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Bebo Valdés, Giant Of Cuban Music, Is Dead
One of the giants of Cuban music, pianist and composer/arranger Bebo Valdés, died Friday in Sweden due to complications from pneumonia, according to his wife and manager. He was 94.Ramón Emilio "Bebo"...
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How Norway Funds A Thriving Jazz Scene
Did you hear about the Italian gallery owner who burned his gallery's paintings last year — with the cooperation of the painters? It was a sort of desperate smoke signal to his government; a means of...
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The Creators Of Jazz Appreciation Month Start Celebrating
The 12th official Jazz Appreciation Month began when April did. But today, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, which founded the JAM campaign, kick started its own celebration with a series of...
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Meet The Man Who Assembles The World's Biggest Jazz Concert
The pianist and composer John Beasley has one of the most formidable tasks of anyone associated with today's International Jazz Day, the celebration produced by UNESCO and the Thelonious Monk Institute...
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A Look Back At Jazz Fest, Where Ages Were Made
Some music festivals are known for certain specific things; others are known for a broad assortment. The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is known for everything. The city's arms are just that...
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Jazz Pianist And Pedagogue Mulgrew Miller Dies
Mulgrew Miller, whose supple touch and thorough command made him a leading jazz pianist, died early Wednesday. His death was related to a stroke he suffered a week earlier, according to saxophonist...
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Ben Tucker: Remembering A Bassist And Citywide Icon
We jazz fans tend to filter through a lot of names. For every Sonny Rollins or Wes Montgomery on the cover of an album, there might be two, three, four, five, eight, 14 more musicians backing him or...
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Reflections On A Dozen Years With Abbey Lincoln
Marc Cary came to New York City to find and save his father. Instead, he found artists like Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln— and saved himself."I hadn't seen my dad in 10 years," Cary says over a recent...
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Facing Illness, An Improviser Learns The Art Of Patience
Dayna Stephens is a patient musician. The 34-year-old tenor saxophonist and composer fashions supple, searching improvisations that brim with melodic cogency. His compositions often exude a widescreen...
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Remembering Laurie Frink, The 'Trumpet Mother' Of The Jazz Scene
Sometimes, the most important musicians are the ones farthest away from the spotlight.Laurie Frink was a great trumpet player. Great enough to tour with jazz big bands led by Benny Goodman, Gerry...
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What To Expect From The 2013 Newport Jazz Festival Webcast
If you didn't manage to fly in, drive up or sneak your way aboard a yacht bound for coastal Rhode Island — well, we can't help you get to the 2013 Newport Jazz Festival. But if you're not near...
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Newport Jazz Festival 2013: Day One In Photos
It's almost like a joke now: Which Newport festival weekend is going to get more rain? Folk or Jazz? Because the Narragansett Bay doesn't play around. Aside from the morning monsoon, the first day of...
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The 2013 Newport Jazz Festival In GIFs
Clap your hands now! From Michel Camilo's stomping, tassled Oxfords to Esperanza Spalding's vibrating upright-bass strings and a whole lotta dancing, here's the 2013 Newport Jazz Festival forever...
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The Odd Jobs Of Dave King
Among musicians, drummers are the explorers, the tinkerers, the polymaths. They don't just play one instrument, but dozens at the very least.With so many jobs to hold down at the same time, drummer...
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How A Korean Jazz Festival Found A Huge Young Audience
It was like discovering a parallel reality.After completing a sponsored trip to South Korea for music professionals in October, I stayed in the country, striking out on my own. I grabbed a train to the...
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What We Loved At Winter Jazzfest 2016
Like any music, jazz has its revolutions; its sudden incidents in infrastructure; its disruptive presences of unprecedented sound. Mostly it's slower than that, though, with years and generations of...
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Henry Threadgill Wins Music Pulitzer For 'In For A Penny, In For A Pound'
Henry Threadgill, a saxophonist and flutist known as one of the most original composers influenced by jazz, has been awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his recording In for a Penny, In for a...
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O Brothers: Drummers Brian and Brady Blade
If the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, sometimes two apples will land on similar turf. Brian Blade has been Wayne Shorter's drummer for several years and leads his own project called The...
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Winter Jazzfest 2014: Tips Of The Iceberg
The logo for the 2014 Winter Jazzfest, marking the festival's 10th anniversary, is a giant iceberg floating into New York harbor. Like the iceberg, this year's edition was both big — 90-plus groups...
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Dave Brubeck Was The Macklemore Of 1954
Dave Brubeck was embarrassed. It was 1954, and he was pictured on the cover of Time magazine — only the second jazz musician ever to receive that particular mainstream media recognition. The chagrin...
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'When The Bus For The Record Label Comes By': Behind Hot Tone Music
This past week, the bassist and vocalist Mimi Jones released three albums at once. They weren't all her music, but they were her work: As the founder and producer of the record label Hot Tone Music,...
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After 18 Years Of Marriage And Two Children, A Couple Releases Their Debut...
