From left: Linda May Han Oh, Kris Davis, Terri Lyne Carrington, Aja Burrell Wood Photo by Kelly Davidson Women have been part of jazz from its beginning. It’s a rich but complicated story framed by limited opportunity mixed with unwritten rules, sexism, and benign neglect. None of this is surprising: Generous as jazz can be, …
The New World Symphony, Miami Beach, presenting Project 305 Think of the city as an orchestra – a rhythm section of cars and buses; the brass sounds of a factory; the emotions played out by a string section, told in the sounds of water; a choir of voices, perhaps in many different languages, all at …
Finding the Symphony in the Sound of a City (Knight Foundation) Read More »
It’s a late Friday morning at Britto Central on Lincoln Road and a casually elegant couple is being led around the gallery by an attendant, price list in hand. In the small office in the back of the gallery, the phone rings nonstop. Sitting in a second-floor studio, oblivious to the employees frantically moving …
After meeting the love of their life, most people send roses or a love letter. Isabel Allende sent a contract. Allende laughs as if caught in a private joke. Her large, brown eyes come to life, and, for the briefest moment, her face, a striking mask etched in thin, short, straight lines and sharp …
Latin America’s Scheherazade, Isabel Allende Weaves Fantastical Tales (The Boston Globe) Read More »
By the time he was captured and killed in Bolivia, Ernesto “Che” Guevara was shadowed by failures. His last was leading a small leftist guerrilla group in the Bolivian mountains on a campaign to spark a continental war of liberation. Taken wounded after a battle with the Bolivian army on Oct. 8, 1967, Guevara was …
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. not only vacationed at the Hampton House but held press conferences and held meetings such as the one with the Southern Christian Conference Leadership in April 1966 When saxophonist Jesse Jones Jr. takes the stage at The Hampton House, Friday, as part of the “Jazz in the House” series, he …
Miami’s House of Blues, Jazz, and Civil Rights (Artburst Miami) Read More »
The music of Nils Petter Molvær is the sound of paradox. It’s the sound of “Solid Ether,” a track from the Norwegian trumpeter, composer, and producer’s recently released CD, An American Compilation (Thirsty Ear). In fact, “Solid Ether” could serve as a manifesto on Molvær’s musical philosophy: delicate melodies floating over brutal, industrial rhythms; breathy, …
Nils Petter Molvær and the Music of Paradoxes (JAZZIZ) Read More »
Willie Clarke, co-founder of Deep City Records. Photo by Larry G. Warmoth. Well before Miami Sound became a brand name, there was a Miami sound. It came together in the mid-’60s and it was soul and funk as only Miami could make it. It was raw and gritty. It was built on the sanctified grooves …
Deep City Records, Miami’s Motown (Knight Foundation) Read More »
Not many musicians can boast of playing under the baton of masters such as Arturo Toscanini, Frederic “Fritz” Reiner, and Pierre Monteux and having recorded with Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie. But also being a teacher, a record producer, publisher, and arts administrator — all while also composing symphonic works, chamber music, and developing an …
Gunther Schuller: A Life in Music (University of Miami, SCORE Magazine) Read More »
Picking cotton near Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1939. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. Wikimedia This is the heart of the Delta, a brooding, magnificent plain in northwest Mississippi that runs south to Vicksburg, east to Mississippi’s central mountain range, and spills over into Arkansas to the west and Tennessee to the north. The blues were …