A Festival of Festival Channels

The summer may be inching ever closer to its inevitable and regrettable end, but some might say the best is yet to come. Three of North America's most celebrated jazz festivals are still ahead of us, and we're shining a spotlight on them at AccuJazz.com.

So far this year we've had channels dedicated to SF Jazz, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and the Montreal and Newport jazz festivals. Still to come are the Chicago, Detroit and Monterey jazz festivals.

The Monterey Jazz Festival, happening September 16-18 this year, is in a class with Newport as a long-standing fest with a much-celebrated history. In fact, Concord Music Group even created a whole separate label, Monterey Jazz Festival Records, to share some of the fest's greatest recorded moments with jazz fans everywhere. Big-name headliners this year include Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Terence Blanchard and, ahem, these guys. Some notable acts on smaller stages include Robert Glasper, Donny McCaslin and Steve Coleman. The AccuJazz channel is playing music by most all of the musicians playing, so whether you're planning for a trip to the fest or just wish you could be there, check it out.

For the past few decades, Labor Day weekend has traditionally seen two great Midwestern cities host free, open-to-the-public jazz fests in their downtowns, and this year is no different. The Chicago and Detroit Jazz Festivals are persisting in their populist ideal of bringing world-class jazz to the people at zero cost, and we've got all the artists playing on our channels.

The Chicago Jazz Festival channel features this year's artist-in-residence Orbert Davis (pictured) and his Chicago Jazz Philharmonic as well as a great lineup of local and international artists including Randy Weston, Cassandra Wilson, the Deep Blue Organ Trio, Roy Hargrove, and many more.

The Detroit Jazz Festival channel features their artist-in-residence, drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, as well as Dave Holland, Jason Moran, Regina Carter, Joe Lovano and many more.

Are you planning on attending any of these festivals? Who are you most excited to see? If you're not going, who do you wish you could go to see?

Check out all of our festival channels at AccuJazz.com.

New Channels Round-Up

If you haven't been to AccuJazz.com in a while, you'll notice a handful of recently-added channels now being offered for your listening pleasure. In the past month or so, we've added five channels to the already possibly overwhelming array of AccuJazz listening options. But, somehow, not one of the channels was commemorated in a blog post. It's due time to put an end to this negligence and give a little coverage to our deserving new channels.

AACM

The AACM is the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and if you don't know what that is, there's an award-winning, 690-page book that can fill you in. If you don't have the time for that, however, let me give you the short version: in 1965 a group of experimentally-inclined, Chicago-based jazz musicians founded the organization to promote and present their distinctly un-commercial music to the Chicago and the world. Founders and early members included such avant-garde jazz legends as Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, Jack DeJohnette, Wadada Leo Smith and the Art Ensemble of Chicago (pictured).

Over the decades, the influence of the AACM has grown far beyond what the founders likely imagined and dozens more musicians have been admitted as official members. Our channel is playing hundreds of tracks by AACM-affiliated musicians, ranging from classic Art Ensemble recordings to brand new music by AACM Vice Chairperson Mike Reed. If your ears are in need of a trip away from the ordinary, hop on this channel.

Montreal Jazz Festival 2011

MJF 2011 is the newest member of our festival channel category, and the one that probably should have been created first; MJF is the world's biggest jazz festival. It attracts millions (yup, you read that right) of fans every summer to see concerts by the biggest names in jazz as well as plenty of rock, pop and R&B acts. With so many artists performing at the fest, it wasn't hard for me to hand-pick a pretty great mix of music for the channel, from cutting-edge young musicians like Darcy James Argue to Gen-X stars like Brian Blade to all-time legends like Dave Brubeck.

Unfortunately, the fest already happened, so you're out of luck if the great mix on our channel triggers an impulse to hop on a plane to Montreal for this year's fest. But you'll be able to keep listening to the channel, which is almost as good... right?

World Fusion

Mixing jazz with music from around the world is nothing new, but in the last few decades, there has been an increasingly greater output of music that references different "world" music and jazz at the same time. Foreign elements in the music might be as small as adding an unusual ethnic instrument like an Oud to an otherwise conventional improv setting or as considerable as basing the whole piece on ancient Indian beat cycles.

I found a great deal of music in the AccuJazz collection that fit squarely into the "world fusion" category: not mainstream jazz, not jazz-rock fusion, but definitely jazz of some sort. You'll hear examples of this beautifully unique music by artists like Vijay Iyer, Fareed Haque, Miguel Zenon and many others.

Spiritual Jazz

It's no mystery that many great musicians, in jazz and virtually every other style, grew up playing in church (including yours truly). For a lot of those musicians, their music never quite left the church. There's a long tradition of jazz musicians re-interpreting hymns and spirituals like "Just a Closer Walk With Thee," "Amazing Grace," and "Wade in the Water." Our channel features great versions of this timeless music from musicians like Charles Lloyd, Cyrus Chestnut, John Scofield and Hank Jones. But there are also some original, faith-centric, compositions by musicians like Terence Blanchard, Brian Blade and Deanna Witkowski.

