In the not-so-distant future, people will express their D.C. pride not with a D.C. flag tattoo, but with a Far Out vs. Hot Dang tattoo. Maybe "FAR OUT" on one asscheek, and "HOT DANG" on the other? Yeah, that would be super nice.
Perhaps the biggest victims of hippies
Always entertaining to be reminded of dozens of [...]
Music festivals tend to be backloaded, primarily to keep people coming back for more, but as a nice side effect it keeps the most happening stuff fresh for critics who do post-festival wrap-ups. Thus this writer is basking in the afterglow of last night's smash "A Night in Treme"—maybe the first time an event at [...]
David Simon and HBO's Treme—a chronicle of the musicians and other residents of New Orleans struggling to rebuild their homes and lives after Hurricane Katrina—could never hope to meet the bar set by their previous Baltimore-based series, The Wire. But it has done something that its predecessor couldn't: For all its somberness and hardship, it [...]
Bobby McFerrin's appearance with Afro Blue last night at the Warner Theatre was the finest concert in the history of the D.C. Jazz Festival.
For disclosure's sake, I am not qualified to make that statement. I haven't been to every concert in the history of the festival (nobody has), and I even missed one recent festival [...]
It's all been leading up to this, funseekers.
For many music festivals, a daylong program of artists on an outdoor stage would constitute the entire festival. For the DC Jazz Festival, Jazz on the National Mall is merely the crown jewel of a two-week, 50-venue event. And as crown jewels go, six-and-a-half free hours of [...]
Readers of this space, and to a large extent followers of D.C. jazz in general, need no introduction to CapitalBop. The website launched last summmer as an online portal to the city's jazz scene; in the winter it expanded its reach to producing its own shows, and quickly became an indispensable part of the scene [...]
You've been hearing about it for weeks, if not months, festivalgoers: CapitalBop Jazz Loft, DC Jazz Festival Edition.
For some time, members of the D.C. jazz scene have been pushing for an avant-garde component to the city’s major annual event; the organizers demurred, with reasons varying from “it’s not D.C.’s style,” to guesses that it’s simply [...]
Tenor saxophone player Jimmy Heath is the eldest surviving member of the Heath Brothers; he's been a key figure in jazz for more than 60 years, along with his older brother, bassist Percy (who died in 2005), and younger brother, drummer Albert "Tootie." The NEA jazz master is a major stylist on the tenor, as [...]
It's no secret that the DC Jazz Festival includes the regular lineup of local venues and gigs in the "Jazz in the Hoods" section of its annual calendar. Some of these are included by mutual agreement, some not. In 2007, when this writer first started covering the festival, a D.C. musician who was watching a [...]
Let's go out on a limb and say that Victor Provost is one of the best things about the D.C. jazz scene. Not that there are a lot of direct comparisons to make: How many jazz steelpan players are there anywhere, let alone in the District (where there's only one)? Without doubt, however, Provost will [...]
