Night Lights is a weekly one-hour radio program of classic jazz hosted by David Brent Johnson and produced by WFIU Public Radio. Night Lights airs on WFIU HD1 Saturday at 11:05 p.m.
Eric Dolphy, a highly-skilled musician who played alto sax, bass clarinet, and flute, created a bracing, unique sound forged in both bop and the avant-garde. His last year was one of his greatest, as he worked with pianist Andrew Hill and bassist Charles Mingus, and recorded an album for Blue Note that many consider to be his masterpiece.
Tom Wilson produced rock albums by Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Velvet Underground that were some of the most influential records of the 1960s, but he got his start in the 1950s running his own adventurous jazz label, recording artists such as John Coltrane, Donald Byrd, Cecil Taylor, and Sun Ra.
A new book takes an in-depth look at the sources and inspirations behind the music of avant-garde artist John Zorn.
Saxophonist John Zorn is a modern avant-garde icon, but in the late 1980s he recorded several tributes to heroes of the 1950s and 60s hardbop era such as Hank Mobley and Sonny Clark, honoring them with an edgy passion that also revealed Zorn’s skills in a straightahead jazz setting.
Another release in the offing from Mosaic features the late-1970s, 80s, and mid-90s recordings of saxophonist Henry Threadgill, including three albums that Threadgill made as part of the legendary trio Air.
In 1963 a 22-year-old Frank Zappa went on Steve Allen’s TV show and demonstrated some far-out musical sounds on an unusual instrument: the bicycle.
Few jazz musicians have provoked the kind of excitement and controversy that Ornette Coleman generated when he arrived on the scene at the end of the 1950s.
2008: not a good year for the economy, certain politicians, or the Detroit Lions. In the realm of reissues and historical releases, however, it was a surprisingly good year. A highly subjective and belated list follows, presented in alphabetical order:
Mosaic’s forthcoming Anthony Braxton set, The Complete Arista Recordings, is a long-awaited dream-come-true for fans of the jazz avant-garde, and it’s now available for pre-order at the Mosaic website. The set’s liner notes were written by musician and scholar Mike Heffley, who gave Mosaic a draft that was twice as long as what they were able to use.
Carla Bley is renowned today for her big-band writing and its wide-ranging use of musical and emotional elements, but it was small-group recordings of her work in the 1960s by musicians such as Jimmy Giuffre, Gary Burton, George Russell, and her husband Paul Bley that introduced her to the jazz world. In her teens Bley abandoned home, religion, and school, eventually making her way to New York City, where she worked as a hatcheck and cigarette girl in jazz clubs such as Basin Street and Birdland.
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