Arnold Jay Smith Jazz Vent

It’s that time of year, again.

Le Grande Dame of Jazz Festivals which has purveyed innovative jazz for the past six decades returns August 1-3, 2014 at Fort Adams.  The celebration has already begun.

The Newport Jazz Festival sprang from the minds of George Wein and tobacco heiress Elaine Lorillard.  The latter wanted to introduce something to the summertude blandness of Newport, R.I. so they called upon a young entrepreneur who was presenting jazz at venues in Boston, MA.  It was to be the premiere outdoor music festival anywhere.  Even Woodstock used the Newport template with their engineers and producers as advisers.

I presented the second in a series of lecture demonstrations at the Arnold Shaw Music Library at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV).  In the Fall of 2013 the topic was “Aspects Of Duke (Ellington).”  In the Spring of 2014 the topic was “Louis (Armstrong) In Hollywood.”  The premise was to show film clips of the great cornetist/trumpeter and the creator of what we now know as jazz in various guises with and without guests.

In March “REMEMBERING MARIAN” was presented at the 92nd St. Y in Manhattan.  Marian McPartland, Ms. McP, as I had come to know her, passed the preceding summer leaving a gap in NPR programming where her “Piano Jazz” featured a who’s who of jazz weekly.

Here, too, there was a parade of McP worshipers both in the star-filled audience as well as on the stage.  Host, Jon Weber, who took over the radio hosting, opened the proceedings with Eddie Gomez on bass playing Marian’s P-J theme, “Kaleidoscope.”  The tearing had begun.

MANHATTAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC JAZZ ORCHESTRA: CLARE FISCHER “EXTENSION” Posted on April 11, 2014

The first time I heard the name CLARE FISCHER was on the Dizzy Gillespie LP “Dizzy Gillespie Plays Duke Ellington.” It was on Verve and it was s freebee given to Down Beat subscribers, of which I was one. I thought he was a she. I also heard lots of gaffs, spaces, dissonances and Ellington and Strayhorn played in a manner in which I was unaccustomed. (“Chelsea Bridge” remains a favorite chart.) I was in high school and still a neophyte jazz listener. It was an ear-and-mind-opening experience.

Word has reached JAZZ INSIGHTS that Alan Bergman –the lawyer not the songwriter– has passed away.  He had undergone surgery for cancer but he told me that doctors told him that they “got it all.”  Does anyone really know?

Alan was one of the good guy lawyers.  His clients were mostly, if not all, jazz oriented.  He was knowledgeable about the music biz and its foibles.  Dr. Billy Taylor was one and when I was doing Dr. T’s publicity for Peter Levinson Communications and beyond we conferred constantly.  Both Billy and his wife Teddy loved him.  Bergman was Taylor’s guiding light as to legal matters, and sometimes musically as well.  Bergman was an accomplished, and recorded, drummer.  Their relationship made Billy very comfortable on many levels.

The near-legendary Pete Seeger was many things to many people: a folk singer, an alternative political figure, a major musician who saved an instrument from oblivion, leader of a major folk group which influenced others and spearheaded an international folk revival, a voice of protest, an environmentalist and all around man of the people.  He was 94 and passed quietly.   (http://nytimes.com)

I was fortunate to have met him and on a few occasions actually got involved in political and musical conversations with him.  I booked his group, The Weavers, into Brooklyn  College, championed his social causes personally as well in print and caught him in musical contexts anathema to his folk musical calling, unless you consider the blues folk music as some do.