#big-band-jazz

#big-band-jazz

Celebrated by the BBC as one of the city's top 8 literary destinations, The Urbane Arts Club is more than just a venue-it's a vibrant hub for culture and creativity. Through an eclectic mix of literary launches, musical showcases, and theatrical performances, it fosters an environment rich in conversation and artistic expression.

For the first time ever, Brooklyn's premier professional orchestra, the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra, is dedicating a full program to jazz, featuring the work of the late Charlie Parker, "Charlie Parker with Strings," on Feb. 13 at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn Heights. It is also the first time in more than a decade that "Charlie Parker with Strings" will be heard live in New York.

Even if you're just a casual jazz fan, you probably recognize "Take the A Train," Duke Ellington's swinging theme song. Or you've heard the melancholy ballad "Lush Life" sung by Nat King Cole, by Linda Ronstadt during her Great American Songbook era, or by Lady Gaga on the album she recorded with Tony Bennett. Both of those - and many other tunes - were written by a gay man, musician, composer, and arranger Billy Strayhorn.

"Many found the music offensive, the dancing objectionable, and the popularity of both with young people verging on a mental health crisis." So writes music historian Susan C. Cook about ragtime, the heavily syncopated ancestor of jazz that arose in the late 1800s. Like all things, ragtime's subversiveness faded over time, and, a century later, the works of Scott Joplin and other practitioners had been relegated to carnivals and fairs, their jaunty piano melodies now evoking quaint notions of old-timey fun.

A trumpeter and composer of rare intuition and inspiration, Blanchard will perform Feb. 20 in Miami as part of the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts' acclaimed Jazz Roots series, returning to his iconic Malcolm X Jazz Suite with his band, The E-Collective, and two-time Grammy-winning Turtle Island Quartet. Created after he wrote the score for the 1992 Spike Lee biopic "Malcolm X," Blanchard has over the years updated and expanded the suite, performed here as part of the ongoing centennial celebration of the slain civil rights icon. Visit ArshtCenter.org.

The last swing music revival of the late 1990s heralded in by groups like the Brian Setzer Orchestra may have seemed like the end of the line for the big band-fueled dance craziness - just don't tell that to Rebecca Roudman.

At the turn of the 1960s, when free jazz was making its initial seismic impact, multi-instrumentalist Phil Cohran-he later added the name Kelan-was living in Chicago and playing trumpet for Sun Ra's Arkestra. He contributed to crucial recordings by the band during his tenure, including We Travel the Space Ways, but Cohran was a restless autodidact who never stuck with any one project for long.

Flipping through the jazz section on a visit to his local record store a few years ago, artist Kye Potter found a battered tape by American pianist and composer Jessica Williams. It looked every bit the quintessential DIY release. The labels had come off the tape, he says. It was home-dubbed, with photocopied notes, a little bit of highlighter to accentuate the artwork, and released on her own label, Ear Art.

Michel Portal, a French pioneer of European modern jazz and a prolific writer of film music, has died aged 90, his agent said on Sunday. A multi-instrumentalist at home with the clarinet, saxophone, Argentine bandoneon and Hungarian taragot, Portal died on Thursday, said Marion Piras, one of his representatives. His 1965 album, Free Jazz, was considered a landmark in Europe's efforts to end American domination of the genre.