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Noon Edition
From 1973 to 2004 the Dutch radio show “Tros Sesjun” broadcast live jazz every week, featuring artists such as Bill Evans in their late-period prime.
The swing era may have been the age of the big bands, but bandleaders often found it worth their while to break small groups out of their larger orchestras.
Chico Hamilton had gained fame with a 1950s quintet often defined as “chamber jazz,” but at the dawn of the 1960s he began to head in a new artistic direction.
By 1966 the Monterey Jazz Festival was an established institution—but the decade’s winds of change were already starting to blow from the festival’s stage.
A playlist and some programs for America's national holiday.
Help Night Lights make its online fund-drive goal this year! Any and all contributions make a difference. Afterwards, enjoy a historic Sonny Rollins solo.
A hard-swinging big band paired with a jazz legend in the making.
In the 1960s Corea made a name for himself playing with hardbop and straightahead jazz artists such as Blue Mitchell, Stan Getz, and Donald Byrd, and recording a stunning trio date, before going on to work with Miles Davis’ revolutionary electric ensembles.
From Brooklyn to Africa and back again, Randy Weston made his mark as a composer.
Programs for the holiday of personal and public remembrance.
A convergence of grief, memory and music for Memorial Day.
More jazz with a Western theme, this time from Grant Green, Dexter Gordon, Ornette Coleman, and others.
Join Loren Schoenberg for some music from one of the greatest finds in the history of jazz—a treasure trove of broadcasts from the golden age of swing.
Scott LaFaro lived only 25 years. His influence as a revolutionary jazz bassist has lasted 60 years and counting.
Both programs make their debut this week on Northeast Indiana Public Radio.
Mary Osborne started out as a little girl playing violin and guitar on the radio in Depression-era Minot, North Dakota, and listening to jazz broadcasts coming far across the prairie to her from Chicago…then one night she went to a club and heard Charlie Christian play, and her path as a muscian was set.
As cultural changes gained momentum in the 1960s, a generation of women artists made their way through a jazz world that had long been resistant to their aims.
News about new and forthcoming box sets from the premier jazz reissue label.
He was a compelling artist, a down-to-earth entertainer, and a human being almost universally known as a genuinely nice person. Saxophonist and flutist James Moody passed away in December 2010 at the age of 85, leaving behind a 65-year-long legacy of jazz. We delve into some of that legacy this week on Night Lights.
Langston Hughes, songwriter? The celebrated African-American author wrote numerous songs, recorded by Nina Simone, Abbey Lincoln, Gary Bartz, and others.
He could split the stratosphere with his high notes… play you sweet and low with his ballads… glide with sudden speed through the middle registers and then slow into a cooking groove…and woe to any other trumpeter who showed up ready to jam.
Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, the hunt, and visions of a jazz deity.
David Brent Johnson hosts the weekly WFIU historical jazz program Night Lights and Afterglow as well. Learn more »
