Jazz and Blues

Seattle’s biggest jazz event of the year begins this weekend. The wide-ranging Earshot Jazz Festival runs over three weeks and includes over 50 concerts by international and regional musicians who perform in many combinations and locations.

Robert Johnson has become a mythical figure of the blues, who acquired his prodigious skills in a deal with the devil at the crossroads. The truth is he was a man who worked very hard to turn himself into a musician. His early attempts at music – sitting in with legends Charley Patton and Son House—were not successful, and he didn’t appear to have much in the way of musical talent.

But then Johnson found a teacher in Ike Zinneman, an unrecorded Mississippi blues player, spending a year developing his musicianship.

Mark your calendar for some great live Latin Jazz in October and November!

High on any list of all-time classic jazz albums is the 1949-50 Miles Davis album "Birth of The Cool" which grew out of an informal composers/ arrangers workshop with Gil Evans, Gerry Mulligan and John Lewis among others.  That album continues to be influential among jazz musicians today, one of them being trombonist Andy Clausen who has studied these recordings and arrangements extensively.  Last summer, he organized a concert of this music which was presented by Earshot Jazz at The Chapel performance space in Seattle. 

KPLU is now accepting applications for 2012/2013 (Volume 9) from schools that are new to the School of Jazz program. The goal is to work with diverse schools and jazz programs: those with award-winning jazz bands, those who crave mentoring, and/or those who want the experience of recording a CD.

Curtis Stigers is a singer, songwriter, saxophonist who loves the great Tin Pan Alley songs of George Gershwin and Cole Porter, but finds a greater creative challenge in doing jazz versions of songs by more contemporary songwriters.