Since the dawn of the all-encompassing non-genre now known by the blanket term “pop,” and specifically since the popularity surges of Elvis Presley and the Beatles, it’s become increasingly difficult for jazz musicians to get substantial paying gigs. Even pop players have since become relegated to legacy acts, but jazz — which has been called “America’s classical music” — … [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...]
Frost string trio opens Flagler Museum music series
It’s been quiet, musically speaking, at the Flagler Museum over the past year as COVID-19 silenced the annual chamber music programs at Whitehall. Since 1999, the mansion-museum in Palm Beach has welcomed some of the leading chamber music groups on the world scene, especially young string quartets such as the Dover, Calidore, and New Orford, all of whom have played the … [Read more...]
Flagler Museum to feature six concerts by University of Miami musicians this season
Tucked away in Coral Gables, several miles southwest of the city it’s named for, the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami (www.frost.miami.edu) is the linchpin of all South Florida musical institutions of higher learning. Renamed for arts patrons Phillip and Patricia Frost in 2003, its program actually goes back 95 years. Saxophonist Paul Chafin (1930-2008) … [Read more...]