Wednesday, September 30, 2009

DK: three more concerts in France

After the fabulous sold-out three-night engagement at L'Olympia, in Paris, from Sept 15 to 17, Diana Krall returns to France for three additional concerts in Lille, Nantes and Lyon.

9/30/2009 Zenith Lille, FR Buy Tickets
10/1/2009 Zenith Nantes, FR Buy Tickets
10/2/2009 Salle Lyon, FR Buy Tickets

Punk Bossa Nova - Nouvelle Vague @ The Roundhouse, Oct 16

Nouvelle Vague, the French band that conquered the world with bossa nova covers of punk and new wave classics, return to London to play the Roundhouse in support of their 3rd album: "3". Led by producer/arrangers Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux and sung by a revolving cast of chanteuses, the group's first two albums, 'Nouvelle Vague' (2004) and 'Bande A Part' (2006) have sold well over half-a-million copies.

On their early records, Nouvelle Vague took cherished tracks from the late 1970s and early 1980s by acts such as Joy Division, The Clash, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Bauhaus, Blondie, Buzzcocks, New Order, Yazoo and the Dead Kennedys and reworked them in a gentle bossa nova style. Sung by French female vocalists, some of whom had never heard the originals before, these cult hits had new life breathed into them, and their meanings became softly subverted. In French, Nouvelle Vague means 'new wave', and 'bossa nova' in Portuguese. Even the records' sleeves wittily referenced the artwork for Jean Luc Godard's early-'60s new-wave films.

"The original concept of Nouvelle Vague was to use young girl singers who don't know the meaning of punk and post-punk music," says Marc Collin, in whose Paris studio the records are made. "That way, they are bringing something new and totally fresh to the songs, and it really worked. So we kept doing it in this direction." Nouvelle's more fragrant approach has been universally approved by everyone from Mick Jones of The Clash, Morrissey, The Undertones, Dead Kennedys and Killing Joke.

Nouvelle Vague will be taking the songs you adore and making you fall in love with them all over again at the Roundhouse this autumn.

Friday, October 16!
Buy tickets online here now or call 08700 603 777

The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Rd
London, NW1

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Anna Mjoll: jazz gig @ The Baked Potato

"Anna Mjoll is the new female Michael Buble". That's the talk of the town in the music bizz. She toured with Julio Iglesias for years, sang with Michael MacDonald and composed for Christopher Guest's latest movie. Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder and Chick Corea love her. She is by far the best jazz singer ever to come out of Iceland (aka Bjorkland). With that airy sultry voice that Julio fell so hard in love with, she will be singing standards for us and chances are we will fall just as hard as Julio, for the magnificent sound someone called "the voice of God". Come out to one of California's most famous jazz venues, The Baked Potato in Studio City, on Nov 5th, and you'll see for yourself what we're talking about :) Hope to see you there!

Anna Mjoll, November 5, two sets @ 9pm & 11pm
The Baked Potato
3787 Cahuenga Blvd West.
Studio City, CA 91604
Ph: 818-9801615

Tropea & Spinozza to perform with the Les Paul Trio

(John Tropea)

NY Session Aces - John Tropea and David Spinozza - Perform with the Les Paul Trio at Iridium Oct. 12

If you’ve ever been anywhere near a radio or a TV in the past 40 years or so, you’ve heard John Tropea and David Spinozza. As two of New York’s most in-demand session guitarists in the early 1970s, Tropea and Spinozza were versatile young guitar aces who served as first-call sidemen for Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Claus Ogerman, Michael Brecker, Paul Simon, Lalo Schifrin, Ray Barretto, Hubert Laws, Deodato, Luiz Bonfá, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Roberta Flack and countless others. Together they will descend on New York's famed Iridium Jazz Club on Monday, October 12 to sit in the chair formerly occupied by the late guitarist and innovator Les Paul.

Tropea has written for and played with major recording artists from around the world. In his long career, his contributions to other artist’s successes have been numerous, including his work with Deodato (the epic solo on "2001/Zarathustra" theme from the best-selling "Prelude" LP for CTI, plus many other albums), projects with Laura Nyro, Harry Chapin (Cat’s in the Cradle), Paul Simon (Fifty Ways), Alice Cooper (Goes to Hell), Eric Clapton (Journey Man), Dr. John, and many others. He is also a composer, arranger, and producer whose vital work is ably demonstrated by his personal projects. He is currently working on his latest project which will be his 11th record as a leader.

Throughout his ’70s-era heyday, Spinozza played on and often arranged countless sessions, dozens of hit records and innumerable commercials and film scores. A short list would include “Band of Gold” (Freda Payne, 1970), “Another Day” and Ram (Paul McCartney, 1971), “American Pie” (Don McLean, 1971), “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” (Paul Simon, 1972), Mind Games (John Lennon, 1973), “Right Place Wrong Time” (Dr. John, 1973), "Walking Man" (James Taylor, 1974), "Hotcakes" (Carly Simon, 1974) and "You’ve Got a Friend" (Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway 1972).

Spinozza just completed a tour with the recently reunited L'Image featuring Mike Mainieri, Warren Bernhardt, Tony Levin and Steve Gadd. A cd of this effort was recently released.
Click here to get your copy.
For tickets, please call the box office at (212) 582-2121 or visit Iridium Jazz Club.
(David Spinozza)

BPM Fridays w/ Louie Corrales @ Island, Oct 2

Friday, Oct 2 at 10pm
BPM Fridays @ "Island"
35-15 36th Street b/w 35th & 36th Street
Long Island City, NY
Ph: (917) 6930495

Presented by ILoveHouseMusicNYC.com

This Week Up Close & Personal w. SUPERCHUMBO
Special Host Anthony Lamont!!!

BPM Friday's will be a another destination for great house music alongside PS 1 & Water Taxi in the LIC area... The sound system rivals that of most NYC clubs w/ deep mind-numbing bass and amazing highs... This week we bring you SUPERCHUMBO along w/ Rik Santiago!!!

This new weekly party comes together to bring you fresh up & coming talent along with the established names in house music.

Island Restaurant & Lounge is a veritable oasis of cool comfort. Silky white curtains surround the serene interior of this bi-level restaurant composed of white stone walls, white tables and chairs fitted with cucumber green cushions.
Island is a full service restaurant with an amazing menu. Dinner seating is available till 10pm and is highly recommended on this particular evening.
So Come Down Drink, Dance & Enjoy The Beats.... Get Involved!
(thanx to my friend Sandy Ferrante for the invitation)

Miss Jewell gigs in Luxembourg & Belgium, Oct 2 & 3


Miss Jewell @ 10 YEARS DJ PACKO GUALANDRIS
October 2, at 11pm
THE POINT
48 rue de Hollerich,
Luxembourg-City, Luxembourg

Now, at the great THE POINT Club, Packo Gualandris would like to celebrate his 10 YEARS DJ jubilee with you where you will have the opportunity to listen and dance to a very exclusive special 6 HOURS DJ-SET mixed by him, sharing with you a selection of his favourite vinyls that he played from 1999 ... until NOW!

Special guest : DJ MISS JEWELL (Baroque records, Belgium)
Maxwell George (the point)
Bionicle (clubrotation, radio lrb)
ND Catani (noobish, gfab records)

Packo Gualandris is one of the most innovative DJs in Luxembourg's Electronic Dance Music scene. Since 1999 he's spinning vinyls and in the year 2002 Packo started playing all over the country in several places.

"This party is first of all to thank all my friends and the partypeople who always supported me ... it will be a unique and unforgettable night ... for sure! :-)" says Jewell, whom I first met DJing at "Bypass" club in Geneve.
*********
October 3, at 11pm
Miss Jewell @ MIAMI NICE PARTY
NICE CLUB
Rue de la grande veine,160
Belgium

Dj MISS JEWELL
Dj FRANCESCO MARRA
DJ ANDREW & DJ BAD BOY

Italian star Pino Daniele for the first time in the USA, Oct 1st, live in NY

Pino Daniele Performs at The Apollo Theater October 1!!!