A few minutes with this channel and you will be convinced that jazz is most definitely not the devil's music. Rev. Ronald V. Myers even found a Bible verse that establishes a precedent for Christian jazz: Amos 6:5.

Composers: Wayne Shorter

I get requests for new artist-based channels pretty often, but it's a rare musician who has composed enough timeless music that the legions of cover versions, in addition the the originals, can make up an entire listenable channel. Wayne Shorter, in addition to the other five jazz composers already honored with their own channels, is one such musician. Generally regarded as jazz music's greatest living composer, Shorter has been producing his distinctive brand of post-bop jazz for five decades. He is still making exciting, urgent new music with his excellent quartet, proving an exception to the rule that septuagenarian jazz masters often become little more than pale imitations of their younger selves.

The channel features over 60 different artists digging in to Shorter's material, including plenty of recordings under Wayne's own name. He is also heard as a sideman with groups like Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, the Miles Davis Quintet and Weather Report. Listeners will hear plenty of takes on "Footprints," Wayne's most oft-covered tune, but keep listening for lesser-played but equally-genius compositions like "Black Nile," "Night Dreamer," "Juju," and "Fall" (one that shows up surprisingly often).

A Brotherhood of Great Music

With the May 16 passing of Hank Jones (pictured), the last of the Jones brothers is gone. Pianist Hank, drummer Elvin and trumpeter/composer/arranger/bandleader Thad made up the greatest sibling set in the history of jazz, each one a titan on his instrument. I've been a fan of all three for some time, and can still remember my first encounters with each. I wanted to honor their legacy on AccuJazz, so I've created an entire channel devoted to their music, called "Keeping Up With the Joneses." We're also featuring an extra dose of the brothers on the AccuJazz main channel. Below, I offer some thoughts about each brother.

Hank:

Hank Jones played a lot of piano in his life. The start of his professional career predates Bebop, a style of which he became an undisputed master. He is known for his impeccable taste and distinctive, sensitive touch. While horn players are often easily distinguished by their tone, it's less common for a pianist to have such a recognizable sound; Hank Jones' touch is about as distinctive as it gets. Our channel is playing a handful of his albums from throughout his long career, from a great 1955 session to his 2007 duo CD release with Joe Lovano, Kids. The channel also features his sideman work with folks like Cannonball Adderley, Milt Jackson and Charlie Haden.

Elvin:

As some of you may know, I am a drummer. Elvin Jones is something of a god to my kind. His propulsive yet elastic time feel, uncanny facility with complex rhythms, and strong, emotional punctuations combined to create a style that has influenced every jazz drummer that came after him. Words can't really do justice to his playing. Just get the channel going and you'll hear what I'm talking about soon enough. His recorded output is basically the Rosetta Stone of modern jazz drumming. Our channel is playing some of his work as a leader, but you'll mostly hear him as a sideman, in his famous role as John Coltrane's drummer, as well as with other greats like Roland Kirk, Larry Young, Ornette Coleman and Joe Henderson.

Thad:

Finally, Thad Jones. His reputation as jazz legend would have been secure for his trumpet skills alone, but two decades into his professional career he started writing a lot of music, eventually becaming known as one of the great jazz composer/arrangers. Our channel is playing a bit of his sideman work and a 1958 small-group session he led for Debut records, but Thad is mainly represented by the legendary big band he co-led with drummer Mel Lewis. Widely considered the greatest post-Basie big band, the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra made the case that large-ensemble jazz is capable of more than novelty and nostalgia. Thad's original compositions and arrangements fit squarely in the big band tradition, but pushed at that tradition's boundaries ever so insistently, with unprecedented harmonic and rhythmic complexity and deft use of funk and rock influences. College big bands all over the world are still constantly challenged by Thad's timeless writing. The Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra collaboration with vocalist Joe Williams is an all-time favorite album of mine, so you'll be hearing a lot of Joe's pipes on the channel.

One more link the the channel: Keeping Up With the Joneses.

Jazz In January: Outliving its Namesake Month

Ah, the first month of the first year of the new decade is over. How did you do? Are things looking good for the 10's? We made sure to get things off to a solid start here at AccuJazz. We celebrated a made-up, month-long holiday called "Jazz in January," where we gave you, the listeners, some lovely new channels as gifts. Even though it's February, we're going to keep the JIJ decorations up on the site for a little while. You don't take the Christmas tree down on December 26th, do you?

As detailed in the last post, we launched a channel devoted to jazz musicians with January birthdays as well as channels based on the line-ups of both SFJazz and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

To finish up Jazz in January, we've launched channels devoted to two great jazz record labels that celebrated significant anniversaries last year: Blue Note, who just celebrated 70 years in business, and ECM, who turned 40.

My boss and I have been talking about the idea of label-specific channels for a while, but for some reason or another (probably the fact that we had no lack of ideas for channels), it has only now become a reality. Judging from listener feedback on the shoutbox (on the AccuJazz homepage) and on twitter, it was a good idea.

In an age when record labels are becoming less and less central to the dissemination of indie music styles (like jazz), Blue Note and ECM have stood the test of time as reliable curators of music with strong brand identities.

