Big Al

We're talking VERY big Al Carson, who sings every night on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. I just got back. Irv Peckham and I found Big Al in a bar with "Pirate" in the name. I forgot the rest of the name.

I saw a few jazz bands on the street too.

Zenon!

The Redwood Jazz Alliance is proud to present the Miguel Zenon Quartet in concert, Monday, April 7 at 8:00 p.m., in the Kate Buchanan Room on the HSU campus.

Zenon, who won the Downbeat Critics Poll “Rising Star Alto Saxophone” category three years running (2004-2006) and was named Best New Artist of 2006 by the readers of Jazz Times, is a major new voice at the crossroads of contemporary and Latin jazz. Paul Olson of All About Jazz calls the Miguel Zenon Quartet “one of the premier live groups in contemporary jazz.”

A highly sought-after sideman (he’s done notable stints with David Sanchez and Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, among others—and he’s a founding member of the SFJazz Collective, with whom he appeared in Arcata for a CenterArts performance in 2004), Zenon is also well-established as a leader: his 2002 debut album, “Looking Forward,” was named independent jazz album of the year by the New York Times, and his most recent, “Jibaro” (which incorporates folk influences of the “musica jibara” of Zenon’s native Puerto Rico), made a half-dozen major Top 10 lists for 2006.

He’ll be touring behind a brand new release, “Awake,” due out April 1 on Branford Marsalis’s Marsalis Music label.

Two other members of Zenon’s quartet, Venezuelan-born pianist Luis Perdomo and Austrian-born bassist Hans Glawischnig, are critically acclaimed rising stars in their own right and have recently recorded as leaders of their own groups. The newest member of the group, drummer Henry Cole, was named as an outstanding young player to watch in the January 2006 Modern Drummer magazine feature article "The Future Of Drumming."

Zenon will also present a free public workshop on Tuesday, April 8 at 10:00 a.m., in Fulkerson Recital Hall at HSU.

Advance tickets ($15 general admission, $10 students and seniors) are available online at redwoodjazzalliance.org, and are also available at The Metro, The Works (both Eureka and Arcata), and People’s Records.

Look who's coming to town! Miguel Zenon, Monday night, April 7: A Musician's Musician.

Kenny and Me

This is the singer Kenny Washington and me at the Marcus Shelby masterclass.

Postings have been sparse lately. I'm writing a paper for the 4Cs (College Composition and Communication Conference), and it's taking all my time. Here's my subject:

This panel extends Gregory Clark’s post-Burkean call for a “jazz rhetoric” by adding to Clark’s key term, “improvisation,” an exploration into the “dissonance” featured at the heart of Myron Tuman’s considerable body of work in the field of literacy and composition studies.

D. Stacey will trace Tuman’s achievement, through several book-length studies, of a complex ethical appeal to be described as “dissonant ambivalence.” This highly-developed point of view is a jazz-inflected, jangled, undecided, back-and-forth “dance-of-attitude” (see Burke) performed in Word Perfect as a celebration/lament of the displacement of old ways of reading by new technologies of writing; in Language and Limits with a critique of critical thinking in a description and defense of “deep language”; and in Criticalthinking.com as the intent to fashion a skepticism of assent (a la the Wayne Booth of Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent [1974]).

Sunnyside Records Hearts RJA

Because we like Chris Potter, they like us:


Chris Potter's albums selected in the 10 best of 2007 by Chicago Tribune, PopMatters and the Redwood Jazz Alliance

Chris Potter

2007-12-29 Chicago Tribune puts it in third position : "The writing for Potter's tentet is so harmonically advanced, structurally sound and intellectually rigorous as to demand repeated listening" .
Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune - December 2007 read the full article

PopMatters puts it in 7th :" Chris Potter is building a claim to greatness"
Will Layman, PopMatters - December 2007 read the full article

Northcoast Journal and the Redwood Jazz Alliance put both of his records tied in number 1 position:" What they have in common is Potter's brillinat improvisations,"
Redwood Jazz Alliance - December 2007 read the full article

Marcus Shelby Comes and Goes

It's hard to believe that the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra has come to town and left again. This one was huge. It took a lot of planning and even more legwork, but I think it went off superfine.

I'll have more pics and some thoughts on the big band's performance, the parties afterward, and the next days masterclass, forthcoming. Kenny Washington too.

Many big thanks to Jambalaya and Three Foods for taking such good care of the band after the show and at the next morning's send off breakfast. Of course there are many more people to thank too. I think Arcata-Eureka and McKinleyville have been long nurturing a serious desire for more great music to come to town.

Tomorrow Night!

Greetings from your friends at the Redwood Jazz Alliance. We've got a couple of final reminders about the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra concert this Friday night in the Van Duzer Theater:

1) The concert starts at 7 p.m.

2) All tickets are general admission, so get there early for the best seats.

Tickets are available at The Metro, People's Records and the Works in Arcata and Eureka through Friday morning. You can purchase tickets from our website (http://www.redwoodjazzalliance.org/tickets.htm) through Friday morning as well (and get a free RJA t-shirt if you buy a pair of tickets!)

Tickets will also be available at the door Friday night.

We'll see you at the show!

The Redwood Jazz Alliance