Self taught guitarist, Pino Daniele is a multi-platinum recording artist who made his first album, "Terra Mia" at the age of 22. From the beginning of his career, it was evident that his passion lay in Rock and Blues, and greatly influenced by his own Neopolitan background, his music has been a successful fusion of tradition and modernity. Defined by Daniele as "Taramblu", the mixing of Tarantella, Blues, and Rumba, his music has captured worldwide attention and praise and has been noted by some as the rebirth of Neopolitan song.

During the course of his 30+ year career, he has opened for Bob Marley and collaborated with such musical giants as Wayne Shorter, Pat Metheny, Chick Corea and Richie Havens. He has shown a profound understanding and respect of world cultures, histories and traditions expressing them through his music. Choosing to collaborate with various artists promoting such topics as ecological awareness and voices of peace, it is only natural that as Pino Daniele makes his NY debut it would be on the stage which introduced and made famous Blues and Pop.

On March 27, 2009 he released his latest album " Electric Jam" which kicked off it's tour in Europe in April. He will be in New York for one night only, performing well known classics and songs from this newest album on October 1st at the legendary Apollo Theater.

After 75 years, the Apollo Theater continues to attract artists from all over the world. It is, for New Yorkers and African Americans throughout the US, a symbol of pride and heritage.
Located at 253 West 125th Street the Apollo's history is as rich as the legends it has housed and created. It is the stage where Ella Fitzgerald made her singing debut at the age of 17 and where Jimmy Hendrix won a first place amateur prize in 1964. It has launched the careers of Billie Holiday, James Brown, Diana Ross & the Supremes, Gladys Night & the Pips, The Jackson 5, Patti LaBelle, Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, and the Isley Brothers to name a few.

Tickets are available thru Ticketmaster at (212) 307-4100 or Box Office at (212) 531-5305.
Click here for more information on this event.
Official website www.pinodaniele.com

Monday, September 28, 2009

Diana Krall live @ Philharmonie Luxembourg tonight

Buy Tickets
Tonight, Monday, September 28, at 8PM, Diana Krall does a single-night concert at the Grand Auditorium of the "Philharmonie Luxembourg" (in Luxembourg, obviously...)
Diana Krall: «Quiet Nights World Tour 2009»
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Diana Krall piano, vocals
Anthony Wilson guitar
Ben Wolfe bass
Karriem Riggins drums

Dans le cadre de Luxembourg Festival 2009. Tour sponsor: Rolex
Complet / ausverkauft / sold out

Regular price Cat. I 60.00 €
Cat. II 50.00 €
Cat. III 35.00 €

http://www.philharmonie.lu/en/events/events.php?seite=event_details&id=1244&PHPSESSID=mhpaqgjcmfjs6llp7otohtn2n1
(click on the above link to watch a lovely slide show) "We would be missing so much without music! Music is a vast Garden of Eden with plateaus, dark forests, mysterious jungles, exciting nooks and crannies, and intoxicating depths; and with the number of individual pathways within it bordering on the infinite, it is as wide-ranging as the world itself – yet always fresh! In this way, music carries within it an element of primordial humanity.

Described on the following pages is what you might be missing, if there were no Philharmonie. In its fifth season, the Salle de Concerts Grande-Duchesse Joséphine-Charlotte abides by its exceptional artistic standards and brings many of the very best musicians, ensembles, and orchestras to Luxembourg. The Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and its principal conductor, Emmanuel Krivine, together with the Solistes Européens, the Orchestre de Chambre du Luxembourg, as well as numerous other artists from the region – all contribute to enlivening the musical activities of the land.

Supported by your enthusiasm, we have assembled the artistic line-up for the fifth season with great joy and have sought out the most exciting artistic impulses in the most diverse genres for a wide variety of target audiences. I trust you will find your personal «grand evening» among them and look forward to seeing you in the Philharmonie.

Sincerely yours,
Matthias Naske"

Streisand & Krall interviewed - USA Today

Barbra Streisand, Diana Krall Labor for 'Love'
by Elysa Gardner
USA Today, September 28, 2009


Ever since word got out that Diana Krall would produce Barbra Streisand's new album, music fans have wondered how two of the most admired artists of their respective generations would forge a creative camaraderie.

"We ate a lot," Streisand reports. "There's something about recording that makes me want to eat. We would bring in Italian food, or go out to dinner. Diana taught me how to roll a piece of chicken with cheese inside and put it in the microwave."

Making "Love Is the Answer," the collection of traditional pop and jazz standards that arrives Tuesday, Streisand, 67, and Krall, 44, also played cards, traded stories about growing up and talked about "girly-girl stuff," as Krall puts it. And they challenged each other.

"Diana records differently than I usually do," says Streisand, whose last studio album was 2005's "Guilty Pleasures." "I mostly sing live with an orchestra, where she'll sing with a quartet, then add the orchestra later." Working at Hollywood's legendary Capitol Studios with co-producer Tommy LiPuma, Krall set Streisand's vocals against both lush orchestral settings and intimate jazz-quartet arrangements. The latter are available on a bonus disc in the deluxe version of "Love."

"The most fun we had, in a way, was with the quartet," Streisand says. "It was a throwback to the way I sang in clubs when I was 18 or 19 or 20."

The tracks were arranged by Johnny Mandel, who had worked previously with Streisand and Krall. Mandel's music also is represented in the collection, along with tunes by Jerome Kern, Leonard Bernstein and Jacques Brel.

"Most of these are songs I've wanted to sing for a long time," says Streisand. In a few cases, as with "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most," she had recorded the songs previously but hadn't been satisfied with the results.

Krall suggested material, making mix tapes for the diva. "I did research from the time I was pregnant" with her twin sons (who'll be 3 in December) by husband Elvis Costello. In a sense, she started long before that: "I've always admired (Streisand) as a singer, and a comic actress. The first movie I ever watched was 'What's Up, Doc?'"

When sessions started, "I was just like, 'Oh, my gosh, do I deserve to be here?'" Krall says. Streisand "is a perfectionist in a way that I really respect. She's intensely intense."

When the star sang something Krall really liked, "she would point to the hairs on her arm standing up," Streisand says. "It was cute, my audience of one."

On Saturday night, Streisand promoted "Love" in another intimate setting, delivering a joyfully virtuosic performance at New York's Village Vanguard -- her first nightclub gig since 1962. Attendees included the Clintons (Bill, Hillary and Chelsea), Nicole Kidman, Sarah Jessica Parker and Donna Karan. Highlights from the show are streaming this week at AOL and http://www.barbrastreisand.com

Though a tour isn't planned, "it wouldn't be out of the question -- not if I could go to places I haven't been, or where I haven't performed this type of music," Streisand says. Regardless, she looks back on the process of making "Love" fondly: "Diana is a good friend, and it's lovely to work with talented people."

Krall concurs. "I miss her. I would love to sit down with her for a meal again."

Barbra Streisand - NY Times review

Lucky Streisand Fans Were A-Listers for a Night
By BEN SISARIO - New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/arts/music/28stre.html?th&emc=th

When Barbra Streisand sings, all fans are equal.

Or so it first seemed on Saturday night at the Village Vanguard, the tiny West Village jazz club where she was singing for the first time in 48 years. In attendance, as you might expect for such a special event, were Ms. Streisand’s celebrity BFF’s like Donna Karan and Nicole Kidman. And, ensconced at a side table, sat Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.

But outnumbering the boldface names were two busloads of ticket-lottery winners, ordinary fans from around the world. Some said they had never been able to afford a Streisand ticket before, but on this night they rubbed elbows with Oscar winners and a former president, and their entrances to the 74-year-old club rivaled the celebrities’ in glamour.

When Reneé Cole, a slender, blond 25-year-old from Brooklyn who was wearing a black dress she had made herself, stepped off the bus in front of the Vanguard’s red awning, camera flashes burst from the sidewalk crowd, and at the request of a videographer behind the police barricade, she took a twirl in her new dress on her way through the door.

“I was plotzing,” said Ms. Cole, an aspiring actress who added that Ms. Streisand’s story had inspired her to move to New York from coastal Maine to pursue her dream.