They are among the few record labels that have a specific "sound" associated with their name. In fact, "ECM feel" has been widely accepted as a musical term indicating a loose, straight 8th note rhythmic pulse. "The Blue Note Sound" is a commonly used phrase in jazz discussions, usually referencing the classic hard bop of Hank Mobley, Dexter Gordon and Lee Morgan. To be sure, both labels have released plenty of music that doesn't fit either of those stereotypes, but the fact that their names have entered the lexicon as something beyond mere music business middlemen is notable.

What's exceptional about these two labels is that they have continued releasing all types of adventurous new music in the 21st Century. When you pop on the Blue Note channel, you'll hear everything from Sidney Bechet to Jason Moran. Likewise with ECM; you might hear Keith Jarrett's famous Koln Concert followed by some sax/accordion duets by Trygve Seim and Frode Haltli, from their spacious 2008 album Yeraz. You'll likely be surprised by the music on both channels.

Happy listening, and do let us know if you have any other suggestions for future channels. There are plenty in the bullpen now, but we're always looking for new ideas.

Put Your Party Hat On and Get Yourself to a Jazz Fest

As I noted in a previous post, we're celebrating "Jazz in January" over on AccuJazz.com. To get things started, we featured three channels: "Decade: 2000s," "2010 Jazz Grammy Nominations" and "Best of 2009." Now, the new channel rollout is off the ground: we're throwing an Internet radio-style Birthday party for a handful of jazz musicians with January birthdays, as well as previewing two major jazz festivals coming up this Spring. Head to AccuJazz.com to see what's going on.

If you listen to the January Birthday Channel, you'll hear music by 33 different artists who were born in the first month of the year. The listening experience is unique, with the playlist being based on a completely-non musical qualifier: the month in which an artist was born. Case in point: my most recent listening session began with avant-garde bassist William Parker and his quartet tearing through "The Golden Bell," a Parker composition with a folk-like bass line, rhythmically knotty horn lines, and the ferocious drumming of Hamid Drake. The next selection was fellow January birthday boy Cyrus Chestnut playing a solo piano version of the century-old Christian hymn, "I Surrender All." Also heard: Bobby Hutcherson (pictured), Chris Potter and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

The January Birthday Channel isn't the only place on the site that's throwing a B-Day party, though. For the rest of the month, our main channel is featuring the music of 9 select artists with January B-Days. Who are the chosen few, you ask? Django Reinhardt, Max Roach, Herbie Nichols, Joe Pass, Milt Jackson, Gary Burton, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Benny Golson and Bobby Hutcherson. The main channel is still playing all of the music it was playing before, but now you'll hear music by these 9 great musicians a little more often.

I feel pretty good about my picks, but if you want to argue with me, feel free. Notable January B-Day people I left out include Parker, Potter, John McLaughlin, Bucky Pizzarelli, Gene Krupa, Jeff "Tain" Watts, James Carter, Alex and Nels Cline, Henry "Red" Allen and Jason Moran. Wow, now that I list those guys, I feel bad for leaving them out. No worries though: they're still on the main channel, just not with the same frequency, and you can hear all of the birthday buddies on the January Birthday Channel.

Also new today are two channels devoted to musicians performing at spring's two biggest American jazz festivals: SFJazz and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Fest. Technically, SFJazz is a series of concerts taking place over a few months, and the NOLA fest is heavily weighted towards non-jazz artists (Pearl Jam and Simon & Garfunkel are the headliners), but they both have a whole lot of great jazz artists performing. We've made a channel for the Chicago Jazz Festival the last two years, and I thought it was about time to highlight some other festivals.

As you can see from the website, SFJazz's lineup is enough to make any jazz fan drool. Keith Jarrett, Joshua Redman, Pharoah Sanders, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Kurt Elling... the list goes on and on. For folks thinking about attending an SFJazz concert or two, the channel will serve as a great way to get pumped up, and for those drooling over the lineup from far away, it's the next best thing to actually being there.

As noted before, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is a definite misnomer, and at least one New Orleanian agrees with me on that. Among the hundreds of artists slated to perform, I'd estimate that about 5% are playing jazz. Nevertheless, there still will be a lot of great jazz performed at the fest, and we're doing our part to draw attention to it. Check out the channel and hear for yourself. If you're going, you just may find a jazz musician worth missing Pearl Jam for. Most of the jazz will be coming from NOLA natives -- including Brian Blade, Terence Blanchard, Irvin Mayfield, Galactic, Allen Toussaint and more -- but there are some notable out-of-towners too, such as the Wayne Shorter Quartet, Joe Lovano and Hiromi.

Between celebrating Jazz in January birthdays and previewing a couple of jazz festivals, it looks like you have a lot of listening to do. Get on it!

Last Two New AccuJazz Channels of the Decade!

Just in time for Christmas, we have two new channels to finish up both our "Jazz Holiday" roll-out and the decade. First, we have a channel that looks back on everything that happened in jazz over the last decade.

The last decade was by all accounts a great one for jazz. I don't know exactly how history will judge the time period, but I wouldn't be surprised if the last ten years or so were regarded as a high-water mark for creativity in jazz. There are too many artists, albums, labels, and mini-movements to detail in any justice right now, but the good news is that AccuJazz has a new channel playing all sorts of great jazz from the last 10 years!

