It's a terrible name, isn't it? But "Jazz Awards" was taken, and this was the best I could do on short notice. And our city's ever-more-vibrant jazz scene deserves some superlatives for its members. So! Without further ado, here are the winners of the Arts Desk 2011 D.C. Jazzies:
ARTIST OF THE YEAR:
Afro-Blue
I said much of [...]
Yesterday afternoon, Prince of Petworth picked up a report via the Twitter feed of H Street Festival publicist Margaret Holwill that the popular HR-57 Center for the Preservation of Jazz and Blues will soon be relocating for the second time in a year.
"That's true," confirms drummer Jimmy "Junebug" Jackson, the venue's house drummer and de [...]
Friday, December 16
Last year, when Bohemian Caverns brought Benny Golson, one of those octogenarian jazz musicians who's achieved unquestionable living legend status, onto its venerable little bandstand, I wrote that the club had scored "an enormous coup....If you miss this, folks, you're doing it wrong and that's that." Which was true. Golson is one of [...]
This is one of those weeks when I wish I could be in several places at once. Alas, dear reader, I cannot, and therefore can't recommend more than one at a time for you.
Friday, Dec. 9
Tim Warfield is one of the best Christmas gifts D.C. gives its jazz fans every year. He does an annual [...]
This, folks, is one of those rare weeks where I'm recommending two shows on the same night. Make it out to both.
Friday, December 2
The Grammy nominations were announced last night, and one of the few standouts on a terrifically vanilla list of jazz nominees (which mostly consists of a handful of old-guard darlings nominated several [...]
As beloved as he was in Washington and the jazz world at large, Dr. Billy Taylor was a man of fairly conservative taste in jazz. This was reflected in the jazz programming at the Kennedy Center, where Billy Taylor served for 16 years as the center's first artistic advisor for jazz. Even in his [...]
Afro-Blue's special appearance on The Sing-Off last night went off without a hitch, with the Howard University group providing a marvelous setting for Smokey Robinson to perform his big hit "You Really Got a Hold On Me." (FYI, Dallas-based quintet Pentatonix took the top prize.) And it turned out to be a special appearance indeed. [...]
Tonight's finale of The Sing-Off, unlike the other episodes, is being broadcast live. And in Los Angeles for the occasion is none other than Afro-Blue, the absurdly talented folks from Howard University whom the judges eliminated on last week's show.
But they're not just VIP audience members. As with the entire Top 10, Afro-Blue has been [...]
YOU'VE GOT
TO BE
KIDDING
ME.
That sentence takes up an entire page of this writer's notes for last night's episode of The Sing-Off. I wrote it just as the judges' decisions were announced: Urban Method and Pentatonix had been kicked upstairs to the finals, while Afro-Blue and Dartmouth Aires were asked to revisit the song they felt had been [...]
Ethan Iverson is the de facto front man for The Bad Plus. The piano trio doesn't really have a leader, but Iverson is the pianist, the one who talks between songs at their concerts, and the one who communicates most prolifically with the jazz audience via his blog Do The Math. Where The Bad Plus [...]
