFy3sbfTm4) , recorded with the saxophonist Lee Konitz, the guitarist Bill Frisell and Mr. Holland. His most recent album, “Six for Six,” was released in 2013.

Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler was born in Toronto on Jan. 14, 1930. His father, who played trombone in local bands, encouraged his interest in music, and he began playing trumpet at age 12. He studied at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto and, in the early 1950s, moved to London, where lived for the rest of his life.

He joined the John Dankworth orchestra in 1959 and performed with the ensemble at that year’s Newport Jazz Festival. He was a mainstay of the British jazz scene as a sideman throughout the 1960s, but was relatively unknown beyond England and depended on studio work for a steady income until the 1970s.

Mr. Wheeler’s survivors include his wife, Doreen, and a son, Mark.

Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=d9342c457d) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=d9342c457d&e=[UNIQID])

Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA

September 22, 2014 / No Comments / More

Kenny Wheeler, Influential Sound in Jazz, Dies at 84 – NYTimes.com

** Kenny Wheeler, Influential Sound in Jazz, Dies at 84
————————————————————

Photo
Kenny Wheeler at the Jazz Standard in New York in 2011. Credit Jennifer Taylor for The New York Times

Mr. Wheeler’s survivors include his wife, Doreen, and a son, Mark.

Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA

September 22, 2014 / No Comments / More

WBGO’s Amy Niles works to create harmony of jazz, technology, community support | NJ.com

http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2014/09/amy_niles_wbgo.html

** WBGO’s Amy Niles works to create harmony of jazz, technology, community support
————————————————————
td0828jazz 4 Kurdzuk

Amy Niles vividly remembers the first time she heard jazz.
She was nine years old, growing up in New York’s West Village and already six years into music lessons. She thought she would become an opera singer.
“Then one day, I went to hear Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66,” says Niles, a confident, friendly woman with thick, dark hair and wire-rimmed glasses.
“And I heard a song that I knew, which was ‘Fool on the Hill.’ And as a classical musician, you study with interpretation but the idea…is that it is set just this way. But I heard a song that I knew interpreted with a whole different flavor and a whole different style.
“I heard music differently for the first time.”
The experience stuck with Niles even as she pursued other careers in music and performance. She played Broadway in “Evita” for four years as Perón’s mistress, she sang “Another Suitcase, in Another Hall” – off-Broadway in “The Fantasticks,” and appeared on the soap opera “Love of Life.” Later, she moved to the business side and became involved with marketing for Sirius Radio and hosted its Broadway Channel.
This summer, Niles, 54, was named the new president of jazz station WBGO, where she succeeds Cephas Bowles. She has been a part of the operation since 2006, first as chief operating officer and senior vice president overseeing areas such as development, membership, marketing and programming, and then as the acting president.
“She’s really got an insight into how to connect with people,” says host Michael Bourne, a friend of Niles since before she arrived at the station.
“She knows how to talk to people in boardrooms and people who are down in the basement doing laundry listening to the radio.”
As she begins to tackle the challenges of promoting jazz and public radio, and developing listener support in a time where internet listening reigns, Niles thinks back to that first “a-ha moment” where she understood how a song could be transformed – and how to make sure that can happen for someone who happens to turn on the dial at any moment.
“It’s not just about playing music,” she says. “It’s about making light bulbs go off.”

As Niles walks through the corridors at WBGO’s Newark studio, she passes walls covered top-to-bottom in gilded plaques and awards and a library that contains scores of CDs and records – more than a shelf for Ella Fitzgerald alone.
She peeks into a room where the hands of countless famed pianists have tickled the ivories and points out a Hammond B-3 organ hidden behind a black curtain. She throws her arms around saxophonist Joe Lovano, who is visiting.
Niles discovered the station about 15 years ago after meeting Bourne through her Sirius show. They used to attend the theater together, and when people turned around after recognizing his voice, she was the one to encourage them to become WBGO members, he says. She had no professional connection to the station at the time.
One day, they stopped by a volunteer drive on the way to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and Niles began answering phones. She was “absolutely hooked.” Then, Bourne told her about an open position.
“I couldn’t wait,” she says. “I dropped everything.”
“When she applied, someone said, ‘she’s never worked in public radio,'” Bourne recalls.
“Good,” he replied. “We need someone who knows how to bring in millions in the private sector. We have enough people with public radio experience.”
Art and commerce, sometimes seen as opposing forces, have always worked in tandem for Niles. As a student at New York University, she studied music and business. After Broadway, when she wanted to start a family – she is now married with two daughters – she decided that the performing lifestyle was no longer ideal for her.
“Most people have a midlife crisis and they go and they get a Porsche,” she says. “I went for my M.B.A.”
As a result, she says, “I understand the musicians’ mentality but I understand what it takes to write the check.”
Niles is in charge of a $5.5 million operating budget and manages a staff of about 50 in addition to hundreds of volunteers. As of July, the station had an average weekly cumulative listenership of 330,000 and 300,000 website views. In order to be close to work, she has moved to the station’s Military Park neighborhood. She has also joined Mayor Ras Baraka’s transition team for Arts and Culture.
Last year, under her leadership, WBGO had its highest number of listeners in its history, with 17,000 members. But Niles is aware that such figures cannot be taken for granted, especially in light of changing technologies.