We're launching "Decade: 2000s," the last and final channel in the decades category (for a while, anyway). It's playing over 3,000 songs from artists as diverse as Ray Brown and Rudresh Mahanthappa, Wynton Marsalis and Maria Schneider [pictured]. I really don't even know how to begin to express the breadth of the music involved, so, just listen and see what you think.

Also showing up just in time for the new decade is the latest addition to our composer channels, "Composers: Jobim," playing the timeless and gorgeous compositions of Antonio Carlos Jobim. Jobim was the compositional force behind the classic "Getz/Gilberto" album, which launched the international bossa nova craze. The gorgeous melodies and rich chords of tunes like "Desafinado" and "Corcovado" helped make him one of the most played composers in the history of jazz.

Our channel is playing over 200 versions of Jobim songs, including tribute albums by Frank Sinatra, Rosa Passos, Joe Henderson, and more. If you only know the hits, give the channel a listen and you'll no doubt fall in love with lesser-known tunes like "Zingaro" and "Inutil Paisagem."

Until next time, Happy Holidays and happy listening! Thanks so much for your support of AccuJazz!

The Best of 2009, According to People Older and Smarter than I

I knew that I wanted to create a Best of 2009 channel this year, but I still haven't made a top-10 list of my own yet. So, instead of relying on my own opinion, I looked to a whole bunch of people who are smarter, more experienced and better-listened than I am to guide the channel's programming.

Critics and bloggers have been posting best-of lists on their own websites as well as on the Jazz Journalists Association site for well over a month now. JazzTimes also conducted a critics poll, tallying up everyone's votes and aggregating the results into a top-50. I expect the Village Voice to publish their critics poll soon.

For the last few weeks, I've been keeping my eyes peeled for year-end lists and compiling the results in a spreadsheet, awarding an album one "point" for every list on which it appeared, and half a "point" if it was granted an honorable mention. The objective was to have a document that showed which albums were deemed the best by the largest number of experts, so that I could create a channel that reflected their opinions.

Now, I know this is an inexact method: some people published a top-10, others had a top-25, and one guy even had a top-130(!). One critic's #11 would be actually be as good as another critic's honorable mention. Also, the JazzTimes poll included the opinions of 40 different critics -- should I have awarded points based on every single critic's individual list, or make up some other points system based on the final results? In the end, I just made up the rules as I went along, and ended up with a spreadsheet that I think fairly accurately reflects the "critical consensus."

You can check out a document showing all of the lists I referenced here. Below is the list of high scorers. With my simplistic point system, many albums received the same amount of points, so I've indicated the ties with letters placed after the numbers. Also, I've only included albums that we have in the AccuJazz collection, so you [regrettably] won't see Miguel Zenon or John Hollenbeck -- gotta get on that. Without further ado, the heavyweight champions of Jazz in 2009:

1) Vijay Iyer - Historicity
2a) Darcy James Argue's Secret Society - Infernal Machines
2b) Steve Lehman Octet - Travail, Transformation and Flow
3) Henry Threadgill Zooid - This Brings Us To, Vol. 1
4) Allen Toussaint - The Bright Mississippi
5a) Keith Jarrett - Paris/London: Testament
5b) Joe Lovano Us Five - Folk Art
6a) Fly - Sky & Country
6b) Darius Jones Trio - Man'ish Boy (A Raw & Beautiful Thing)
6c) Gary Burton/Pat Metheny/Steve Swallow/Antonio Sanchez - Quartet Live
7a) Linda Oh - Entry
7b) Matt Wilson - That's Gonna Leave a Mark
7c) Jeff "Tain" Watts - Watts
7d) Monterey Quartet - Live at the 2007 Monterey Jazz Festival

Total, there are 242 different albums on my spreadsheet, the majority of which are not in the AccuJazz collection. There are dozens more albums that received less points but were still singled out by critics as being among the best. You will hear many of these on the channel, too, but with less frequency. Chances are you'll hear a Vijay Iyer track within your first 6 songs, but it may take a while before you hear something from Mike Reed's About Us, an album that only received a half a point but which I personally place among the best.

There were exactly 2 albums that made it on the JazzTimes poll and which are in my collection but I didn't deem deserving of a place on the channel. What albums are they? I'd rather not publicly ridicule anyone on the blog. If you really, really want to know, you can DM me on Twitter.

I really love listening to this channel, and I sincerely hope you do too. It's as good of evidence as any that the art of jazz is alive and well in 2009. An hour of music from this channel is as good a rebuttal as any to NYT columnist Glenn Branca's recent claim that "Jazz has stopped evolving and become a dead art." From Henry Threadgill's brainy explorations of free improvisation to Darcy James Argue's fusion of big band tradition with modern rock sensibilities, jazz in 2009 was as varied and exhilarating as ever, perhaps moreso than ever.

Enjoy.

Taking a Jazz Holiday

I know I used a Louis Armstrong photo at the top of my last post, but can you ever really see enough of that smile?

