Jazz & Blues

Percussionist Lary Barilleau leads his new Latin Jazz Collective on the next Jazz Northwest, Sunday, May 20 at 1 pm PDT on 88.5, KPLU.   The concert was this month's installment of the Art of Jazz series presented by Earshot Jazz at The Seattle Art Museum. The quintet played music ranging from Latin Jazz classics to newer compositions by Lary Barilleau and Jay Thomas. 

Last Friday, during their 4-night engagement at Jazz Alley, this jazz super-group consisting of drummer Jack DeJohnette, Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke visited the KPLU Performance Studio for a little conversation with jazz host, Abe Beeson, and a whole lot of music!

The Legend of John Henry is an iconic myth of American railroad history, a battle between man and steam drill. One of the intriguing things about the legend is that no one knows for sure if John Henry existed. At least part of the myth is based  on historical events from the mid-1800’s; some say the source lies in Alabama, others point to West Virginia, both places where significant railroad tunnels were dug.

The Pacific Northwest is blessed with outstanding jazz talent from Portland to Vancouver, BC and this week on Jazz Northwest we'll feature some new releases by some of them.  Former Seattle resident Dee Daniels now divides her time between New York and Vancouver, BC.  This weekend she's featured at the Grand Opening of the new Bake's Place, Bellevue through Sunday.  Human Spirit, with Thomas Marriott, Mark Taylor, Matt Jorgensen and guests Orrin Evans and Essiet Essiet has a new CD recorded at Tula's during last Fall's Earshot Festival.  

More links from this week:

• Interesting discussions at George Colligan's blog this week. An informed opinion on the charge that music schools produce "cookie cutter" musicians. Some thoughts on sight reading, that misunderstood skill among the jazz community. And a low brass forum erupts.

Tampa Red was a slide guitar pioneer who helped create the template for modern blues. His distinctive use of single-string slide melodies in the 1920’s would go on to influence virtually every slide player who followed him, including Big Bill Broonzy and Muddy Waters.

In the days before amplification, he played a steel-bodied resonator guitar, the loudest and showiest guitar available. And he was one of the early adopters of the electric guitar, making the switch in the 1940’s.

The Undead Music Festival, which lifted off last night, has grown every year. On Friday, it will outgrow New York City.

Now in its third year, this jazz festival typically seizes small pockets of Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan, as it did yesterday, building immersive urban playgrounds where largely young audiences flood venues with colored admissions bracelets. It is jazz as both heady experience and social happening. But on Friday's Night of the Living DIY, the venues scatter across five Brooklyn neighborhoods, as well as a half-dozen cities across the U.S.

For arranger Gil Evans' centennial, we celebrate a concert from the 2011 Monterey Jazz Festival. Evans was born on May 13, 1912. In three collaborations in the late 1950s, two friends — Evans and Miles Davis — steered their projects into a new era for jazz.

Their first album was Miles Ahead. Named in its honor, this concert is "Still Ahead," with music from the pair's second and third records, Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain.

Singer Tierney Sutton’s band were in deep discussion five minutes before their live in-studio performance on KPLU last Wednesday, trying to decide which three songs to play for our audience. It was just one example of how interconnected each member of this quartet really is.

We learned more about each band member’s extra-musical skills were divided, how they’d go about sharing their surely impending Grammy Award (they've been nominated for five so far), and Tierney told us about walking the fine line as lyrical story teller and vocal improviser.