HOOVER – Jazz music from legends like Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald filled the Spain Park High School library on Feb. 24 as the Shades of Blue Jazz Band performed in honor of Black History Month. The band played a variety of well-known songs, including “It Don’t Mean a Thing” and “I’ve Got You Under [...]
Alex Rodriguez Benjamin Peters Jack Earnhart Kyle Smith Ryan Phillips By STEPHEN HU FOR THE FREE–LANCE STAR The jazz group Sound Fusion is like a band of brothers. All the members are young men between the ages of 19 and 29. As the name suggests, their music is inspired by the jazz-rock fusion sounds that [...]
Tom Cook, retired Fort Atkinson High School band director, has been selected as the 2020 inductee into the Wisconsin State Music Association’s Marching Band Hall of Fame. The honor comes after several decades of involvement in marching band and other musical leadership across the state and beyond, during which time Cook transformed the Fort Atkinson [...]
LONGMEADOW, MA (WGGB/WSHM) -- Longmeadow native and an international jazz competition finalist Hailey Brinnel is now adding bandleader to her resume. She’s releasing her first jazz album this week. Brinnel, 25, is dreaming dreams. Originally from Longmeadow, the trombonist and vocalist now lives in Philadelphia. She has performed at prestigious venues around the world, including [...]
American pianist Chick Corea live in concert in Mumbai in 2018. Photo: Prashin Jagger With the passage of time, jazz music, now about 120 years old, has become a reservoir of some of the greatest music ever. After so many generations of artists, styles and influences, jazz has evolved into a fine tapestry of music. [...]
Golden Eagles Black Masking Indians, 1980. Photographer: Michael Smith. Allison Miner Collection, Tulane University Special Collections. Tulane University Special Collections (TUSC) is pleased to announce an expanded mission and new name for its famed music archive. Previously known as the Hogan Jazz Archive, the reconceived Hogan Archive of New Orleans Music and New Orleans Jazz [...]
Pearson Cross headlines the next virtual PASA in Your Casa concert at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 19, offered by Performing Arts Serving Acadiana (PASA). He’ll be joined by Lucas Munce on alto sax. Tickets to the online event are available at http://bit.ly/PASACross [bit.ly] or on PASA's website www.pasonline.org [pasonline.org] Cross, the associate dean of [...]
Jazz is the foundation of Mark Ruffin’s career as a music historian, journalist and broadcaster. The principles of jazz composition also inspired his fictional takes on topics of race and intolerance. In “Bebop Fairy Tales: An Historical Fiction Trilogy on Jazz, Intolerance, and Baseball,” Ruffin weaves jazz, baseball and real people — with their very [...]
Three-time GRAMMY Award-nominated pianist Joey Alexander follows his major-label debut album, WARNA (Verve Records), with three new singles "SALT" (March 19), "Under the Sun" (April 23), and "Summer Rising" (May 28) set for global release on Verve in spring 2021. In just seven years subsequent the release of five critically-acclaimed studio albums (My Favorite Things, [...]
The 54th annual Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival, hosted by the University of Idaho’s eponymous school of music, will be delivered virtually this year, but organizers are still finding a way to showcase young talent. Included with a slate of professional performers for this year’s fest is a student ensemble assembled from universities across the country [...]