The basic story behind drummer Rudy Royston's first album sounds like that of many sidemen in jazz. He moved to the New York area. His talent got him into bands led by higher-profile artists like Bill...
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Possessed By Joy: A North American Drummer In Cuba
In Afro-Cuban religious ceremonies, it's common for participants to become possessed by spirits. All sorts of people are possessed: older ladies and teenage boys, lifelong adherents and new initiates....
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A Guitarist Starts Anew, Except For This Old Song
Matt Stevens' recorded debut as a leader was supposed to have come out back in 2011."I had a record that was completely done," the guitarist says. "But circumstances change, and by the time it came to...
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Wayne Henderson, Jazz Crusaders Co-Founder, Dies
Wayne Henderson, trombonist and co-founding member of the popular jazz-funk band The Jazz Crusaders (later known as The Crusaders), died Friday, April 4, in Culver City, Calif. The cause of death was...
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Jazz Journalists Association Recognizes Its Musicians Of The Year
Longtime friends and collaborators Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter headline the winners of the 2014 JJA Jazz Awards for musical achievement, which were announced today.The awards, annually nominated...
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Why Metallica's Bassist Is Producing A Jazz Documentary
It seems an unlikely match.In one corner, you have Metallica's Robert Trujillo. The most popular heavy metal bassist alive, he prowls beast-like across arena stages, rumbling guts with the low B on the...
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13 Jazz Artists Awarded Over $1.7 Million
Yesterday, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation announced the recipients of its 2014 Performing Artist Awards, including 13 jazz and improvising musicians, who will receive at least $1.7 million in...
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How Japan Came To Love Jazz
If you've witnessed a headlining performance from pianists Toshiko Akiyoshi or Hiromi, visited a "jazu kissa" cafe where records are spun and coffee poured, or read nearly any work by author Haruki...
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The First African-American Piano Manufacturer
At the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival in February, one couldn't help but notice the striking new grand piano on the main stage, emblazoned with the name SHADD. When the many accomplished pianists that...
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Ethereal Jazz Singer Jimmy Scott Dies
Singer Jimmy Scott died of natural causes Thursday morning at his home in Las Vegas at age 88, according to his booking agent, Jean-Pierre Leduc. Scott suffered from Kallmann's syndrome, a lifelong...
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The Future Of Intense Art: A Free-Jazz Event Looks Forward
"We had to do things ourselves until something else kicked in," bassist William Parker said at a panel earlier this month. He was explaining how he came to co-found the Vision Festival. "And nothing's...
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Newport Jazz 2014 In Photos
The Newport Jazz Festival turned 60 this year, and expanded to three days to celebrate. Throughout last weekend, more than 45 bands performed at Fort Adams State Park in coastal Rhode Island, playing...
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What Is Jazz Night In America?
Along with NPR Music's partners at WBGO and Jazz At Lincoln Center, we're proud to announce a new public media initiative: Jazz Night In America. You can check it out on your local public radio...
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A Jazz Institution Moves Back Home To Los Angeles
Last weekend, at a sold-out, star-studded gala concert in Hollywood, Pharrell Williams and Herbie Hancock remixed Williams' hit "Happy," Kevin Spacey served up a compelling Frank Sinatra imitation...
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After Sandy Hook, A Saxophonist Remembers A 'Beautiful Life'
Jimmy Greene's Beautiful Life is dedicated to the memory of his 6-year-old daughter, Ana Márquez-Greene, one of the 20 children killed in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn....
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An Upset Either Way: Steve Lehman And Wadada Leo Smith Triumph
Could anyone have predicted that Steve Lehman and Wadada Leo Smith would place first and second in this year's NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll, among a field including previous winners Sonny Rollins, Vijay...
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Introducing The Reginald Cyntje Group: Who Are These Guys?
The artists featured on this week's Jazz Night In AmericaWednesday Night Webcast are, by a fair margin, the least-known performers we've had on the program. Their names don't travel far outside the...
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Clark Terry, Ebullient Jazz Trumpeter, Has Died
Jazz trumpeter Clark Terry has died. The musician's ebullient personality reached a nationwide audience as a member of NBC's Tonight Show band, and the sound of his expressive trumpet inspired younger...
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Three Jazz Pianists, A Generation After Apartheid
In South Africa, the major art of resistance during apartheid was jazz: a melting pot where folk songs and hymns defiantly mixed with influences from South Asia, America and West Africa. South African...
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Ornette Coleman, Jazz Iconoclast, Dies At 85
Ornette Coleman, the American saxophonist and composer who liberated jazz from conventional harmony, tonality, structure and expectation, died early on Thursday of cardiac arrest in Manhattan. He was...
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Help Us Make An Exquisite Corpse In New York City
For this year's edition of Make Music New York, we come not to praise the dead, but to sing the blues and create a new "exquisite corpse."This Sunday, June 21 at 4 p.m. ET, join NPR Music and regulars...
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