Author Archives: The Independent Ear

From 1965-1985 one of the New York metro area’s hotspots for live jazz was the Blue Coronet in Brooklyn – the Bedford-Stuyvesant community to be exact. Sometimes I wonder if perhaps Brooklyn should be labeled the Second City instead of … Continue reading →

May 4, 2005 Jazz is dead! It died that day around 3pm… Surviving are 1,7 million musicians who play Jazz and 20 million jazz fans throughout the world, 300 million recordings, and 500,000 trombonists without beepers. – Producer-saxophonist Bob Belden

The 7th annual DC Jazz Festival, under the prescient guidance of Charlie Fishman and Sunny Sumter (who though still a young woman, insists she has “retired” as a jazz vocalist, but we still hold out hope…) closed last Monday evening … Continue reading →

Striving to live up to its boast as “Africa’s grandest gathering” the 2011 edition of the Cape Town International Jazz Festival presented a rich cornucopia of sounds – including jazz, jazz extensions and jazz-influenced in a colorful melange. Being an … Continue reading →

Nina Simone was one of the more thoroughly unique and singular artists of the 20th century. Her legacy lives on in many corners; radio programmers such as WPFW’s Miyuki Williams (“A Sunday Kind of Love”) steadfastly and earnestly uphold and … Continue reading →