Concerts by Ms. Streisand are rare, but the scale of Saturday’s show was exceptional enough to briefly upend the natural social order of celebrity events. To promote her new album, “Love Is the Answer,” which will be released on Tuesday by Columbia, Ms. Streisand was booked for one night at the Vanguard — legal capacity 123, absurdly small for an artist who has sold 71 million albums in the United States alone. The scarcity was made more acute by the fact that 74 seats had been given away through online fan contests and that video cameras would be eating up some of the little space remaining.

Videos of five songs from the show will be streamed on AOL and on Ms. Streisand’s Web site, barbrastreisand.com; Ken Sunshine, her longtime publicist, said, “There may eventually be a DVD.”

The contest winners were gathered at the Sony building in Midtown Manhattan on Saturday afternoon and screened with metal detectors. To prevent audio or video leaks online, they were told to leave all electronic devices — including cellphones — behind or forfeit their tickets. Once on board the buses, they traded “Funny Girl” stories and shrugged at all the security fuss, which also included a laminated pass on a lanyard, a paper wristband and stamp in red ink.

“I thought it was like seeing the pope,” said Shari Hansen, a 58-year-old hospital transplant coordinator in Denver who said she left her husband behind on their anniversary to attend the show. “They could have given me any kind of restriction, anything at all, and I still would have been here.”

The measures were being taken to protect not only Ms. Streisand but also her fans, some of whom have been targets of harassment online ever since the winners were chosen two weeks ago.

Ms. Cole, the actress, was called a “rat” on the Streisand site’s message boards for the crime of not pre-ordering a copy of “Love Is the Answer” with her contest entry. (No purchase was required.) And Kevin Keyser, a former Disney casting director in Orlando, Fla., who got his ticket through the site’s “cutest pet photo contest,” said he had received rude Facebook messages about his dog, a Chihuahua named Punks.

“People said, ‘Your dog looks like a deer on Xanax,’ ” Mr. Keyser said. “It was shocking that people would directly send me a message to say that.”

The Vanguard ticket was so impossibly hot that a satellite party for spillover V.I.P.’s was arranged uptown at the Waldorf-Astoria, where a live video feed was shown to a few dozen people, including former Mayor David N. Dinkins, Streisand family members and record-label employees. In the elegant Louis XVI Suite, where chandeliers reflected the flickering table candles, a voice from one table erupted during Ms. Streisand’s first song, “Here’s to Life”: “Oooh, is that Sarah Jessica Parker?” (Indeed it was, front and center at the show.)

Onstage, Ms. Streisand alternated between lighthearted banter, some of it about the club’s close quarters — “It’s hard to have stage fright when there’s hardly any stage” — and gentle performances of 12 songs, including standards from “Love Is the Answer” and Streisand immortals like “Evergreen” and “The Way We Were.” The last time Ms. Streisand sang at the Vanguard she was auditioning but didn’t get the gig.

The cameras panned across the room and lingered on famous faces; sometimes the less-famous ones seemed to get in the way. Throughout the show Ms. Streisand called out lovingly to her close friends in attendance, like Ms. Parker, Ms. Karan and the songwriters Marilyn and Alan Bergman, writers of two of the tracks on her new album. When Ms. Streisand got to Mrs. Clinton, who was surrounded by contest winners, the cameras had difficulty at first finding a good angle.

For her longtime fans, Ms. Streisand had only a few words: “I want you to know how much I appreciate your support over all these years.” Inside and outside the club, those fans were rapturous.

Larry Sayoc, 40, who works in real estate, did not get into the show but waited next door at Rivoli Pizza, where he pressed his right ear against the wall and stood transfixed for 20 minutes. “I could hear a bit of ‘The Way We Were,’ ” he said, beaming.

Michel Filion, 49, a photographer from Montreal, was luckier. He had won the ticket lottery, and said he was wearing the same cherry-red blazer that he wore when he saw Ms. Streisand in Auburn Hills, Mich., in 1994. He managed to swipe a paper coffee cup that his idol had left behind on stage.

“I don’t know, I guess I’ll bronze it,” Mr. Filion said, adding that he already had a scrap of carpet in his house from another theater where Ms. Streisand had once played.

By the time the show ended, at around 9:30 p.m., the old order was restored somewhat: the contest winners were free to go about their evenings, with no buses to spirit them away from the mass of humanity to which they were now returning. Reached later in the evening, Mr. Keyser was still grasping for words to describe his ecstasy.

And the Waldorf-Astoria suite became a reception for all the V.I.P.’s — Sarah Jessica Parkers and Barry Dillers and James Brolins included, and contest winners excluded. Aided by two bars and a spread of desserts, the reception crowd mingled and gabbed coolly into the evening, until around 11, when whispers of “She’s in the room” began circulating through the suite.

Guided by Mr. Sunshine, Ms. Streisand began to make her way through the party, and guests of all levels of fame lined up excitedly along her expected path, waiting with smiles to pay their respects to the woman who seems able to make almost anyone act like a fan.

Right before Ms. Streisand arrived, Tamir Hendelman, her pianist, said, “It doesn’t matter if you’re Clinton or the guy who won the contest — she’s singing to you.”

A version of this article appeared in print on September 28, 2009, on page C1 of the New York edition. C. J. Hughes contributed reporting.

"Love Is The Answer" reviewed

Barbra Streisand: Love Is the Answer (Columbia)
by Joan Anderman
Boston Globe, September 28, 2009


At this point in her career, Barbra Streisand has nothing to prove. She's the best, everyone knows it, and all that's required is a dozen or so great songs, a few talented collaborators, and voila. But over the years Streisand has released a remarkable string of duds, schmaltzy or misguided collections that pit her bountiful gifts against her questionable taste and make tomorrow's arrival of "Love Is the Answer" a happy event. The disc is a return to basics, which in traditional pop parlance means jazz standards and theater gems: "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning," "Spring Can Really Hang You Up," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "Here's That Rainy Day," and the like. At 67, Streisand's gorgeous tones and powers of interpretation are utterly intact, and also front-and-center thanks to producer Diana Krall's class-conscious pairing of her own understated quartet with Johnny Mandel's velvety orchestrations. The album's deluxe edi tion comes with a second disc of quartet-only tracks, which will please fans (including this one) who prefer their love songs unsweetened. Refined as they are, all those placid strings and feathery flutes seem to mock, rather than embellish, Streisand's pointed, bittersweet reflections.
**********
by Larry Katz
Boston Herald, September 28, 2009


Given the opportunity to produce an established legend, jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall doesn't try to take Babs to any strange new musical places. No songs, God forbid, by or with Krall's hubby, Elvis Costello. No swinging jazz either. "Love Is the Answer" is 100 percent butter: a lovely collection of lovely ballads about love. The arrangements cushion the diva in sumptuous strings, while Krall and her jazzy friends occasionally add a few cool notes, always with the utmost restraint. Which is to say, the focus is all on Streisand's way with a well-wrought song. The few -- and they're very few -- signs of wear in the 67-year-old's voice only make her more appealing. Download: "Some Other Time."
********
Highly Recommended: Barbra Streisand - Love Is The Answer
by Mike Ragogna
Huffington Post, September 28, 2009


"There's no 'yes' in yesterday and who knows what tomorrow brings or takes away, as long as I'm still in the game, I wanna play for laughs, for life, for love, so here's to life and all the joy it brings..."

Sounding warmer and the most at home with her recordings since the mid-seventies, the 67-year-old vocalist-supreme at last reclaims the musical territory she reigned over in the sixties. Love Is The Answer is the latest portal into the soul of a woman celebrating her golden years with an album so beautiful, it's easily one of the best she's ever recorded. Make that one of the best albums of its kind that she or any of her contemporaries have recorded in decades.

Sensuously produced by Diana Krall and romantically orchestrated by Johnny Mandel, Love Is The Answer puts Streisand right back on the musical path she once immortalized and probably should have been following for the last twenty years. Her mastery of classics -- such as Bob Hilliard and David Mann's "In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning" or Jacques Brel and Rod McKuen's "If You Go Away" -- evokes her People and My Name Is Barbra albums of over forty years ago as it transports the listener to a post-prime-Sinatra era filled with music you still had to listen to with your heart to appreciate fully.