“The next generation may not be radio listeners,” she says.
As a result, an increasing amount of attention is being paid to online and mobile listeners. In addition, Niles has encouraged investments in marketing to raise awareness and in a new transmitter to broadcast from New York’s Times Square.
“It’s only about 4 percent of people who listen to us who actually support us,” she says. “Can you imagine if only 4 percent of people who turned on their electricity paid their electric bill?”
Niles fondly recalls examples of that small number of listeners who do donate – including a man who lost his job and collected cans just to raise $10 a month to support the music he loved.
It’s a rare mentality.
“We had a funder – this was an incredible woman I had the opportunity to meet and she said, ‘I don’t understand. I can raise 2 million dollars by [telling people] I’ll put their name on a wall. But how come I can go to somebody and say, ‘will you buy 10 tickets to send a kid to hear a concert’ and they look at me like I’m nuts?'”
The woman died recently, and a foundation in her name is now supporting the station’s Kids Jazz Concerts Series, interactive weekend afternoon events for young listeners.
“We’d love to be very idealistic about putting jazz on the radio and keeping the lights on,” Niles says. “But the fact is we have to communicate to our audience that without support, without this partnership that we have, we don’t exist.”

Niles’ management style and her priorities for the station seem to relate back to her Broadway days.
“I remember Hal Prince saying to us one day in rehearsal that every one of us was a piece of furniture and that really stuck with me,” she says of her days working in the ensemble.
Her approach is the opposite, driven to forge a relationship with each person, when it comes to both employees and listeners.
In addition to traditional fund drives, Niles wants to get to know the audience through travel and events, an area she has worked to expand. The station has sponsored trips to Newport and Montreal jazz festivals including backstage access, and a weekend of jazz immersion at Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, N.Y.
When it comes to the idea that some see jazz as a niche or something difficult to understand, Niles tries to be as inviting as possible.
“How does it make you feel?” she asks. “Does it make you happy? Does it make you feel calm?
“Sometimes the way to experience jazz is just to listen to it, take from it what you want. If you want to analyze it, great. If you want to say ‘that’s pretty,’ great….what I always say to people is enjoy it, don’t worry about it.”
When Niles listens, she gravitates to the American Songbook – a natural entrée for Broadway fans, with many standards common to both – as well as Latin and Brazilian jazz.
“There’s jazz I like and some that doesn’t do it for me” she says. “Jazz is many, many things. It’s Brazilian, it’s Latin, it’s smooth, it’s contemporary, it’s classic soul.”
She practically overflows with praise for hosts such as Rhonda Hamilton of “Mid-day Jazz” and Felix Hernandez of “Rhythm Revue” and their ability to introduce the varied shades of the music. The station has also added a new show in the past year – “The Checkout,” in which new artists and releases are showcased – and has a “radar” feature in which listeners can hear recordings before they are available to the general public.
A multiplatform program with an education component in partnership with NPR is also in the works.
“They don’t just spin records,” she says of the station’s hosts. “They really connect the listener to what the music is about…which I think makes us a solid proposition for the future. You don’t get that on Spotify or Music Choice or all those things.
“You have the opportunity to learn from some of the greats. That really makes us unique and I think that’s part of what will keep us going.”
Ever the vocalist, Niles refers to two Sondheim lyrics as touchstones. First, “Art isn’t easy.” Then, “Everybody says don’t…I say try.”
“I think jazz has a tremendous past but it also has a tremendous future,” she says. “The wonderful thing about jazz is it’s always evolving.”
“This is only the first 35 years [of the station,]” she adds. “I want at least another 35 years. I may not be here for them, but WBGO will be.”

Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=fe2bb5d458) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=fe2bb5d458&e=[UNIQID])

Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA

September 22, 2014 / No Comments / More

WBGO’s Amy Niles works to create harmony of jazz, technology, community support | NJ.com

** WBGO’s Amy Niles works to create harmony of jazz, technology, community support
————————————————————
td0828jazz 4 Kurdzuk

Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA

September 22, 2014 / No Comments / More

Forthcoming LSU Press Book Chronicles the Changing Face of Jazz in the Crescent City

http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
http://www.lsu.edu/ur/ocur/lsunews/MediaCenter/News/2014/09/item72457.html

Arts & Entertainment, General Information, Media Advisory

** Forthcoming LSU Press Book Chronicles the Changing Face of Jazz in the Crescent City
————————————————————
09/19/2014 09:23 AM

BATON ROUGE – In 1966, journalist Charles Suhor wrote that New Orleans jazz was “ready for its new Golden Age.” Thomas W. Jacobsen’s “The New Orleans Jazz Scene, 1970–2000 (http://lsupress.org/books/detail/new-orleans-jazz-scene-1970-2000/) ,” to be published by LSU Press in October, chronicles the resurgence of jazz music in the Crescent City in the years following Suhor’s prophetic claim. Jacobsen, a New Orleans resident and longtime jazz aficionado, offers a wide-ranging history of the New Orleans jazz renaissance in the last three decades of the 20th century, weaving local musical developments into the larger context of the national jazz scene.

