Drums game

Here's a drums game and some other music games. TGIF!

Soundies: A Musical History Hosted by Michael Feinstein

Here's another interesting jazz program on Philadelphia's public tv station, WHYY-TV:

Soundies: A Musical History Hosted by Michael Feinstein
Saturday, March 31 at 8 p.m.

Before television and MTV, there were "soundies" — three-minute, black-and-white films featuring the era's hottest big band, jazz and swing-era artists, including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Count Basie. The best of these performances, meticulously restored to pristine quality, are presented along with new interviews that explore their role as the forerunners to today's music videos.

(Totally unrelated...I just ran across this funny Lily Tomlin quote: "We're all in this together -- by ourselves.")

Another internet jazz radio station

This jazz radio station has different channels for jazz piano, vocals, saxophone, guitar, etc. There are also other stations for other types of music besides jazz.

It's called AccuJazz.

April 15 - Jazz Bridge benefit for musicians in crisis

Jazz Bridge, a nonprofit that assists local jazz musicians in crisis, is holding its first benefit on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at LaRose Supper Club, 5531 Germantown Ave, Philadelphia, PA from 5:00-9:00 PM. Some of the Philadelphia area's most revered jazz artists will be giving of their talent and time to help raise money for jazz musicians from Wilmington, DE to Trenton, NJ, to Reading, PA and Atlantic City and Cape May. A fabulous buffet will be included in the ticket price and WRTI's Bob Perkins will be hosting the event. Plenty of FREE parking.

Tickets are $35 per person ($15 tax deductible) and are on sale at Jazz Bridge's secure website, jazzbridge.org and at LaRose Supper Club. For info: 856-858-8914 or 215-844-5818.

This year Jazz Bridge has helped with medical care, free hospital stays and medical testing, free eye exams and low cost glasses, free legal advice, funeral expenses, and many other resources that our local jazz musical community needed and received. Your generosity of spirit will help Jazz Bridge keep assisting our local jazz musicians in the future.

Billie Holiday - Fine and Mellow (1957)

Lester's solo is wonderful - I remember this clip from the Ken Burns' show. Here's the Youtube caption:

Reunited after many years with tenor saxophonist Lester Young, Billie's visual reaction to his moving solo remains as eloquent as anything she ever sang; a touching finale to their historic musical partnership. Introduced by Robert Herridge (producer/host of CBS' "The Sound of Jazz"), this is perhaps the single most famous "live jazz" performance in TV history. Other members of the all-star band seen here: Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Gerry Mulligan, Roy Eldridge, Doc Cheatham, Vic Dickenson, Danny Barker, Milt Hinton, Mal Waldron..."We shall not see their likes again."

Music theory web site - tutorials, exercises, Q&A

That pretty much covers it. I like the looks of this "Teoria" music theory site, especially the tutorials that include sound to teach about intervals and chords.

A Jazz Improvisation Primer

That's the name of Marc Sabatella's book you can browse in full text at this site. Looks like it might be a helpful resource.

Sarah Vaughan - Somewhere over the Rainbow

Just beautiful.

One way to practice & score a few points!

Check out this crazy video.

Synesthesia - color of sound

Here's a neat site dealing with synesthesia, the condition where a person's senses are intertwined, such as hearing sounds in color. This site is an experiment - normal folks can match colors to songs heard on the site, and you can see if there's a common pattern. If nothing else, I like the colors!

Look at ColorOfMySound.com.

Jazz greats preserved in sound archive

The Library of Congress has announced its annual 25 selections of historically or aesthetically significant sounds recordings to be preserved in the National Recording Registry. Jelly Roll Morton, Sarah Vaughan...see who else made it.

They are accepting nominations for the 2007 registry - it just has to be a recording at least 10 years old. Got anything worthy? Submit it! Last year two public nominations were included in the registry — recordings of a foghorn in the Midwest and a high school marching band from Modesto, Calif., playing Beethoven in a competition.

Ortliebs is reopening March 8

Ortliebs Jazz Haus in Philadelphia has completed its renovations and is reopening tomorrow. Wonder if the bison head is still on the wall.

Naxos Classical Music Spotlight podcasts

If you're reading this blog, you probably know a lot about jazz...maybe not so much about classical. If you'd like to learn a little more about classical music, check out the Naxos Classical Music Spotlight podcasts here at the Naxos web site or at the itunes store.

In these 20-minute podcasts, the Naxos classical music label highlights their new releases and looks at performers and composers who make their recordings. So they're kind of a combo marketing/educational tool, and they're very nicely done. I've listened to several and really enjoyed them - in fact after listening to one on Mahler's 5th Symphony (which I hadn't heard before), I had to run out and buy the piece immediately to hear the full slow movement which is AMAZING. Ironically, the music store I went to didn't carry the Naxos CD, so I bought a different one. Sorry Naxos.

Free play-along tracks

I just found JazzPianoTracks.com, where you can download free play-along tracks for jazz and other improvised music. Then I noticed the site has a link to LarrysImprovPage, so I guess Tony found it first!

"I have acted stupidly, dishonestly, and unlawfully."

Thus spake the husband of British pianist Joyce Hatto, after it was recently discovered that he had passed off other musicians' recordings as those of his wife! As the story goes, she was dying of cancer and he tried to edit out her grunts of pain with clips from other recordings...one thing led to another, and next thing you know, he's slapping her name on whatever he can get his hands on. When she died last year, he had produced over 100 cds.

We might never have known, but for itunes....someone put in one of "her" cds, and itunes identified it as a release by pianist Laszlo Simon. Game over.

"I was desperate to finish her life, which had been disappointing in so many ways, on a high note," he wrote.

I'd call it a stolen note.

Jazz Transcriptions

This site links to almost 30 other sites all offering free jazz transcriptions. Have fun.