Colored by Krall's own moody quartet, everything here wears different shades of melancholy, like "Where Do You Start?" with its lines "Our lives are tangled like the branches of a vine that intertwine, so many habits that we'll have to break, and yesterdays we'll have to take apart." These songs are like the blues on a rainy day, offering semi-sweet, romantic insights into peoples' lives and loves.

Barbra Streisand recording an album this strong and lush and elegant brings her career full circle, and is in sharp contrast to recent Songbook marketing exercises that have filled the pipeline with especially mediocre recordings by maturing artists for years. Love Is The Answer is the antidote to such unimaginative, painfully-contrived releases, and it's time to either discover or rediscover this style of music with Streisand's latest being the perfect place to start.

On Love Is The Answer's "Here's To Life," Streisand sings, "May all your storms be weathered, and all that's good get better, here's to life, here's to love, here's to you." Right back at ya, Babs.

Clifton Anderson live @ Birdland, tomorrow

Tomorrow, Sept 29, Clifton Anderson live @ Birdland in NYC, 8:30 & 11PM
Charge: $25
315 West 44th St.
NYC, NY 10036

Clifton Anderson has been on a lifelong journey of artistic evolution. From his start as a child surrounded by a musical family, to formal education mixed with the practical experience of live gigs, Clifton's odyssey is ever-unfolding. Whether playing as a long-standing member of his uncle Sonny Rollins' band, helping to run the Doxy label or leading sessions with his own band, Clifton's life is always happily connected to music. His first recording as a leader in approximately ten years, the highly anticipated ‘Decade’ was released in January of 2009 to enthusiastic reviews. JazzWax’s Marc Meyers wrote that Clifton “…shines as a stylist and storyteller… On Decade, Anderson demonstrates a new level of maturity and offers a warm, round and purposeful sound… [His] compositions are all strong and fresh, and they avoid being derivative. Best of all, they are tailor made to show off the trombonist’s lyricism and powerful chops…”.
Reserve Online

Ramana Vieira's upcoming performances

Hear Ramana and her band live:

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2
RAMANA VIEIRA and Ensemble: The New Voice Of Portuguese
Doors at 7:00p.m.
Show is at 8:00p.m.
Admission $10-$15 Donation to benefit Art House Gallery
All Ages

Art House, Gallery & Cultural Center
2905 Shattuck Ave.,
Berkeley, CA,
94705
510-472-3170
Art House is wheelchair accessible
*********
A NIGHT OF FADO WITH RAMANA VIEIRA
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23

Ramana Vieira will be performing Fado at the Mission San Francisco
Solano in Sonoma from 7:30pm until 9:15 pm.
Admission is $20.00 and tickets are available at the Mission San Francisco Solano front desk
daily from 10am to 5pm (707) 938-9560.
The Mission San Francisco Solano is located on the corner of Spain and First Street East.


You can also call event coordinator, Liz Kane at (707) 935-6832 to order tickets.
This event WILL SELL OUT, so get your tickets early.

Ramana will be joined by acoustic guitars, cello and contemporary world/Latin rhythms.
The translation is a fusion of old world meets new world.
The ensemble wil include Alberto Rameriz, bass; Marcia Brown, cello; Jeffrey Luis, classical guitar; Steve LaPorta, percussion/drums.


LaSalette Restaurant will be taking dinner reservations before and after the concert.
To make reservations, please call 707-938-1927

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Diana Krall live in Brussels tonight, Sept 27

Diana Krall performs tonight at the "Bozar" in Brussels, Belgium, land of my dear friend Toots Thielemans.
Buy Tickets

Sunday 27.09.2009 - 20:00
Centre for Fine Arts / Henry Le Boeuf Hall
Ravensteinstraat 23
1000 Brussels
Info &Tickets 02 507 82 00
prices: € 90,00: category II€ 80,00: category III€ 70,00: category V€ 105,00: category I
>ticket
Production: Aja Concerts sprl
The Centre for Fine Arts, a palace of the arts. Immense and yet almost invisible, overlooking the city and yet buried underground, multiple and yet unified, prestigious and yet open to all...this was how Victor Horta imagined the first cultural centre of its kind to be constructed in Europe, the Brussels Centre for Fine Arts.

His ambitious project was designed to meet several challenges. A town planning one, first of all: linking the upper to the lower town. An architectural one: creating a building that would meet the needs of different disciplines while still preserving its own architectural cogency. An artistic challenge: to host all forms of art, at the highest level and in the best possible conditions. A cultural challenge, finally: to make art accessible to as many people as possible, free of elitism but without lowering standards.

The Centre for Fine Arts first opened its doors in 1928. Here, Horta traded the sinuous lines of art nouveau for the geometric design language of art deco, but the incidence of light in the exhibition rooms and the ingenious arrangement of the different spaces betray the hand of the master. In his memoirs, Horta referred to the Centre as a high point in his career.

An underground "Mount" of the Arts
All forms of art come together in the PSK. Horta pieced together a jigsaw combining three concert halls, exhibition spaces, and lecture rooms in one harmonious whole. From the outset, music and exhibitions were placed on an equal footing. The open plan was made possible by a steel skeleton of rafters and the use of reinforced concrete.

When walking through the building, without really being aware of it one is climbing a hill: the Mont des Arts/Kunstberg. In total, Horta’s Palace has no fewer than eight levels. It is quite difficult to represent all these floors and mezzanines in a single, easy-to-use floor plan. In order to orient oneself, it is easiest to use the main entrance on rue Ravenstein/Ravensteinstraat as the point of reference.

CD of the Day - "Toots Thielemans: Your Precious Love"

CD of the Day
Toots Thielemans: "Your Precious Love" (Sony)
(back cover autographed by Toots to Arnaldo DeSouteiro)

"Love Is The Answer" reviewed - London Times, NY Times etc

Barbra Streisand: Love Is the Answer (Sony/Columbia)
by Clive Davis
London Times, September 27, 2009


Connoisseurs of Comden and Green or Jacques Brel will rightly point out that Barbara Cook or our own Barb Jungr own this jazz-cabaret repertoire. Does La Streisand come close to matching them? No, but that isn't really the point. What does matter is that the diva -- and her producer, Diana Krall, no less -- are giving their immense audience a chance to savour low-key versions of 24-carat material. There's none of the usual overkill; Streisand tiptoes decorously around the lush orchestral arrangements by Johnny Mandel. It's not earth-shattering by any means, and the quartet arrangements on the deluxe edition are anodyne at best, but at least it's a sign that classic songs can still find a place in the mainstream.
**********
The New York Times
A version of this article appeared in print on September 27, 2009, on page AR1 of the New York edition.
Streisand’s Fine Instrument and Classic Instinct
By Anthony Tommasini

IT seemed clear from her reaction, at once intrigued and a little amused, that Barbra Streisand had never been asked by an interviewer about her diaphragm.

But as an opera devotee and a longtime admirer of Ms. Streisand’s voice, I wanted to explore the inner workings, as she understood them, of her singing. For me her ability to shape a phrase with velvety legato and find the right expressive coloring for each note and each word is the epitome of cultured vocalism.

Did Ms. Streisand, like an opera singer, think incessantly about breathing deeply from the diaphragm, about using the diaphragm as a natural support for her voice?

“Never,” she said, sitting up straight on a couch in the living room of a friend’s Upper West Side apartment, looking elegant in a dark dress and lacy shoulder wrap. Everything about singing came to her naturally, she explained, adding, a little sheepishly, that she hardly ever does vocal exercises. She was giving a rare interview, in person, apparently curious to speak with a classical music critic about vocal technique.

“I’m terrible about warming up,” she said. “That’s just too boring to me.” Years ago Tony Bennett sent her a tape with vocal exercises on it. “I listened to it once,” she said. She does keep handy one tape with solfège vocal routines that a voice coach made for her. “It’s very simple,” she said. “But I find myself doing the exercises only in the car on the way to the recording session.” That is too last-minute to do much good, she added.