In case you didn't know, AccuRadio (AccuJazz's daddy) is well-known for its obscenely extensive Holiday music programming. In fact, said programming was even featured on Chicago Tonight, the nightly news program of Chicago's PBS affiliate, WTTW.

Being around so much Christmas radio cheer, I've naturally tried to think of ways to get AccuJazz in on the fun. Last year, I created an AccuJazz channel called "Swingin' Christmas." It was essentially AccuRadio's "Holiday Jazz" channel minus the smooth jazz, and it garnered lots of listeners. This year I thought I'd take the Holiday programming idea one step further and offer a whole lineup of new channels as a sort of gift basket to you, our faithful listeners. Thus, "Jazz Holiday" was born.





Before even creating any new channels, I took the time (and the company's credit card) to beef up our collection of Christmas jazz, hand-picking some choice tunes from the Amazon mp3 store and contacting record labels and artists who released Christmas albums this year. "Swingin' Christmas" is a much better listen this year than it was last year, with new CDs by Carla Bley, Hot Club of San Francisco, Typhanie Monique and more, as well as new-to-us CDs by Willie Pickens, Ramsey Lewis and Harry Allen among others.

For the first batch of new channels, I followed up on some listener suggestions I got through Twitter and Facebook and created three Swingin' Christmas subchannels: Christmas Vocals, Christmas Instrumentals, and New Christmas Jazz. Interestingly enough, there have been many points in the last week when I've noticed that the vocal and instrumental subchannels have each had more listeners than the main channel.

Now we're going to roll out some pretty awesome Non-Christmas channels, starting with one simply called "Best of 2009." This is not merely a compilation of my favorite music from 2009 (though I hope to create that channel in the coming weeks); the playlist is based on the results of over 20 critics' lists, including the JazzTimes critics poll. I compiled the results in a spreadsheet, awarding "points" based on how many lists selected an album and whether it was on the top or merely an honorable mention.

Vijay Iyer's Historicity was the top scorer, by far, with Steve Lehman and Darcy James Argue tied for second. Other high achievers include Joe Lovano, Henry Threadgill and Allen Toussaint. I programmed the channel based on the results, so it's very likely that you'll hear Vijay Iyer and a little less likely that you'll hear Bobby Broom, whose wonderful Monk tribute only appeared on a couple of lists. If you want to know what's been going on in jazz circa 2009, this channel is the place to start.

The rest of the Jazz Holiday roll-out includes a channel playing music from 2010 Grammy Jazz Nominees, a Decade: 2000s Channel, and one more surprise next week! I hope these gifts of music brighten up your season and help you discover some new favorite jazz artists. Please keep checking back for the updates, and have yourself a very, very happy Holiday!

New Channels: "Composers: Beatles" and "Pop Composers"

We're a little late to the party, but AccuJazz is now officially part of the resurgent Beatlemania sweeping the world right now. We've just launched a new channel called "Composers: Beatles," playing over 150 jazz covers of Beatles songs. Accompanying the Beatles channel is "Pop Composers," which includes the Beatles material plus jazz versions of other "non-jazz" composers, like Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Burt Bacharach and more.

"Composers: Beatles" includes everything from Buddy Rich's screaming big band doing "Norwegian Wood" to Gene Harris laying down the funk on "Get Back" and Baptiste Trotignon getting all sensitive on "Julia." It really makes for a fun and interesting listen, and it has quickly become one of the most-listened-to channels on AccuJazz.

It was also a lot of fun to create. It was the first new channel where I had the go-ahead to take AccuRadio CEO Kurt Hanson's credit card to the Amazon mp3 store and go crazy. Thanks to my faithful Twitter followers who made a lot of great suggestions about worthwile Beatle covers. I never knew quite how many Beatles covers there were out there, and I'm sure there are thousands more. The channel was also fun for me because I've totally fallen victim to the wider Beatle craze. I think I've listened to Abbey Road, Revolver, Rubber Soul, and Sgt. Pepper's a combined 20 times in the past couple of weeks.

Go on now and listen. Then, if you're so inclined, let your friends know about it, and let me know what you think!

New Channel: Brazilian Jazz

You may have noticed the "Shoutbox" on the AccuJazz homepage. I get an encouraging amount of comments through that little thing. At times I even engage in a genuine conversation with a loyal listener through the 'box. Brazilian Jazz marks the first AccuJazz channel instigated completely by comments in the ShoutBox. Some contributors, including one very persistent individual, have been bugging me to create a Brazilian jazz channel for a long time. Despite other listeners pointing out that there's plenty of great Brazilian jazz on the existing Latin Jazz channel, these folks kept lobbying for Brazil.

I'm glad I followed through. The resulting channel is not merely a select few songs from our Latin channel that happend to have Brazilian rhythms. It's a new thing altogether. All the Brazilian-rooted music on the Latin channel is here, but I also went through AccuRadio's servers and found a lot of other relevant music that, up till now, has only been playing on the Latin format, Radio Preciso. Funnily enough, there's already a "Brazilian Jazz" channel there, but it's a definite misnomer; it's mostly Brazilian popular music, with a little bit of jazz and folkloric styles thrown in.

