New Feature at Jazz.com: Guest Artist Dozens
Jazz.com launches a new feature today with its publication of trumpeter Randy Brecker’s selection of twelve outstanding Freddie Hubbard performances. Brecker offers up a valuable survey, encompassing the full range of Hubbard's artistry, from his Blakey and Blue Notes days, through his CTI and Columbia work, and beyond, and includes both timeless classics and neglected gems.
The Dozens column, as regular site visitors know, is our way of celebrating the jazz heritage by focusing on twelve great tracks built around a theme. In the past we have relied on jazz writers to make the selections and offer up their reviews. But our new “Guest Artist Dozens” will add a new twist – we will now also go to the musicians themselves for their picks and opinions.
True, this is a dangerous concept. If you start asking the musicians for their opinions, what happens to the jazz critics? They might need to start writing restaurant reviews or gossip columns. But we are willing to take that chance. Part of the vision for jazz.com is to develop its potential as a place where musicians can speak their mind, and share their views -- not just on their own work, but on the music's rich heritage and current state of health. The Dozens is an ideal setting to facilitate this expanded dialogue. (And, yes, we plan to continue publishing Dozens by our stalwart crew of critics. So they don't get to run off to the smorgasbord quite yet.)
Who better than Grammy award winner Randy Brecker to guide us through the illustrious career of Freddie Hubbard? Like Hubbard, Brecker has spent decades blowing his horn in the most high profile settings, from his early days with Horace Silver and Art Blakey, through his Brecker Brothers’ work and many classic leader dates and sideman sessions.
This feature also marks the first appearance of contributor Ted Panken on jazz.com. Panken, who serves as editor for our “Guest Artist Dozens,” is a top notch jazz writer and first rate interviewer. His work has graced the pages of Down Beat and Jazziz, and he is also well known for his popular broadcasts on WKCR-FM. A few months ago, Panken was honored with a much deserved ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for his journalism. (For a more complete list of contributors, click here.)
Our “Guest Artist Dozens” complements our other recent addition to the site, “Desert Island Dozens,” which allows noteworthy individuals in the world of jazz to offer their ideal playlist for a tropical getaway. We recently initiated “Desert Island Dozens” by sharing the selections of drummer Peter Erskine.
Stay tuned. More Dozens – of all shapes and flavors – are in the works. For a full list of all our Dozens to date, click here.
This blog entry posted by Ted Gioia
April 13, 2008 · 1 comment
Tags: site featuresSomething Old, Something New
One of the challenges in covering the jazz world – by blog or review, or with a comprehensive web site – is balancing the space devoted to new music and historical material. I did a quick survey of the most recent jazz magazine to arrive in my mailbox, and found that eight of the nine stories featured on its cover dealt with the a current artist or release. This is fairly typical, I suspect, of the jazz media today. But is it the right balance?
Of course, jazz periodicals have always devoted the vast majority of their pages to what is currently happening on the scene. But this made much more sense back in 1970, when Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie and so many other legendary figures were still recording and performing. Back then, a fan could gain a complete understanding of the history of the music simply by visiting the leading jazz clubs on a regular basis. The whole spectrum of the music was available to be experienced first hand. But today, all of the pioneers of the jazz art form are gone, and even most of the masters of post-war jazz are departing from our midst – only a few days ago, we lost Oscar Peterson. In this environment, an approach to covering jazz that focuses solely or primarily on what is happening this week or this month misses much of what is most valuable in the jazz heritage.
In planning jazz.com, our goal has been for a more even balance between covering the best of today and celebrating the legacy of the past. If a typical jazz magazine still puts the mix at 80% (current) and 20% (historical), jazz.com is aiming for something approaching a 50-50 balance. I believe that most media outlets covering jazz will gradually move in a similar direction, realizing that their audience often gets as much enjoyment from Miles as from, say, Chris Botti, or that a good guide to hard bop masterpieces or Kansas City jazz is as valuable as reviews of the best new CDs released this week.
Two daily features at jazz.com attempt to balance these conflicting demands. Five days a week, we pick a “Song of the Day” – highlighting an outstanding new or recent release that deserves to be more widely heard. (A list of our picks for “Song of the Day” since our site opened its doors on December 10 can be found here.) But right next to the “Song of the Day” on our homepage, we celebrate a great historical performance, under the title “A Classic Revisited.” (A list of our choices for “A Classic Revisited” can be found here.) Check these out daily on our home page, immediately below our recent articles, and send us an email with any comments or suggestions for songs you would like to see featured in these slots.
The “Song of the Day” for today is Abbey Lincoln’s “Throw It Away” from her recent Abbey Sings Abbey release on Verve. Today's selection for “A Classic Revisited” is Stan Getz’s “I’m Late, I’m Late” from the tenorist's great 1961 Focus session, also on the Verve label.