Whatever vocal power, finesse and richness she has was not the product of traditional study and analysis, she said.

“I didn’t do it intellectually,” Ms. Streisand said. “I did it intuitively, unconsciously. I kind of like that.”

Ms. Streisand, who lives in Malibu, Calif., was in New York in anticipation of a concert scheduled for Saturday, billed as “Once in a Lifetime.” For the first time since 1961 Ms. Streisand would return to her roots and sing in a club: a one-night-only appearance at the Village Vanguard, the jazz haunt. But the big event for Streisand fans, other than for the 97 who could be accommodated at the Vanguard (tickets were given away free through a lottery) is Ms. Streisand’s latest album, “Love Is the Answer,” which will be released on Tuesday by Columbia. The recording is a collection of 12 songs, and a bonus track, all of them mellow, jazzy, intimate reflections on love, with standards like “Make Someone Happy” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” more recent songs by the composer and arranger Johnny Mandel, songs by Leonard Bernstein and Jacques Brel, and other offerings that nestle into the club gig concept.

The album, produced by the pianist, arranger and songwriter Diana Krall, features Ms. Streisand singing with a jazz quartet, enriched with subtle orchestrations. The deluxe edition includes an extra disc, in which Ms. Streisand is accompanied only by the mellow jazz quartet. So the recording is a throwback to her early days as a club singer.

“Some people like the simplicity of the voice with just instruments,” she said, instead of the richer version with orchestra. “And that’s the way I started. And I thought, ‘Why not?’ ”

In its way the project was also risky. At Ms. Streisand’s request the engineers used hardly any electronic juicing or reverberation. Her singing is uncommonly intimate and exposed. Though even during the 1960s her high range was never her comfort zone, she had a way of reaching the peak of a phrase and sustaining a pitch with such focused vibrato and pulsating tone that she seemed to be soaring effortlessly.

Her very top notes are not as available to her these days. On the recording her voice sometimes turns breathy as she takes a high note. Yet she uses this to expressive effect, like a great jazz singer, lending an earthy emotional cast to the moment, as in her melting, vulnerable account of “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” when she takes a top C at the wishful word “only” in the phrase “You’d be his if only he would call.”

The sound of her voice, at 67, is remarkably fresh. Back in the “My Name Is Barbra” days, from the mid-’60s, her singing was already mature and rich, never girlish. Her voice remains, as the pianist Glenn Gould, a self-confessed “Streisand freak,” put it in a 1976 review of the “Classical Barbra” album, one of the “natural wonders of the age, an instrument of infinite diversity and timbral resource.”

As I pressed Ms. Streisand on the subject, she revealed herself as a vocal artist with powerful, if innate, insights into phrasing, legato, vibrato, interpretive nuances and, most important, the art of singing as an expression of words. She kept emphasizing, however, that from the time she was 7 she wanted to be an actress, not a singer, and that singing came as an extension of that passion, “a means to an end,” she said. Still, her exceptional voice emerged early and, from her perspective, on its own.

“I remember when I was 5 living on Pulaski Street in Brooklyn, the hallway of our building had a brass banister and a great sound, a great echo system,” she said. “I used to sing in the hallway. I was known as the girl on the street with the good voice. No father, good voice. That was my identity.” (Her father, Emanuel Streisand, a high school teacher, died from complications of an epileptic seizure while directing a summer camp in the Catskills. Ms. Streisand was 15 months old.)

More than the pleasure of singing, it was her capacity to use her voice to act, to express herself and convey words, that hooked her as a young girl, she explained.

“Life was peculiar to me then,” she said. “I was allergic to the country. I was raised on the streets, in hot, steamy Brooklyn, with stifled air.” But “there was — I don’t like to say pain, I don’t want to be too whiny,” she added. “But words meant something to me, words spoke to me. So I think it somehow unconsciously influenced whatever I do.”

Her mother, Diana, a public-school secretary, had a beautiful natural voice, “light and operatic,” Ms. Streisand said. But she thought that her gifted daughter’s voice was not strong enough. So she had her drink egg yolks mixed in milk, what she called a “guggle muggle,” Ms. Streisand said, giggling a bit at the memory. Her early voice training amounted to one lesson with a voice teacher. At that session Ms. Streisand sang “A Sleepin’ Bee,” the Harold Arlen song that she performed in her first television appearance, on “The Jack Paar Show” in 1961, just before turning 19.

During the lesson Ms. Streisand got as far as the first line: “When a bee lies sleepin’ in the palm of your hand.” The teacher stopped her. “She said, ‘No, no, you have to say bee-e-e-,’ ” Ms. Streisand recounted, prolonging the word and singing it with a rounded, quasi-operatic tone. “I thought that was unnatural so I told her, ‘No, I have to sing the word as an extension of my speaking.’ ” On her own, over a career of nearly 50 years, Ms. Streisand figured out just about everything there is to know about singing. During her early club days she once lost her voice and had a brief crisis. She called in a coach who explained the physiology of singing.

“She showed me a chart, so I could realize the mechanics of what’s happening with air and the body,” Ms. Streisand said. But the coach reassured her that she was using her voice well. “I realized how much of singing was mechanics and how much was psychological,” she said. “People kept asking me, ‘How can you hold a note so long?’ I never thought about it. I held it because I wanted to hold it.”

For her, singing has always been a matter of sheer will and determination.

Opera singers might learn from Ms. Streisand’s way of treating singing as an extension of acting. In working so hard to cultivate the beauty and carrying power of their voices, too many opera singers compromise with indistinct diction and generic expression. Ms. Streisand sings as if she is speaking to you.

Ms. Streisand can turn the right song into a sung-through dramatic soliloquy, as in several works on “Love Is the Answer,” especially “Where Do You Start?,” one of three songs she sings as a nod to an artist she reveres, the jazz singer and pianist Shirley Horn, who recorded them on “Here’s to Life,” a 1992 album produced and arranged by Mr. Mandel. “I think she’s sublime,” Ms. Streisand said.

“Where Do You Start?” is the wistful regret of a woman at the end stage of a breakup. The ruminative music is by Mr. Mandel, with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman “profound, poetic and yet conversational” lyrics, as Ms. Streisand writes in the album’s liner notes. All those qualities come though in her subdued performance when she achingly, without a trace of self-pity, poses questions: “Which books are yours?/Which tapes and dreams belong to you and which are mine?”

For all her demurrals Ms. Streisand revealed sophisticated intuitions about the technique of singing and the art of interpretation. I mentioned once hearing Yo-Yo Ma give a master class. With several of the student cellists Mr. Ma talked about how important it is to not let a sustained tone that is decreasing in volume just go limp.

There is a way, by using a quicker vibrato and a penetrating tone, as Mr. Ma demonstrated, to make a sustained pitch actually increase in intensity as the sound dies away. Something similar is a hallmark of Ms. Streisand’s singing. Did my description of Mr. Ma’s technique ring a bell?

“It sounds familiar,” she said. “It’s true. You have to almost give it more air. The sound is not really dying out.” But, she added, “I don’t know what it is I do.”

When asked if it was true that she essentially cannot read music, she answered in a Fanny Brice deadpan: “I don’t read music. Not even essentially. Not even nonessentially.”

In learning songs, usually all she needs to do, she said, is to hear a melody once, and she gets it.

Of course she is in great company among vocal giants who did not really read music, not only Ethel Merman and Mary Martin but Luciano Pavarotti.

Besides winning a best actress Oscar in 1968 for her performance in “Funny Girl,” Ms. Streisand earned an Oscar for best original song, “Evergreen,” the love theme from her 1976 film “A Star Is Born,” which she composed to lyrics by Paul Williams. The depth of her musicality came through when she talked about her fantasy of composing a symphony.

“I hear these melodies,” she said. “I hear horn lines and string lines. That’s what’s fun about recording with an orchestra.” She can sing things, and composer-arrangers like Bill Ross or Jeremy Lubbock have the skill to write them down, she said.

