June 1 - 3
School's Out!
Plan your next summer jazz festival getaway with the Jazz Break at Noon, featuring music from nationally scheduled festival artists with all new releases this week.
June 6 - 10
Three Decades of Woody Herman's Thundering Herds
Woodrow Charles "Woody" Herman was an American jazz clarinetist, alto and soprano saxophonist, singer and big band leader. Leading various groups called "The Herd", Herman was one of the most popular of the 1930s and 1940s bandleaders.
June 13 - 17
Erroll Garner Meets Jaki Byard: Separate But Equal Piano Giants
One of the most distinctive of all pianists, Erroll Garner proved that it was possible to be a sophisticated player without knowing how to read music, that a creative jazz musician can be very popular without watering down his music, and that it is possible to remain an enthusiastic player without changing one's style once it is formed. The late Jaki Byard was, arguably, the most versatile pianist in jazz, though he also played trumpet and was an excellent tenor saxophonist.
June 20 - 24
Eric Dolphy: Lone Genius of the 1960s
Eric Dolphy was a true original with his own distinctive styles on alto, flute, and bass clarinet. His music fell into the "avant-garde" category yet he did not discard chordal improvisation altogether (although the relationship of his notes to the chords was often pretty abstract). While most of the other "free jazz" players sounded very serious in their playing, Dolphy's solos often came across as ecstatic and exuberant.
June 27 - July 1
The Individualism of Pianist and Composer Andrew Hill
Andrew Hill was a great and even groundbreaking composer and pianist, yet the relatively circumscribed scale of his innovations might have originally caused him to get lost in the shuffle of the '60s free jazz revolution. While many of his contemporaries were totally jettisoning the rhythmic and harmonic techniques of bop and hard bop, Hill worked to extend their possibilities; his was a revolution from within.
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