Dec 17, 2024 9:58 AM
Tabla Master Zakir Hussain, 73, Succumbs to Illness
Tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain, one of India’s reigning cultural ambassadors and a revered figure worldwide…
“Jazz in July is all about creating a communal space,” Diehl said.
(Photo: Courtesy Mack Avenue)The 92nd Street Y, New York has named pianist/composer Aaron Diehl as the new artistic director of the Jazz in July festival, beginning in the summer of 2024. Diehl, an American Pianists Association’s 2011 Cole Porter Fellow, has worked with such artists as Wynton Marsalis, Jimmy Heath and Cécile McLorin Salvant, performed at such celebrated venues as the Village Vanguard, Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Newport Jazz Festival, and released three albums on Mack Avenue.
Bill Charlap, the festival’s artistic director since 2005, announced earlier this year that he was stepping down at the end of this summer’s festival, and was instrumental in choosing Diehl as his successor. Good friends and collaborators, the two performed together at the 2017 NEA Jazz Masters concert honoring Jazz in July’s founding artistic director, Dick Hyman, who led the festival for 20 years from its first season in 1985, as well as at three previous 92NY Jazz in July concerts. Charlap will pass the baton to Diehl on July 20, when the two perform at this year’s festival in a concert that also includes 2023 American Pianists Award winner Isaiah J. Thompson and 2021 BMI Foundation’s Future Jazz Master Award winner Caelan Cardello.
“Aaron Diehl has the artistry and vision to bring Jazz in July into a brilliant new era,” Charlap said.
“I’m deeply honored to be the next artistic director of Jazz in July at 92NY, and to build off of the extraordinary blueprint that both Dick Hyman and Bill Charlap have developed over the decades,” Diehl said. “Working off of these foundational visions, I intend to continue to expand the collaborative possibilities of this series, with an intimate, reflective and nuanced experience around each concert. To me, Jazz in July is all about creating a communal space where musicians and concertgoers can come together to experiment with artistic honesty and vulnerability, drawing open-minded, open-hearted audiences into their worlds and taking them on a journey.”
In September, Diehl will release of his recording of Mary Lou Williams’ Zodiac Suite featuring the Knights Orchestra. DB
“Watching people like Max Roach or Elvin Jones and seeing how they utilize the whole drum kit in a very rhythmic and melodic way and how they stretched time — that was a huge inspiration to me,” Hussain said in DownBeat.
Dec 17, 2024 9:58 AM
Tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain, one of India’s reigning cultural ambassadors and a revered figure worldwide…
“I love doing ballads,” Mike Stern says. “It’s just a part of me, some part of emotionally how I feel sometimes.”
Dec 3, 2024 12:52 PM
Stories of major shifts and rebirths among musicians during the past five years are common, from weathering the…
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…
Queen Latifah extols Harlem and the Apollo Theater at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.
Dec 12, 2024 1:58 AM
Cuban-American jazz trumpet legend Arturo Sandoval and Harlem’s Apollo Theater were among the honorees at the 2024…
“With jazz I thought it must be OK to be Black, for the first time,” says singer Sofia Jernberg.
Jan 2, 2025 10:50 AM
On Musho (Intakt), her recent duo album with pianist Alexander Hawkins, singer Sofia Jernberg interprets traditional…