There was still a lot of good music over on the Radio Preciso channel that would help fill out my nascent AccuJazz project and add some stylistic diversity. So the new Brazilian Jazz channel includes a lot of jazz-tinged MPB (Musica Popular Brasileira) as well as some new jazz and bossa nova that wasn't on the Latin Jazz channel previously.

So, when you launch the channel, you'll hear everything from the classic Getz/Gilberto recordings to Dexter Gordon's hard bop bossa to the jazzier output of Caetano Veloso. Go ahead and listen, and then Shout at me about how much you like (or don't like) the channel!

Also, watch out for an all-Jobim composers channel in the coming weeks. If you don't know who Jobim is, listen to the Brazilian Jazz channel and just take a look at the "Composer" field in the media player. Chances are you'll find his name there sooner rather than later.

AccuJazz News: Roll-Out Continues With "Decade: '90s"

The pace is slowing a bit, but we're still rolling out new channels pretty frequently. This week, with "Decade: '90s", we come one channel closer to finishing our roll-out of decades channels.

As is the case with the '80s, the jazz scene in the '90s is impossible to tether to any single style, concept, or trend. There were a lot of excellent jazz musicians, young and old, continuing to make passionate music in an extremely diverse range of styles, including the ever-more popular practice of eschewing style and tradition altogether.

A shortlist of major jazz talents who started their recording careers in the '90s includes Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Dave Douglas, Stefon Harris, Brian Blade, Avishai Cohen, Jason Moran, and Medeski, Martin & Wood. Whoa.

Plus, there were a lot of great jazz veterans still making records: Joe Henderson, Tony Williams, Ray Brown, Bobby Hutcherson, Benny Golson, Paul Motian, Roscoe Mitchell and Billy Taylor, to name a few. The '90s, while not considered a golden age for jazz, like the '50s or '60s, definitely saw its fair share of good music.

Go ahead and hear it all, now, on AccuJazz's "Decade: '90s" channel. Then, as always, let me know what you think!

Thanks for the few comments I've been getting lately, BTW. I appreciate it, and I'm sorry if I don't respond immediately; I'm simply not used to getting comments on the blog and kind of stopped looking for them for a while there.

AccuJazz News: Roll-Out Continues With "Modern West Coast"

I'll be honest: there's a lot less music playing on this new Region channel than the last one, but there's still a lot. The thing about "West Coast Jazz" is that the term doesn't have an exclusively regional connotation, but a stylistic one, too. It's not uncommon for musicians to describe a song as having a "West Coast Jazz" feel. It's interesting that the music coming from California in the 1950s was so distinct that the region became synonymous with a sound. That's certainly not the case with today's West Coast jazz. Today's West Coast jazz offerings display a great deal of diversity, and very little of it conjures the classic cool jazz sound of Chet Baker or Chico Hamilton.

AccuJazz has long had a Cool Jazz channel. It used to be called "West & Cool," but I changed it to "Cool Jazz" for the relaunch of the site earlier this year in anticipation of the region channel at hand. The purpose of this channel is to give a broader view of the music from that part of the country, including lots of newer music from people like Charlie Haden, Nels Cline, Scott Amendola, John Clayton and Jenny Scheinman. And don't worry, I've included some of the classic West Coast stuff by folks like Art Pepper and Gerry Mulligan, too.

Go ahead and listen to the channel, and let me know what you think! FYI: the icon for the channel you see is a photo from outside the historic Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach. It was a hub of the West Coast scene in its '50s heyday, but it looks like they don't offer up much jazz anymore. I guess the image isn't totally apropos for a "Modern" west coast channel, then, but that's OK. Personal note: my family used to vacation in Hermosa Beach when I was younger, and I remember walking by the Lighthouse many times, long before I knew that I should care about its rich history.

AccuJazz News: Roll-Out Continues With "Nothin' But the Blues"

This week's new channel is a unique one: the common element among its hundreds of songs is not a style, decade, region, instrument, age range (Emerging Voices), gender (Women of Jazz), or inclusion in a famous photo (A Great Day in Harlem), but a chord progression. Not just any chord progression, but the end-all-be-all of jazz chord progressions: the 12-bar blues.

Granted, not every "jazz" version of a blues song has the exact same chord progression, but the basic underlying structure is the same, and it's amazing how much variation there is to be heard in the hundreds of tunes playing on our channel. There's early New Orleans jazz (King Oliver's "West End Blues," for instance), fiery bebop (Bird's "Au Privave," "Bloomdido" or "Relaxin' at the Camarillo") and all sorts of post-bop blues compositions, like Wayne Shorter's enduring "Footprints," George Russell's "Stratusphunk," and any number of more modern and adventurous blues-based creations from musicians like Brad Mehldau, Anat Cohen, Conrad Herwig, Dave Holland, Jason Moran and John Scofield.

The aforementioned Stratusphunk is not actually playing on our channel (yet) but was introduced to me via Twitter by the extremely talented composer/band leader Darcy James Argue and I found a great video of the harmonically adventurous George Russell tune on youtube.