She talked about recording with Marvin Hamlisch. “I can go, ‘That’s not the right chord, no, it has to be an 11th or a 9th or something,’ ” she said. “I just know that the chord has to be in contrast, it can’t just be this.” She sang a sustained husky pitch. “I’ll say: ‘It has to rub. I want that slight rub there.’ ”

The interview eventually turned to opera. Though not a buff, Ms. Streisand goes to the opera now and then with pleasure. She is a big Maria Callas fan, which makes sense. Talk about a singing actress who drove her artistry through force of will.

During her career Ms. Streisand has been all over the stylistic map, and different camps of fans have criticized what they see as lapses of taste for exploring country rock or disco or whatever. “Classical Barbra,” offering songs by Debussy, Faure, Wolf and others, in orchestrated arrangements, was a rare instance of her being too deferential to the originals. “I was going to write on the album, ‘a work in progress,’ ” she said. “But they talked me out of it.”

Still, no one can argue with success. She is the top-selling female artist in American recording history. And she has great hopes for her new album.

Yet some of her insecurity came out, touchingly, when we talked about the new album. When I mentioned her approach to standards, she cut in, “Did you like ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’?”

She said she had recorded it before, but never released it. Recording it this time, she made new discoveries into the lyrics of this bittersweet love song.

When with melting sound she sings the opening lines, “They asked me how I knew/My true love was true,” she allows her voice to swell at the end of the first phrase. Sliding seamlessly into the next one, without a break in the legato, yet with a clear sense of new statement, she answers the question: “I of course replied/ Something here inside/Cannot be denied.”

Did I like it? Are you kidding?
**********
What's Not to 'Love'? CD Is Babs-olutely Fabulous
by Jim Farber
New York Daily News, September 28, 2009


Everyone talks about Barbra Streisand's tone, the one that inspired all those comparisons to the world's smoothest condiment. They also speak of her range, which mirrors the distance between the depths of the Grand Canyon and the peaks of Everest. Her lung power invites equal comment; Small wonder since, at full bore, it can flatten a town.

Far fewer people talk about her phrasing.

Many more will do so after hearing "Love Is the Answer," Streisand's jewel-like new disc. The album makes more clear the dexterity, and decision-making, in her singing than any Streisand release since her '60s peak.

"Love Is the Answer" returns Streisand to the kinds of saloon songs she swooned-over back when she played downtown holes-in-the-wall like Bon Soir more than 40 years ago. (She referred that era last weekend, when she returned to the Village Vanguard for a super-rare gig for 100 lucky souls).

For "Love," Streisand went back to covering standards like "In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning" and "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," the kinds of tiffany pieces that could have turned up on early albums like "My Name Is Barbra" or "Simply Streisand."

She cut each piece in two versions -- one with a small jazz combo led by Diana Krall, the other with a full orchestra laid over Krall's band. You can buy either the former disc alone, or get both in a deluxe package. But you should definitely spring for the latter because, as tasteful as the orchestrations may be, the sparer combo brings you closer to Streisand's instrument -- and to her intent.

Streisand designed "Love" as a more intimate work than she has allowed in years. Even those CDs that shunned her contemporary pop sound in favor of the "classic" Babs style -- like "The Broadway Album" or "The Movie Album" -- suffered from dense production and drenching synths.

This time, Streisand's voice stands without filters. And what a wondrous voice it remains. At 67, Streisand has lost only a few notes on the high end, and she seems to have actually gained some on the low. Yet, it's the way she swings between those notes that rivets. She'll start a phrase in one octave, then leap to an unsual place in another with the grace and care of an aerialist. It's here, in the adventure of her phrasing, that Streisand shows her awareness of jazz.

In the stripped down versions, Krall hangs back in her piano, offering Streisand only the most delicate suggestions. In the fuller versions, arranger Johnny Mandel gives the orchestra the intimacy of a chamber group.

To be sure, Streisand hasn't revived the zaniness of her youth, or the bravura. Her new run at "Wee Small Hours" lacks the shouting pay-off of her live take back in 1969. But the singer's confidence more than makes up for it. The conversational way she moves through these songs allows Streisand to find quirks of meaning in the lyrics her younger self never could, while showcasing a vocal approach as musicianly as it is magical.
*********
Barbra Streisand: Love Is the Answer (Columbia)
by Phil Johnson
London Independent, September 27, 2009

This new studio album (the first since 2005's Guilty Pleasures) by the best-selling female artist ever packs a considerable surprise punch.

On the face of it, it's not a Streisand album at all -- it's a Diana Krall one. The Canadian singer-pianist not only acts as producer -- along with her Svengali, music-biz bigwig Tommy LiPuma (with Babs taking an "Exec" role, natch) -- she also plays piano throughout, in a quartet of her own favourite musicians. The orchestra is arranged and conducted by the great Johnny Mandel, who has worked with Krall since 1998. It's recorded at Krall's customary location, Hollywood's Capitol Studios, and the songs are all standards.

But -- and here's the rub, and the reason why Love Is the Answer isn't just a second-hand rose: Streisand sings superbly, in a series of bravura vocal performances that more than make the album her own.

As a vocalist, her style is the exact opposite of Krall's less-is-more approach. With Babs, it's more and more and then some more again, please, although by her own standards this is a very restrained gig. But that inimitable anglicised, almost plummy diction, the trademark octave slides and a voice that remains -- despite some signs of age -- shockingly pure make this very different from the Krall effect, which rests upon an icy contrast between the lushness of Mandel's orchestrations and her own underplayed vocal economy of means.

This is where the choice of songs becomes crucial. When Babs does Krall-style bossa nova on Jobim's "Gentle Rain"(*), it doesn't work, and "If You Go Away" is awful. But four of the 13 songs are very, very good: "Here's to Life" (associated with the late Shirley Horn, the real progenitor of the Krall style); "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most"; "Some Other Time" (famously covered by Tony Bennett and Bill Evans) and "You Must Believe in Spring".

The main problem with the repertoire, of course, is that despite the empathetic, Method-actor's interpretations of a spurned lover's role, it's very hard to read Streisand as anything but a winner. Here, she even gets to win twice: the deluxe version of the album comes with an additional CD of Barbra accompanied only by the quartet.
(*)Arnaldo DeSouteiro's note: Jobim, the composer of "Gentle Rain"? Argh...#%#* Poor Bonfá!

Friday, September 25, 2009

Kristen Kastaway @ 33 Lounge, Sept 26

Come join the gorgeous DJ/model/actress Kristen Kastaway DJing @ 33 Lounge tomorrow, September 26, after 10PM. This is the place to be on Saturdays if you are in the Boston area. The past few saturdays have been incredible with a line of people down the street to get in. Don't miss out!
"33 Lounge"
33 Stanhope St.
Boston, MA

Health reform video challenge

"Dear Arnaldo:

Our records show that you are now located in California's 30th congressional district.

In many ways, the fight for health insurance reform comes down to a battle over information. The more people know about how broken the system is and the President's plan to fix it, the more they want change. But there are an awful lot of lies to cut through, and a whole lot of truth to get out.

So today, we're proud to announce a powerful new way for you to help: Organizing for America's Health Reform Video Challenge.

This is your chance -- you ingenious, insightful, funny people out there -- to make a 30-second ad telling the story about why the status quo has got to go, or explaining how the Obama plan will ensure we get the secure, quality care we need without breaking the budget.

The top submissions will be voted on by the public and a panel of experts, with the winning ad aired on national television. This is your opportunity to add your voice and creativity to the debate, get some great exposure for your work, and make a huge difference.

Click here to get started.

No experience is needed -- if you have an idea, we want you to give it a shot. And if you know someone who is especially handy with a camera, please forward this note along right away. Just make sure you submit your ad by October 18th.

Your video could be as simple as you talking straight into the camera, as complex as a full-blown production with a script and special effects, or anything in between.

We're looking for serious videos: You can tell your personal story about how the broken health insurance system has affected you. You can illustrate the big picture about what's wrong now and how the President's plan will help with animations, charts, and facts.

