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…
Telarc announced yesterday that it has signed New York-based jazz vocalist Melissa Morgan. Morgan will make her recording debut in March 2009 with the release of Until I Met You.
Trained in classical music at a young age, Morgan shifted toward jazz in her teen years, due in part to her grandmother’s extensive collection of Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan and Nancy Wilson LPs. At SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music, she studied with artists like Yolanda Bavan, Jon Faddis and Roseanna Vitro. Morgan gigged around the New York club scene after college and was named a semi-finalist in the 2004 Thelonius Monk International Jazz Competition in Washington, DC. Last year, she appeared with the Next Generation of Jazz All-Stars at the Concord Fujitsu Jazz Festival in Japan.
“How amazing it was to listen to Melissa’s recording for the first time,” said Telarc President Robert Woods. “I found myself asking, ‘Where did this wonderful young jazz singer come from?’ She is the real deal. And when I saw her for the first time I was stunned by how grounded, collected and natural she is at delivering the music and the emotion. At a time when we wonder where the next good jazz musician may come from, Melissa is a real treat.”
Of Until I Met You, Morgan said, “I wanted it to be soulful and emotional, and I wanted it to run the gamut of happy and sad and everything in between, with lyrics that are very potent. I also wanted it to be like those classic recordings of the ‘50s and ‘60s, where there are a lot of musicians on it and there’s a real family sense to it. That’s exactly what this record has turned out to be.”
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.’”
Feb 3, 2025 10:49 PM
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.
Jan 21, 2025 7:38 PM
Last November, Keith Jarrett, who has not played publicly since suffering two strokes in 2018, greenlighted ECM to drop…
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…
Larry Appelbaum with Wayne Shorter in 2012.
Feb 25, 2025 10:49 AM
Larry Appelbaum, a distinguished audio engineer, jazz journalist, historian and broadcaster, died Feb. 21, 2025, in…
