Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Southern California Fires Hit the Jazz Community
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
Maria Schneider, ASCAP Foundation Life in Music Award Winner
(Photo: Scott Wintrow, Gamut Photos)The ASCAP Foundation honored acclaimed choral music composer Morten Lauridsen and groundbreaking jazz composer/ bandleader Maria Schneider with The ASCAP Foundation Life in Music Award on Dec. 14. The accolades were presented at The 2016 ASCAP Foundation Honors at the Appel Room and Ertegun Atrium in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall, Broadway at 60th Street, New York City.
The ASCAP Foundation Life in Music Award is presented by The ASCAP Foundation to an ASCAP writer member for his or her outstanding accomplishments as a composer, songwriter, performer, arranger or vocalist in any genre. The 21st annual event also honored and featured performances from scholarship and award recipients in an array of music genres including classical, jazz, musical theater, pop, country and rhythm & soul, all of whom benefit from programs of The ASCAP Foundation.
Tony and Emmy-nominated songwriting duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul received the Harold Adamson Lyric Award. The team opened the show with “Waving Through a Window” from their award-winning Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen (Outer Critics Circle Award, Obie Award, Helen Hayes Award, Drama Desk Award). Pasek & Paul also have original material featured in recent Hollywood hits La La Land and The Trolls.
The Maria Schneider Duo celebrated Schneider’s honor with a performance of her composition “Walking By Flashlight.” Other outstanding performances by this year’s honorees included “Good Go Bad,” from Brad Blackburn, Leon Brettler Award winner; “Heart Like a Phoenix,” from Kate Copeland, Robert Allen Award winner; “Breaking Point,” from Roxy Coss, Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award winner; “New York City Lights,” from Charles Duke, “Reach Out and Touch” Award winner in honor of Nick Ashford; “Bad Night in Heaven” from Kison, Desmond Child Anthem Award winner; and “Point G” from Ali Can Puskulcu, Morton Gould Young Composer Award winner.
To scroll through the photo collage above, simply click on each image. DB
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
“She said, ‘A lot of people are going to try and stop you,’” Sheryl Bailey recalls of the advice she received from jazz guitarist Emily Remler (1957–’90). “‘They’re going to say you slept with somebody, you’re a dyke, you’re this and that and the other. Don’t listen to them, and just keep playing.’”
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In the April 1982 issue of People magazine, under the heading “Lookout: A Guide To The Up and Coming,” jazz…
The Old Country: More From The Deer Head Inn arrives 30 years after ECM issued the Keith Jarret Trio live album At The Deer Head Inn.
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“The first recording I owned with Brazilian music on it was Wayne Shorter’s Native Dancer,” says Renee Rosnes. “And then I just started to go down the rabbit hole.”
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In her four-decade career, Renee Rosnes has been recognized as a singular voice, both as a jazz composer and a…
As Ted Nash, left, departs the alto saxophone chair for LCJO, Alexa Tarantino steps in as the band’s first female full-time member.
Mar 4, 2025 1:29 PM
If only because openings for JLCO’s 15 permanent positions appear about as frequently as sub-freezing days on the…