This blog entry posted by Ted Gioia
December 27, 2007 · 0 comments
Tags: site featuresAbout Jazz.com's Music Reviews
For more than a year, a team of twenty-three critics has been working under my direction on an ambitious project to review the most important performances from the century long history of jazz music. But with an interesting twist: while many reviews of jazz CDs have been written over the years, we wanted to focus on individual tracks.
This is a Herculean task, and before we are finished, we will need to tackle more than ten thousand reviews. But such a project is necessary to fill a gap in the jazz world. For a variety of reasons, jazz fans need – and deserve – a more focused source of music criticism than is provided by the standard CD review.
The advantages of reviewing individual tracks are many. By focusing on songs instead of CDs, a reviewer can give readers much clearer guidance. The critic no longer needs to fret over how to assess a CD that might have one or two strong tracks mixed in with weaker material. And an emphasis on individual songs frees us from the confusion wrought by fickle record label execs, who constantly re-package the same material in different compilations, ensuring that the CD recommended one year is out of print the next. But above all, the rapid rise of i-Pods and legal sources of downloading suggests that the future of music will be driven by the track not the disk, and reviewers need to adapt to this brave new world of electronic commerce.
Traditionalists should not fret about this change. In many ways, we are merely returning to the way the music world previously operated, when the industry focused on selling “singles,” the A-side of a 78 or 45 rpm record. But even before the rise of recorded sound, music was composed, performed and consumed one piece at a time. Modern technology is simply returning us to this natural state of affairs.
Another difference in jazz.com reviews is a move away from the 1-5 star rating system that has often been employed to evaluate recordings. In practice, few records received one or two stars, and even fewer were awarded five star reviews. As a result, most records were lumped together into a three or four star category that made it difficult for fans – or critics – to make more nuanced evaluations. At jazz.com we have adopted a 100 point scale, which allows much clearer and more subtle distinctions. (A guide to this 100 point system can be found here.)
But the value of any system of reviews depends, in the final analysis, on the critical judgments of the people making the evaluations. I have worked hard to build a team of smart, knowledgeable reviewers. I have tracked down specialists with deep expertise in specific areas of the jazz tradition, and given them a forum to share their know how. We have not made any attempt to "dumb down" our reviews, or squeeze them into some generic mass market formula. Sometimes they are provocative, or perhaps even go against the grain of received opinion, but they will always be interesting and passionate. The end result is a unique resource for jazz fans. And (unlike most sources of reviews) we allow the reader to add comments and contrary opinions.
I say “end result,” but in fact we still have much to do. We continue to expand our team of jazz critics, and we have an aggressive plan to publish a significant number of new reviews every month.
In the meantime, take a test drive. See what we have to say about some of your favorite jazz artists by using our music review search engine in the left sidebar on this page. And check back again on a regular basis to see what new additions we have made.
Finally, if you have deep expertise in jazz music and strong writing skills, you can inquire about joining us in our grand reviewing project by sending an email to reviews@jazz.com.
This blog entry posted by Ted Gioia
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December 20, 2007 · 0 comments
Tags: site featuresIntroducing the 'Dozens'
In the coming days, I will introduce you to some of the more interesting features on our brand new site. One of my favorites is our on-going series known as The Dozens. Some of you may be familiar with ‘playing the dozens’ – an African-American tradition based on informal, taunting exchanges. Our approach to the ‘dozens’ is a bit different. We select twelve exemplary jazz recordings based on a theme, and submit them for your enjoyment and debate. We have already published a number of these celebrations of the jazz art form (see complete list here). Some are straightforward (Steve Greenlee selects twelve essential John Coltrane performances), while others are whimsical and fun (Alan Kurtz’s celebration of the masterpieces of crime jazz). But they are always prepared with fastidious care, and the deep expertise that our writers draw from a lifetime of jazz listening. You will see more of the ‘dozens’ in the future, and from time to time I will draw attention to them in our blog.
For a description of other jazz.com features, go here.
This blog entry posted by Ted Gioia
December 12, 2007 · 0 comments
Tags: site featuresWelcome to jazz.com
We are proudly opening our doors after almost two years of behind-the-scenes efforts to create a useful and exciting center of jazz activity on the web. We are launching with almost three thousand pages of unique content – including features, reviews and interviews contributed by many of the finest writers in the jazz world.
Our music review section offers an unmatched guide to the greatest jazz tracks, encompassing both timeless classics and the most provocative contemporary performances. Unlike other guides to recordings, which typically review entire CDs, jazz.com highlights the best individual tracks --- an invaluable guide in this day of downloading and iPod-ing.
Jazz.com is also delighted to announce that we are the new home to Lewis Porter’s unique Encyclopedia of Jazz Musicians, an unsurpassed source of information on currently active performers. Also make sure to visit our Visual Jazz galleries where we feature the best in jazz photography and painting. We also invite site visitors to participate in our discussion boards, list their goods and services in the jazz.com directory, or create their own jazz.com web page. Check back here in the coming days, as we share more of highlights of jazz.com.
This blog entry posted by Ted Gioia
December 01, 2007 · 0 comments
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