My Music Sources

These are my sources for music and information. If you have any suggestions for me, I would appreciate seeing them in Comments.

All About Jazz – For all of the news of the Jazz world

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/

American Mavericks – A history of serious music in America from Minnesota Public Radio

http://www.musicmavericks.org/

American Composers Forum – Fostering artistic and professional development

http://www.composersforum.org/

Bang On A Can – At the heart of the Downtown New York New Music scene

https://www.bangonacan.org/

Blue Note Records – an iconic Jazz label still putting out great recordings

http://www.bluenote.com/

Cantaloupe Music – the recording arm of Bang On a Can

http://www.cantaloupemusic.com/

Classical Discoveries – Marvin Rosen’s Wednesday survey of great new music and the avantgarde on WPRB, Princeton, NJ

http://classicaldiscoveries.org/

Cuneiform Records – great taste in new music

http://www.cuneiformrecords.com/

ECM – possibly the finest recording company in the world

http://www.ecmrecords.com

The GreeneSpace, the live presentation space of New York Public Radio with programming from WNYC, WQXR, and Q2

http://www.wnyc.org/thegreenespace/

Hearts of Space – Stephen Hill’s great weekly mix of music for relaxation, contemplation, mediation, and…
This is a paid service.

http://www.hos.com

Innova – creating an environment for new compostion and musical maturation.
The recording arm of American Composers Forum

http://innova.mu

Live365 – niche audio streaming – any genre or sub-genre you want. This is a paid service.

http://www.live365.com

New Amsterdam Records – “…a non-profit-model record label and artists’ service organization that supports the public’s engagement with new music by composers and performers whose work grows from the fertile ground between genres….”

https://www.newamsterdamrecords.com

NPR/music – Jazz, Classical, interviews, news, concerts, “first listens”, artist profiles

http://www.npr.org/music

Q2 on the internet, “for the new music we crave” the home of New Music

http://www.wqxr.org/q2

WBGO bringing Jazz from Newark, NJ to the world

http://www.wbgo.org

WNYC – the home of John Schaefer’s Soundcheck and New Sounds programs

http://www.wnyc.org

WPRB, Community Radio, Princeton, NJ
For the most serious presentation of Classical music and the most erudite presentations of Jazz

http://www.wprb.com

From HypeBot, via AAJ

All About Jazz strikes again, bringing us a discussion of the plight of the music industry from Hypebot. Forgive me, you will need to get the link from the AAJ link above. The Hypebot link is so long I do not trust myself to copy and paste it in here.

So, I am going to tease you with just a bit of AAJ’s tease:

“This syndicated blog entry appears courtesy of HypeBot.
Copyright © 2010. All rights reserved.

This guest post is by Charlotta Hedman (@fjoms), a journalist who blogs for the Music 4.5 project, a series of events for the tech and music industries.

Copyright is confusing. Is it working, isn’t it working and if it isn’t working, what should be done about it? We decided that the best way to make some sense of this complicated and often vicious debate was to ask experts and commentators what they think. Here are their answers. “

At the end of the Hypebot piece, if you wish, you can see my comment.

Alex Ross on John Cage

The October 4, 2010 issue of the The New Yorker has a wonderful piece by Alex Ross on John Cage. Whether or not one enjoys John Cage, everyone interested in Music should read this article. If I could, I would reproduce it here. Unfortunately, I cannot. The material is of course protected by copyright. There is an abstract on line.

I recommend that anyone interested try to find a copy of the magazine. Maybe a friend has it, maybe the local library. Maybe someone from The New Yorker or Mr Ross would come here and give me permission to reproduce it.

Alex Ross

Must Reads for a Jazz Listener

If you are serious Jazz listener, these web strivers are must reading. If you know of others – and there must be others – please tell me about them.

Howard Mandel’s Jazz Beyond Jazz Howard is a very thoughtful writer. I have learned a lot from him.

Howard Mandel

Peter Hum’s Jazzblog.ca Peter sits up there in the ice and snow and knows everything going on in NYC. How does he do that?

All About Jazz This is an amazing news center. Long and thorough articles on all sorts of subjects.
All About Jazz also is the home of the Jazz Bulletin Board, a very rich source of information and “conversation” about Jazz.

JazzCorner This is a hugely important forum, especially on artists performing.

Bebopified Pamela’s sub heading is “live jazz mostly in Minneapolis-St. Paul”. Don’t believe it. She seems to get around the country pretty well.

Jazz Profiles Written by Steve Cerra. This is a fabulous blog.