Jacobsen vividly evokes the changing face of the New Orleans jazz world at the close of the 20th century. Drawing from an array of personal experiences and his own exhaustive research, he discusses leading musicians and bands, both traditionalists and modernists, as well as major performance venues and festivals. The city’s musical infrastructure does not go overlooked, as Jacobsen delves into New Orleans’s music business, its jazz media, and the evolution of jazz education at public schools and universities. With a trove of more than 70 photographs of key players and performances, “The New Orleans Jazz Scene, 1970–2000” offers a vibrant and fascinating portrait of the musical genre that defines New Orleans.

Jacobsen is the author of “Traditional New Orleans Jazz: Conversations with the Men Who Make the Music.” He has published extensively on New Orleans jazz in a number of jazz periodicals, including “The Mississippi Rag and The Clarinet.”

For more information on the book, contact Jenny Keegan at jenniferkeegan@lsu.edu (mailto:jenniferkeegan@lsu.edu) or 225-578-6453 or visit http://lsupress.org (http://lsupress.org/) .

Ernie Ballard (http://www.lsu.edu/ur/ocur/lsunews/MediaCenter/News/Contacts/item4287.html)
LSU Media Relations
225-578-5685
eballa1@lsu.edu (mailto:eballa1@lsu.edu)

Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=17280810d1) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=17280810d1&e=[UNIQID])

Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA

September 21, 2014 / No Comments / More

Forthcoming LSU Press Book Chronicles the Changing Face of Jazz in the Crescent City

Arts & Entertainment, General Information, Media Advisory

** Forthcoming LSU Press Book Chronicles the Changing Face of Jazz in the Crescent City
————————————————————
09/19/2014 09:23 AM

For more information on the book, contact Jenny Keegan at jenniferkeegan@lsu.edu (mailto:jenniferkeegan@lsu.edu) or 225-578-6453 or visit http://lsupress.org (http://lsupress.org/) .

Ernie Ballard (http://www.lsu.edu/ur/ocur/lsunews/MediaCenter/News/Contacts/item4287.html)
LSU Media Relations
225-578-5685
eballa1@lsu.edu (mailto:eballa1@lsu.edu)

Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA

September 21, 2014 / No Comments / More

ROOSTERSPIN Now Open featuring Korean Fried Chicken Vintage Jazz LPs and Live Music Westfield NJ

http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
September 19, 2014

To: Listings/Critics/Features
From: Jazz Promo Services
www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/ )

http://roosterspin.com
ROOSTERSPIN (http://roosterspin.com)
Now Open
featuring
Korean Fried Chicken, Vintage Jazz LPs
and Live Music in Westfield NJ

ROOSTERSPIN

251 North Ave

Westfield NJ 07090
908.233.7333
http://roosterspin.com

Have you tried Korean fried chicken?

Roosterspin, now open in Westfield, offers New Jersey’s most succulent, crispiest and tastiest, as well as other Korean-inspired specialties and freshly pressed sugarcane juice.

It’s all set to a jazz soundtrack powered by 7,000 vintage LPs.

We’re located at
251 North Avenue W. (x-apple-data-detectors://0) , facing the New Jersey Transit train station. We can’t wait to see you!

Known for its sublime Korean Fried Chicken, delicious soju cocktails and library of jazz vinyl records, impeccably adorned Michelin Guide recommended destination East Village analog music pub & eatery Mono+Mono is bringing a sister restaurant Roosterspin to Downtown Westfield NJ. Roosterspin will feature the famous Korean Fried Chicken and tasty lineup of Asian inflected sushi rolls, bulgogi/pork buns and kimchi/seafood pancakes while DJs spins selections from a deep collection of thousands classic jazz vinyl records…

Live Music Schedule
730 – 10:30 PM
Sat., Sept. 27th
Florencia Gonzalez – Tenor Sax, Voice
Diego Porchile – Guitar, Voice

Fri., Oct. 24th
Charlie Apicella & Iron City Jazz
Charlie Apicella, guitar
Eric Finland, organ
Alan Korzin, drums

CharlieApicella.com (http://charlieapicella.com/)
http://roosterspin.com
This E Mail Is Being Sent by:
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: jim@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU) HERE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU&feature=player_embedded)

Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=2785fed884) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=2785fed884&e=[UNIQID])

Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA

September 19, 2014 / No Comments / More