Please let me know what your favorite blues heads are, and I'll try to make sure we're playing them. Mine are: Blue 7 (Sonny Rollins), Turnaround (Ornette Coleman), Blues In Blueprint (Duke Ellington), Bolivar Blues (Thelonious Monk), Footprints (Wayne Shorter), All Blues (Miles Davis), Isotope (Joe Henderson), Misterioso (Monk, again) and Sandu (Clifford Brown). Check out the channel right now and listen for these and literally hundreds more.

More Good News:

On the heels of yesterday's good jazz news post, I came across another good news story happening right here in Chicago. A non-profit organization called Urban Aspirations has been putting on weekly jam sessions at a southside restaurant called Sikia, and they're presenting a fundraiser concert Wednesday to raise money for another year of sessions. The concert will feature young trumpet phenom Corey Wilkes [pictured] (whose Cries From tha Ghetto is currently spinning on many AccuJazz channels) and local legend, pianist Ken Chaney.

The more I read about these jam sessions, the more intrigued I am and the more I want them to keep going on. Read this blog post and this news report about the last session and you'll get an idea of how big an impact this sort of thing can have in local kids' lives. There really are zero opportunities for young south side musicians to go jam, so this place is offering an essential service that will could very well launch some potentially important careers. If you want to attend Wednesday's fundraiser, hurry up and buy tickets here now, because tickets are only on sale through tomorrow, July 10.

AccuJazz News: Roll-Out Continues With "Decade: '80s"

It's new channel time again, and we're adding another channel to the "Jazz by Decade" category: the '80s. When I say "'80s Jazz," it probably doesn't summon a strong characteristic sound or image in your mind the way, say, "'50s Jazz" does. Like everything else towards the end of the last century, jazz was becoming more and more diverse and splintered in its aesthetic. While the '50s saw some great steps forward for the music, people undoubtedly think of classic hard bop when associating the decade with a particular sound. With the '60s, it's likely the post bop of Miles and Trane's classic small groups, and with the '70s, it's probably the fusion supergroups led by Miles alumni like Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul and John McLaughlin.

The '80s saw the rise of the so-called "young lions," led by the brothers Marsalis -- young jazz musicians who took to straight-ahead bop instead of the prevailing experimental styles of the '70s. While the young lions got a lot of attention in the '80s, they were by no means the only show in town. Veterans of the avant-garde and fusion scenes like Jack DeJohnette, Paul Motian, The World Saxophone Quartet, Weather Report, and Pat Metheny were pushing forward with new music.

Whether or not you have any vivid sonic image of what "'80s Jazz" sounds like, check out the new channel. You might be surprised how much you like it.

AccuJazz News: Roll-Out Continues With "A Great Day in Harlem"

It's new channel time again, and this week's is very unique: the common factor uniting the artists is not a time period, style, or instrument, but a historic photograph. It's the "Great Day in Harlem" photo. You know the one, right? Well, In case you don't, here it is:

Here's the story behind it: in 1958, a young photographer named Art Kane was assigned by Esquire Magazine to produce a photo to open an article about jazz. Looking back, Kane said he was young and naive to have believed that his ambitious plan could have been practical, but he went for it anyway and succeeded. He attempted to get every major jazz musician in New York to the same spot on 126th Street in Harlem at 10 a.m. Amazingly, 57 of them showed up, resulting in a photograph still unparalleled today in terms of cumulative jazz talent. While some of the musicians present never gained extremely wide name recognition, most of the people in the photo belong on a list of the greatest jazz musicians of all time.

A shortlist of legends present in the photo includes Sonny Rollins, Count Basie, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Horace Silver, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Art Blakey, Marian McPartland, Gene Krupa, Mary Lou Williams, Roy Eldridge, Jimmy Rushing, Benny Golson, Gerry Mulligan, Johnny Griffin, Hank Jones, Sonny Greer, Jo Jones, Milt Hinton, Oscar Pettiford, Dicky Wells and Pee Wee Russell.

The AccuJazz channel is playing recordings from throughout the careers of these magnificent players, from early Count Basie to Sonny Rollins's 2008 release, and lots of other great music in between.

The photo has attained legendary status, with an Academy Award-Nominated documentary about it, and even a starring role in a Spielberg movie. It was the first photo Art Kane took in his professional career, and he went on to become a very successful photographer, taking iconic pictures of rock musicians like The Who, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan.

The idea for this channel actually came from fellow AccuRadio employee Paul Maloney. Thanks Paul! Give it a listen and let me know what you think, either here, or on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, or the ShoutBox on the AccuJazz homepage.

AccuJazz News: Roll-Out Continues With "Trombone Jazz"

For this week's new channel, we highlight one of the more under-appreciated jazz instruments: the trombone. Sure, "Piano Jazz" is our most popular channel (even more popular than the main channel), but I have a feeling there are a lot of folks out there who have been waiting for this one.

The trombone is probably less popular simply because there are less people playing it. And why is that, you ask? Because it's really freaking hard to play! Nonetheless, young musicians decide to take up the trombone every year, and many of them go on to unlikely careers playing it. Many of the greatest musicians and composers in jazz history have been trombonists. From Tommy Dorsey to J.J. Johnson to Steve Turre, the instrument has attracted talented, creative individuals who play in plenty of different styles.