We're looking for funny videos: You can parody those trying to scare us into inaction (between the lying pundits and the insurance company spin doctors, they've given us some good stuff to work with).

And we're looking for new ideas we never would have thought of but we know will blow us all away.

We know that compelling videos can touch people in a way that words alone simply cannot. The messages that regular people put together will make a bigger difference than any false smears or slick ads the other side can dream up. And who knows -- your creative, powerful, or touching video could help tip the balance in favor of health reform.

So go get started today!

http://my.barackobama.com/videochallenge

I can't wait to see what you come up with,

Natalie Foster
New Media Director"

Rachel Bailit: "Sugar Happens" in LA, Oct 1st

Rachel Bailit's acclaimed one-girl show!
October 1st, 8pm @ the Marilyn Monroe Theater at The Lee Strasberg Theater Institute.
7936 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA
Ph:(310)8663268
See the newest and freshest version of the show!

Ted Curson Quartet live in NY, Sept. 29

Join us for an exciting musical evening this coming Tuesday evening, September 29 when trumpet great Ted Curson brings his dynamic ensemble to the John Birks Gillespie Auditorium in the New York City Baha'i Center at 53 East 11th Street (between University Place & Broadway). This evening Ted Curson’s ensemble features Calvin Hill on bass, Sharp Radway on piano, and Bruce Cox on drums. There will be 2 shows at 8:00 and 9:30 p.m.

An outstanding and flexible trumpeter, Ted Curson is well-known for his work with Charles Mingus’ quartet (which also included Eric Dolphy and Dannie Richmond). He studied at Granoff Musical Conservatory; moved to New York in 1956; played in New York with Mal Waldron, Red Garland, and Philly Joe Jones; and recorded with Cecil taylor (1961). After the 1959-60 Mingus association (which resulted in some classic recordings), Curson co-led a quintet with Bill Barron (1960-65), played with Max Roach, and led his own groups. He spent time from the late ‘60s on in Europe (particularly Denmark) and then returned to the US in 1976.

Ted Curson has led sessions for Old Town (1961), Prestige, Fontana, Atlantic, Arista, Inner City, Interplay, Chiaroscuro, and several European labels. A dogmatic approach to playing one’s own way that has marked the work of his mentors - Mingus, Miles, Dolphy and Cecil - is what defines Curson’s incredibly difficult to pinpoint approach, one that seems to hit every adjective in the book while harping on none. At present he has over 20 solo albums to his credit. He is sought after as a music instructor and is in demand for jazz clinics and concerts at universities and music schools throughout the world.

Admission is 15.00, 10.00 for students.
Tickets will be sold at the door, or call 212-222-5159 for reservations and information.
*********
Jazz Tuesdays
in the John Birks Gillespie Auditorium
The New York Baha'i Center
53 East 11th Street (between University Place & Broadway)
Two shows: 8:00 and 9:30 p.m.

Join Amherst's Jazz Faculty!

Assistant Professor, Tenure Track. The Amherst College Music Department seeks a scholar/performer whose research, teaching, and creative work combine jazz, popular music, ethnography, historiography, and/or new media technologies.
For complete information, please visit: https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/dean_faculty/employment

Mimi Jones live @ The Priory, tonight

Tonight, September 25, 2009, bass sensation Mimi Jones live @ The Priory
showtimes: 7pm-8pm, 8:30pm-9:30pm,10pm-11pm
233 W Market St.
Newark NJ 07103
Ph: 973-623 2800

With the musical world buzzing about Esperanza Spalding it's no wonder that the timing is perfect for the release of yet another extraordinary female bassist, composer and vocalist. Introducing Mimi Jones and her debut CD "A New Day" (Hot Tone Music), released on September 15th, 2009. Mimi Jones recently gave a sneak preview of her debut CD during the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival at the prestigious Kennedy Center along with performances featuring the world's top female jazz artists including: Anat Cohen and the Anzic Orchestra, Janis Siegel, Carmen Lundy, the Maria Schneider Orchestra and Esperanza Spalding. Mimi's elegant sound is an eclectic mix of genres based in a strong jazz foundation that leave room for funky bass grooves, world beat rhythms, gentle voices and the soulful cries of the Wurlizer. "My music taps in directly to the senses using elements of jazz, folk, rock, blues and different sounds from around the world which have all had such a profound effect on me."

Her inspiring debut recording," A New Day" is bursting with original compositions seamlessly melting from one song to another and caressed by the warmth of Mimi's sultry voice. The music is a rich assortment of rhythmic statements, musical textures, and compositional variations all flawlessly executed by Mimi Jones (acoustic bass, electric bass, vocals, composer, arranger, and assistant producer), Marvin Sewell (acoustic and electric guitars), Miki Hayama (piano, key board and Wurlitzer), Marcus Gilmore (drums), Lucianna Padmore (drums on tracks 1 and 11) and Ambrose Akinmisure (trumpet).

The title of the CD speaks of embracing a changing world with a positive point of view while maintaining the courage to move forward just as the new persona and alter ego, Mimi Jones, was transformed from "side man" Miriam Sullivan in order to fully express her individual messages of change and personal evolution. Songs like "Fast Lane," "Spiral," "Watch Your Step" and "Mighty Time" send those messages by allowing the music to take shape without fear of definition and genre restriction. The concept is to cross borders and to reach out to a broader perception of time, space and rhythm. Mimi's philosophy is profound, yet simple, "It's important to me that this music is for everyone. I believe that I have a calling to heal and make people feel good so I want to pass on what comes to me musically. Hopefully this music will make our world a little bit better."

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Diana Krall live in Denmark tonight

Tonight, Sept. 24, DK (pictured by Jane Shirek) live @ Aarhus Music House (Musikhuset) in Aarhus, Denmark. Love will be on the air!

Buy Tickets

DK - review of the concert @ Oslo Konserthus


http://oslopuls.aftenposten.no/musikk/article34137.ece?service=redirect&sourceid=2010238
Diana Krall imponerer igjen med piano og vokal. Her opptrer hun i Oslo Konserthus.
Foto: Grundseth, Dag W.

Megastjerne i lyd og bilde
Supre videoglimtkroner denne fine presentasjonen av jazzdronningen Diana Krall.
STEIN KAGGE
Publisert: 24.09.07 00:01
Oppdatert: 24.09.07

Ikke helt snau, påstanden om at disse 15 sporene ikke bare er Diana Kralls beste, men sogar hennes aller beste.

Her vil kritikeren nesten alltid være uenig - visse motforestillinger vil lett melde seg. Ikke minst når en artist har produsert så mange album som denne kanadiskfødte megastjernen, vil det alltid være opptak man heller ville hatt med enn et par av dem som er valgt. Men når så er sagt, iler vi til med å understreke at dette albumet gjør all ære på denne vokalisten og pianisten, som anno 2007 knapt overgås i popularitet av noen av dagens jazzmusikere.

Kralls medprodusent Tommy Lipuma har en tendens til å drukne solistene i orkestral vellyd, men på denne produksjonen bidrar strykerne stort sett til å skape dybde i arrangementene. Krall selv både synger og spiller på samtlige spor, og enda en gang beundrer man dualismen i hennes artisteri. Vi opplever fremføringen som å lytte til to personligheter - den ene spiller klaver, den andre synger. Aller høyest rager trioinnspillingene med Russel Malone på gitar, men Anthony Wilson er ingen dårlig erstatter.

Hva man måtte savne av intimitet på CD-en, får man til fulle på DVD-en. Ikke, som forventet, bare klipp fra kjente, tidligere utgitte DVD-er, men også opptak av mer privat karakter. Både kresne arrangementer og lekre bilder. Fra ende til annen.

Ennio Morricone concert @ the Hollywood Bowl, Oct. 25

Composer Ennio Morricone -- whose scores for films by Sergio Leone, Brian De Palma and Giuseppe Tornatore are considered soundtrack classics -- will be making a rare L.A. concert appearance on Oct. 25 at the Hollywood Bowl.

The evening, titled "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," will be Morricone's only concert appearance in the U.S. this year.

