by Liz Fixsen and Gail Marten
On Sunday, June 10th, The Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center was the site of a tribute concert organized by jazz presenter Mike Binsky. Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, two giants of jazz from the 1950s through the 1980s, were celebrated by a quintet headed by Javon Jackson on tenor, and including Baltimore native Tommy Williams on trumpet, Larry Willis on piano, Steve Novosel on bass, and Billy Williams on drums. | Read more>>
These days musicians might consider a monthly gig that lasts one year as quite a milestone. Now consider this. Guitarist Paul Wingo has played in the bar at Bertha’s Restaurant virtually every Tuesday night for the past thirty years! | Read more>>
by Andrew Zaleski
You couldn’t hear Gary Thomas in the back of the Peabody Conservatory’s East Room on this particular Wednesday night. The founding director of the jazz studies program has a softspoken, if deep, voice. That was but a minor inconvenience on May 2nd, when the focus of the night was the occasion being celebrated—ten years since the inception of Peabody’s jazz studies concentration—and the rather large, twenty-member-plus Improvisation and Multimedia Ensemble assembled at the front of the room. | Read more>>
“Moons and Junes and ferris wheels, the dizzy, dancing way you feel….” “And the sun came in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses…..” “They paved Paradise, put up a parking lot….”
Who of us born before 1970 doesn’t recall those memorable Joni Mitchell lyrics? | Read more>>