Before being interrupted by bebop, then Elvis Presley, and then The Beatles and the remaining British Invasion, big band jazz was America’s most popular music. Yet despite the genre’s overall scroll of innovators, jazz as a whole has scrambled for the spotlight in-between (and ever since) in the United States — even as its innovators were, and continue to be, embraced … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2022-23: The season in jazz
In 1998, a quartet of jazz/fusion veterans started an instrumental group in which they interpreted music by seminal jam band the Grateful Dead. More recently, a rising jazz record label started mixing in elements of hip-hop to draw new and younger fans to America's time-honored genre. Both are called Jazz Is Dead. Yet this isn't an obituary for live jazz, rather … [Read more...]
Postmodern Jukebox warms up chilly Boca Fest finale
By Dale King The final evening of this year’s Festival of the Arts Boca at the Mizner Park Amphitheater in Boca Raton on March 8 was damn cold, with a biting wind that made ambient temperatures in the 60s feel even frostier. Still, the not-too-comfortable folding chairs on the amphitheater lawn were nearly filled, thanks, in large part, to the appearance of Postmodern … [Read more...]