Morricone, 80, will lead the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and the Angeles Chorale in works from his four-decade career in the movie business.

The concert will include excerpts from his scores to the movies "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"; "The Untouchables"; "Cinema Paradiso"; "Once Upon a Time in America"; "The Mission"; "Once Upon a Time in the West"; "A Fistful of Dollars"; "Sacco and Vanzetti"; "The Battle of Algiers"; "A Fistful of Dynamite"; and "U Turn."

For tickets, visit Ticketmaster.
Ennio Morricone: "50 Movie Theme Hits" (3-CD set)

Ennio Morricone is one of the busiest and most successful composers on the international film scene. Everybody who is interested in film music knows Ennio Morricone. Everybody has his own favorite. He has written the music or more than 400 movies and TV films, including dramas, comedies, spaghetti westerns and thrillers. His most famous composition to date is the theme to "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly", which is one of the most recognizable pieces of music ever written. Filmmakers such as Marin Scorses, Roman Polanski, Mike Nichols, Barry Levinson and Brian DePalma have used his work. With this 3-CD compilation, one is given an overview and an exciting introduction to Ennio's enchanting musical world.

Click here to get your copy.

CD of the Day - "Nelson Angelo: Minas Em Meu Coração"

CD of the Day
Nelson Angelo: "Minas Em Meu Coração" (NAC) 2009

The most underrated genius in the history of Brazilian music, Nelson Angelo gives another masterpiece to the world: "Minas Em Meu Coração."
From the opening track, a superb contemporary samba titled "Salvar Como Nosso Planeta," till the last one, the solo piano "O Silêncio da Montanha," this master delivers an outstanding collection of great songs with stunning (a surprise after a surprise) arrangements - all by Angelo himself, of course, who also played piano, acoustic & electric guitars, keyboards, percussion, did the main vocals, the electronic programming, the mixing, the mastering...
This multi-talented hero gets the support of people like Luiz Alves, Robertinho Silva, Paulo Guimarães, his daughter Ana Martins, Roberto Marques and Kiko Continentino, amongs others.
Beyond words and one of the best albums of the year, of this decade, and of this century. Gênio da Raça!

Upcoming El Perror Del Mar in-store NY performance, Oct 20

Sweden's El Perror Del Mar will be playing a free in-store at Other Music on Tuesday evening, October 20th, celebrating the release of her great new album, Love Is Not Pop, which comes out that same day on Control Group/TCG.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20 @ 8PM
OTHER MUSIC: 15 East 4th Street NYC
Free Admission / Limited Capacity

Johnny Mandel interviewed - "Alban Times Union"

For Famed Composer Johnny Mandel, They'll Be Playing His Songs
by Michael Eck
Albany Times Union, September 24, 2009


"I wanted to play an instrument I could kiss."

Johnny Mandel was 12 years old when he first put his lips to a trumpet, a New York City kid crazy about the radio, his head filled with dreams of being in the big bands.

So what. Every other crackerjack kid in the five boroughs wanted to be in the big bands in 1937. But Mandel made it, and how.

By the time he was 25, Mandel had played trumpet and trombone with everyone from Joe Venuti to June Christy to Count Basie; and from Buddy Rich to Woody Herman and Artie Shaw.

He spun all that sound into a long career as a composer and arranger, and it's in that role that the writer of the "M*A*S*H" theme ("Suicide is Painless") and other classics comes to The College of Saint Rose on Saturday.

The occasion is "Music and Memories -- An Evening with the Legendary Johnny Mandel," and the program will feature performances of Mandel's music by Sherrie Maricle and the DIVA Jazz Orchestra, along with celebrated vocalist Ann Hampton Callaway.

Mandel has nothing but praise for the DIVAs, and he's a discerning critic of modern music and its players.

As noted, in the '30s and '40s, the trumpet was simply a key to un lock the door of the music business for Mandel. He didn't like school, and by his tweens he'd already figured out that he didn't like many of the arrangements he heard pouring out of the little speaker on the family Philco.

So he set about learning his craft the hard way -- by doing it.

"There weren't any books that told you how to be an arranger at that time," the 83-year-old Mandel says in a recent telephone interview.

He scored a gig studying with the great Van Alexander, and was soon making his own charts, finally releasing the sound in his head.

"I sort of got hung up with the alchemy of mixing all these different sounds from all these different instruments; and with making the music sound like the way I wanted it to.

"There's no way you can learn this other than to write the music and have someone play it so you can hear it. It's not like making a painting where you can see what you're doing. You have to hear it."

And Mandel wasn't the only one to hear it. Once he relocated to the West Coast in the mid-1950s, Mandel was arranging recording sessions for the likes of Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Mel Torme, Jo Stafford, Tony Bennett, Chet Baker and Andy Williams.

"I wish I could have worked with Sinatra more," he whispers.

Mandel also found his way into film, scoring "The Americanization of Emily," "The Sandpiper," "M*A*S*H*," "Being There" and "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming" among others. Mandel's contributions to the American standards canon include "The Shadow of Your Smile," "Emily," "Where Do You Start?" and "Close Enough for Love."

At Saint Rose, Mandel will reminisce about his life in music, but he'll also conduct the DIVA band, showing that his first love is still strong. And while you can be sure you'll hear some classics, don't expect much by way of contemporary music.

Mandel doesn't much care for the world of "American Idol" and format radio. He makes that very clear.

"I think it's a dismal world when 'American Idol' becomes the arbiter of good taste in the world of music. It's gone as low as you can go. It seems like it's going to have to get better, but don't ask me how, I have no idea."

"I don't want to sound like an old person, but it just used to be a whole lot better. Music is made by amateurs now and not by professionals and that's all encouraged. 'American Idol' is an amateur show, that's all it is. It seems almost like professional is a dirty word these days."

Mandel, though, is nothing if not a seasoned pro.

When he's done in Albany, he'll head back West, where he's working on getting all of his old war stories where they belong.

"Oh, I have so many memories," he says. "I'm having a book written to tell them all."

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Alexa Weber Morales tonight @ Club 101

"Hello there Arnaldo ~

Here are some upcoming dates... I am really strapped for time so forgive this terse message...

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
Salsa en San Rafael - 10:00pm
Club 101

815 W Francisco Blvd
San Rafael, CA 94901
(415) 460-0101
Price: $12

Tonight, I'll be singing salsa @ Club 101 in San Rafael with ANDY Y SU ORQUESTA CALLAO! We've added lots of new songs to the repertoire, covering the best salsa songs from New York City to Bogota, Havana to Callao, Peru!

Salsa dance lessons from 8:15 - 9:30 with Angie, currently a member of SalsaMania Dance Company. Angie has been teaching and performing salsa for the past 8 years. I also got to work with Angie for the Seaon Stylist Michael Jackson salsa tribute, where I learned she not only dances like a dervish (I mean that in a good way!), she can herd cats (musicians) too!
For more information visit her website, http://www.angiesalsera.com.
*********
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
Salsa en San Francisco - 10:00pm
The Glas Kat

520 4th St
San Francisco, CA 94107-1609
(415) 495-6620

With Andy y Su Orquesta Callao... This club consistently has GREAT dancers and great salsa bands... definitely a place to go to learn to dance salsa as well as watch the pros do it!
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Thursday, October 8th, 2009
Jazz 'n Cocktails 'n Entrees - 7:30pm
Cafe Claude

7 Claude Lane (near Kearny & Sutter)
San Francisco, CA 94108
415.392.3505

Alexa's jazz trio enhances the lovely French cuisine and soothes the beautiful people who all appear to be gainfully employed.
*********
Friday, October 9th, 2009
Salsa en Albany! - 10:00pm
Montero's

1106 Solano Avenue
Albany, CA 94706
510-524-1270

With Andy y Su Orquesta Callao!
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Thursday, October 29th, 2009
Salsa en Concord - 10:00pm
Club Sazon

2765 Clayton Road
Concord, CA 94519
(925) 686-1950
With Andy y Su Orquesta Callao

Yours in music,
Alexa Weber Morales"