Tagged: Jazz

Three-time Grammy winner Ramsey Lewis, who rose to prominence in the early 1970′s, released his 80th album, Ramsey, Taking Another Look today with his Electric Band.

“The idea of the electric quintet came up and having played mostly in an acoustic trio arrangement for twelve-fifteen years, I decided to get together with the guys to see how it felt," Lewis said.

Read more on Groove Notes.

In this studio session, we welcomed Donald Harrison (alto saxophone, congas) and Glen David Andrews (trombone), both of whom were born in New Orleans’ Treme neighborhood, cut their musical teeth on the music of Treme, and can be seen in the HBO television series, Treme. 

Currently they’re also part of an ever-changing line-up of New Orleans musicians touring with a show called A Night In Treme which is bringing the music of Treme’s Congo Square to cities all over America - including Seattle's Jazz Alley through Sunday night.

The Ellis Marsalis Center for Music opened last week in the Musicians’ Village in New Orleans’s Upper 9th Ward.

The center is a performance hall and place where local students and musicians can make recordings, take classes and have access to computers and community rooms.

KPLU’s Kevin Kniestedt visited the site of the center in 2010.

Read more on Groove Notes.

The Vancouver Wine & Jazz Festival is now recognized as the #1 Cultural Tourism event in Vancouver and Southwest Washington and is “…the largest jazz festival of its kind in the Northwest…”  (KATU Channel 2, Portland, OR). 

I had the opportunity this week to speak by phone with tenor saxophonist Anton Schwartz.

Anton recently moved to the Seattle area. I had the chance to ask him about what brought him to the Puget Sound, and how he has networked himself into the local jazz scene so far.

Relive last week’s studio session with vocalist/pianist, Karrin Allyson, who was joined by guitarist Rod Fleeman.

The Earshot Jazz Festival gets kicked off in Seattle on October 14th and runs through November 6th. While the full schedule does not get released until September, the early bookings feature a wonderful variety of top tier musicians.

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With students such as Quincy Jones and Miles Davis and a playing career that includes Duke Ellington and Count Basie, one would expect jazz great Clark Terry to have some pearls of wisdom and a few great stories to share.

And now that influence and inspiration will be brought to the screen in a documentary called “Keep on Keepin’ On.”

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