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.
Thelonious Monk was an innovator deeply rooted in tradition, a stride-influenced pianist marketed as “the high priest of bebop,” a family man who became a bohemian icon, and one of the most significant composers of modern jazz. Biographer and jazz scholar Robin D.G. Kelley joins Night Lights for the first of a two-part look at Monk’s life and music.
In this program we explore the sounds of the mid-20th-century Los Angeles jazz scene with historian Steve Isoardi. Jam sessions, bebop, r and b, big bands, visits from Hollywood celebrities–as the center of African-American culture in L.A., Central Avenue had it all.
Alto saxophonist Charles McPherson spent much of his early career under the spell of jazz great Charlie Parker–but he fired the Parker sound with his own intense energy and expressive skills.
This week marks the centennial of clarinetist Benny Goodman (born on May 30, 1909) and we’ll pay tribute on Night Lights with a program devoted to the so-called “King of Swing’s” late-1940s foray into the revolutionary sounds of bebop, featuring young modernist side musicians such as Wardell Gray, Mary Lou Williams, and Fats Navarro.
Last year Night Lights began an annual Bastille Day-week salute to the convergence of all things French and jazz with Paris Noir, a program about post-World War II expatriate African-American musicians in France. This year our tribute show focuses on jazz interpretations of the many songs that have been written about the City of Light.
Word is that we’ll probably see the following reissues from Nessa Records in several months: Roscoe Mitchell’s Nonaah (with bonus material), Charles Tyler’s Saga of the Outlaws, and…
A couple of weeks ago Bernard Gordillo, who writes the WFIU early-music show Harmonia, mentioned a recent interest in Pannonica de Koenigswarter, also known as Nica, the Jazz Baroness, or simply the Baroness. The Baroness was a sort of jazz patron, a woman well-liked by the jazz musicians she befriended on the mid-20th-century New York bebop scene; she counted Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk among her closest companions from that community. As a wealthy white woman spending time…
Word from the Jazz Programmer Listserv that alto saxophonist Frank Morgan has passed away:his 74th, birthday, December 23.…
There are several confirmed reports from yesterday evening and this morning that baritone saxophonist Cecil Payne, an unsung hero of the bebop era, has passed away:
Max Roach was a revolutionary bebop drummer, a leader of the classic Clifford Brown-Sonny Rollins hardbop quintet, a social activist, jazz educator and intellectual, a forerunner of Do-It-Yourself recording, and an explorer of the avant-garde…among other things. Max Roach contained multitudes, and his death in August of 2007 reverberated across the jazz world as if it were a long solo being played on a cosmic drumset. This program, an audio snapshot of his career on record, features his work with pianists Herbie Nichols and Bud Powell, his hardbop configurations with Clifford Brown and Sonny Rollins…
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