"Trombone Jazz" has been a long time coming; I knew when I first started working at AccuRadio that it would be a necessary addition to the "Jazz by Instrument" category, and I've been adding great music to the channel's play list ever since. If you find the channel less than satisfactory on first listen (which I'm pretty sure will not be the case), please come back and listen again on Monday, when a new update including about 600 more songs will have gone through.

The channel provides an education in the history of jazz trombone, from the early swing trombone of Dickie Wells and Jack Teagarden to the bebop mastery of Curtis Fuller and Frank Rosolino to the creative modern sounds of Roswell Rudd, Conrad Herwig, Robin Eubanks and Jeff Albert.

A recent listening session produced a playlist including youngster Josh Roseman, Herwig, modern hard-bopper Steve Davis, and J.J. Go on and listen, and see what trombonists show up for you. Then let me know what you think right here, or via Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, or the ShoutBox on the AccuJazz homepage.

AccuJazz News: Roll-Out Continues With "Decade: '40s"

This week's new channel makes for the 4th Decade channel at AccuJazz, joining the Pre-1940 channel and a channel apiece for the '50s and '60s.

As with all decades, jazz didn't have a uniform sound or aesthetic during the '40s. In the earlier part of the decade, swing was still king. Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington were household names and Benny Goodman's band was one of the hottest touring acts in the country. That soon changed, with big bands becoming harder to keep together and pop crooners taking over the airwaves.

Jazz wan't just going to die, though, right? Nope. You know the story: Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie came swooping in and saved the day with their new, revolutionary style of jazz called "Bebop." The new style breathed life into jazz and spurred on further innovation that continues to this day.

You'll hear everything from Dorsey's sentimental swing to Bud Powell's fiery bop on the channel, as well as gypsy jazz by Django Reinhardt, raucous big band music by Woody Herman, and plenty more.

In my first listening session I heard great tunes by Nat King Cole, Mary Lou Williams, Bud Powell and Duke Ellington. Pretty good start, I'd say.

Go ahead and listen to the channel here, and then let me know what you think in the comments section, or on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, or the ShoutBox on the AccuJazz home page.

AccuJazz News: Roll-out continues with "Regions: New York Now"

This week's new channel, arriving just in time to actually be truthfully called "This Week's 

New Channel," is the second addition to our Regions category, and it's focused on the great music coming out of the Mecca of the jazz world, New York Ciy.  "Regions: New York Now" is dedicated to music made in New York in the last two decades because a channel that played all the music from throughout jazz history made in New York would encompass almost all of the AccuJazz music collection.

It's amazing that even with the globalization and digitization of the music industry, New York remains an essential hub of jazz music, with most all of the important modern jazz being made there.  It is undoubtedly still the center of the jazz world, with everything from cutting edge cosmopolitan jazz to straight-up hard bop to austere Avant-Garde jazz filling the city's venues every night.  Listeners will hear all of the above, and plenty more, on the new AccuJazz channel.

A recent listen to the channel produced this playlist: a track from young Japanese-born New York pianist Eri Yamamoto, a song from Wynton Marsalis' Citi Movement, a track by Dave Holland with Jack DeJohnette and Steve Coleman from Holland's Triplicate, and a song from master trombonist Conrad Herwig.  It was great listening and represented well the stylistic variation inherent in an all-NY station.

Alright, here's the part of the blog where I tell you to go listen, now!  Let me know what you think right here, or on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, or the Shoutbox on the AccuJazz homepage.

AccuJazz News: Roll-Out Continues With "Composers: Bird and Diz"

This week's new channel is the third addition to the "Jazz by Composer" category, and it's all about Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, known to jazz fans as "Bird" and "Diz," respectively. While we all think of the innovations of Bebop as mostly pertaining to improvisation, it also ushered in a golden age of jazz composition. Bird and Diz wrote prolifically, and contributed a number of standards to the repertoire.

Tunes like "Now's the Time," "A Night in Tunisia," "Yardbird Suite," and "Salt Peanuts" are as prevalent in jazz recordings and jam sessions as old Tin Pan Alley favorites like "All the Things You Are," and "What is This Thing Called Love." While you'll hear plenty of the aforementioned Bird and Diz tunes on this channel, you'll also have the opportunity to hear many of their lesser-known compositions performed by a diverse cast of musicians.

Some rare gems have come up on my recent listens.There's the version of Bird's "Dewey Square" performed, on piano, by avant-garde reed master Anthony Braxton, from his 1995 album "Seven Standards." There's also an adventurous 7/4 reading of Bird's "Confirmation" by the young saxophonist John Ellis, and a whole album's worth of lesser-known Parker tunes performed by a drummer-less trio led by trumpeter Roy Hargrove ("Parker's Mood").

Whether you're a bebop expert or curious as to what all the fuss is about, this new channel is definitely worth checking out. Listen now and let me know what you think right here on the blog or on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, or the ShoutBox on the AccuJazz homepage.