I have very mixed feelings about NPR and their commitment to jazz, or lack thereof. They long ago dropped staff and funding for Jazz Profiles — no new ones, just re-runs. Jazz Set, now hosted by Dee Dee Bridgewater is still running (I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how much of it is new or not), and thankfully Marian McPartland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Piano Jazz also continues. (I think there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be a world-wide honest-to-God rebellion if they dropped Marian\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s show.) <\/p>\n
But lately I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve taken notice of the NPR online jazz offerings such as their Jazz & Blues page<\/a><\/strong> with changing features and Take Five: A Weekly Jazz Sampler.<\/a><\/strong> This week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sampler is titled Feeling The Vibes: The Short History Of A Long Instrument.<\/a><\/strong> The five selections include the usual suspects — Lionel Hampton, Milt Jackson, Gary Burton and Bobby Hutcherson — plus Stefon Harris playing Bach, specifically “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”<\/p>\n This particular track brought to my attention The Classical Jazz Quartet featuring some of my favorite people \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Kenny Barron on piano, Lewis Nash on drums and Ron Carter on bass. How this series of recordings (CJQ Plays Bach<\/a><\/strong>, CJQ Plays Rachmaninoff<\/a><\/strong>, and CJQ Plays Tchaikovsky<\/a><\/strong>) escaped my radar I do not know. <\/p>\n Perhaps due to my classical conservatory training, combined with growing up in a jazz household, I am one of those who love the jazz\/classical hybrid. Eons ago, during lessons with Roland Hanna, he would take a classical piece from my repertoire and interpret it his way. At that time he was especially fond of Debussy and also introduced me to Scriabin. I could only dream of making such magic. <\/p>\n To this day, when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m writing, or editing, I find it soothing to listen to John Lewis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Bach Preludes & Fugues<\/a><\/strong> or Ron Carter Meets Bach<\/a><\/strong>. So now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got some new CDs on the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have very mixed feelings about NPR and their commitment to jazz, or lack thereof. They long ago dropped staff and funding for Jazz Profiles — no new ones, just re-runs. Jazz Set, now hosted by Dee Dee Bridgewater is still running (I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how much of it is new or not), and thankfully … Continue reading “NPR and Jazz?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boos-and-bravos","category-jazz-ears","category-writing-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}