Josh Jackson’s The Checkout. Josh is the special projects person at WBGO, Jazz 88, Newark, NJ

So, I am not doing more here than give links to these very useful sources on the Jazz world. please check them out for yourself. And, if you know of any other good spots, please let me know about them.

Miles on AAJ

If you are not reading All About Jazz, you should be. Here is an example.

Book Review: The Autobiography… Two Decades Later

Here is the first paragraph of this excellent review.

“Miles Davis knew how to keep himself on the radar screen. He did it musically throughout his life, except for a five year period of “silence” when he isolated himself in his Manhattan townhouse, by his own admission musically inert and completely caught up in drugs, alcohol, and sexual escapades, inaccessible to even his closest friends. Even then, his records continued to sell, and he made money. Today, nineteen years after his somewhat untimely death in 1991 at the age of 65, he continues to remain a musical legend, still quite popular as well, and undoubtedly his estate earns considerable royalties from his recordings and other productions. Part of Davis’ enduring success is due to his enormous musical influence, creativity and productivity. Beginning with the Birth of the Cool sessions, he showed his remarkable ability to bring a group of musicians together to create groundbreaking music. However, a significant part of his fame and success is also due to his well-cultivated image as the quintessentially rebellious, individualistic black musician, the artist against the Establishment, his insistence on being himself, the African American insisting on being free. This image is perpetuated by his autobiography, co-authored by Quincy Troupe, who in an Afterword, indicates that he spent countless hours with Davis, taking copious notes and taping extended conversations with him. Moreover, he devoted himself to capturing Davis’ language and intention. So, in two decades retrospect, and without being able to question the primary author, we can assume that this is Miles speaking, not the pure construction of his co-writer.”

Miles: The Autobiography
By Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe
New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2005
(Originally published in 1989)

From AAJ, News of the National Jazz Museum

From All About Jazz, News of the National Jazz Museum

“The National Jazz Museum in Harlem is at 104, E 126th Street, a few steps from the bridge that carries the Metro North trains to and from Connecticut from the 125th Street station. Situated on the second floor, the museum is primarily a suite of offices with a large front area that presents photographs, video documentaries and books on jazz to the public.”

Please visit the AAJ article, three pages, with photos, an excellent piece.

At Q2, “Host Nadia Sirota Celebrates Leonard Bernstein“

Nadia Sirota, the absolute genius of Q2, but really a virtuoso violist, did an outstanding job curating a four hour program devoted to Leonard Bernstein as a composer and conductor.

Nadia Sirota
The program streamed on Wednesday, August 25th. Fortunately, you can still click into the link above and listen to this fascinating program. Four hours is not enough to do justice to Leonard Bernstein. But, there is enough here to tease you into delving more into this wonderful musical spirit.

Further, you can still go to the WNYC production Our Lenny.

Leonard Bernstein

This photo accompanied Leonard Bernstein: An American Life, an eleven part radio project by Steve Rowland, which is available in .mp3 download at the site.

And last, but way not least, go find Danny Felsenfeld’s remembrance of Leonard Bernstein at his NewMusicBox blog.

Three Luminaries in Music Criticism

This is a tale with some twists.

The first really good book of music criticism I read was Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise.

Alex Ross

I used this book as a guide for buying important music, especially Duke Ellington’s suites.

The next really great book of music criticism I built myself, out of the articles by Greg Sandow in the Wall Street Journal, the blogs at New Music Box, and artsjournal. 880 pages. All of this material is still available at Greg’s web site. I used this “book” also as a guide to buying especially new music, groups like Ethel and eighth blackbird. After I had “built” the book, I sent Greg a copy. It was, after all, a single file, which made a lot of it searchable.

Greg Sandow

So, now, I finally bought the book So I’ve Heard, the collected later criticism of Alan Rich, described by Alex Ross as the “Dean of American criticism”.
Alan recently passed away. I was supposed to meet him on my next trip to Los Angeles to visit my daughter and her family. Alan and I struck up a relationship after he wrote a piece for the monthly newsletter for KUSC, Classical Public Radio in L.A. I sent him a note about KUSC. He responded to me and put me on his email distribution list. We had some email back and forth. He was very kind to this simple listener, kinder than he was to some of the people about whom he wrote. The last exchange we had was his request that I send him a couple of DVD’s of the Great Performances production of the Gustavo Dudamel premier in Los Angeles.

So, now the twists.

On page xxix on Alan’s book, he refers to a blog entry by Alex Ross. Here is the link.. The piece starts out, “I hate ‘classical music’: not the thing but the name”. Sound interesting? Hit the link and read more. it is wonderful. And, to whom might you suppose Alex refers? at II para 1, none other than Greg Sandow at the arts journal blog link above.

It surely is a small interlinked world at the top.