Today’s show highlights several of the artists featured at the first annual Solvang Jazz Festival, on Sept. 28th and 29th. We’ll hear music from Airto, Freddie Hubbard, and Hubert Laws. Then we’ll do a brief sonic tour of the career of Miles Davis, who died 16 years ago today.
For more info about the Solvang Jazz Festival, visit http://www.solvangjazz.com/
Today we pay tribute to yet another great figure in jazz who passed away in recent weeks: keyboardist, composer, and band leader Joe Zawinul. Originally hailing from Austria, Zawinul (along with John McLaughlin) became a key European jazz artist tapped by Miles Davis to electrify the trumpeter’s fusion- period work. Zawinul was also known for his contributions to Cannonball Adderley’s group, particularly his classic tune “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.” Zawinul was most well-known, however, for co-founding (with Wayne Shorter) Weather Report, the most successful jazz fusion group of the 1970’s.
Today’s show features some of the amazing sounds from last week’s Guelph Jazz Festival and Colloquium, in Guelph, Ontario. For 13 years, this festival has combined scholarship, public interviews and lectures, and great concerts spanning a wide range of improvised music. It is quite simply one of the most incredible events in North America for creative music making. Today we’ll listen to several artists featured in this year’s festival, including Myra Melford, Anthony Braxton, Marianne Trudel, Isaiah Ceccarelli, Jesse Stewart, and festival organizer, professor, and pianist, Ajay Heble.
For more information on the festival, visit www.guelphjazzfestival.com
Today, we highlight some of the amazing music made by multi-instrumentalist, composer, and teacher Yusef Lateef. Lateef is, like Bill Dixon and Sam Rivers, an octogenarian improviser still making vital, creative music after a long career of performing with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, et. al. Lateef has also been an important educator, having taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst for many years. He calls his music “autophysiopsychic” music, and we’ll hear samples of his mastery of various instruments including tenor sax, flute, and more!