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Jazz/Blues

Jane Monheit Does a Ella Fitzgerald Tribute Album

Jazz singer Jane Monheit has been able to fufill two long held ambitions with her upcoming CD release. She has her new label Emerald City Record and, on April 8th, she will pay tribute to her idol Ella Fitzgerald by releasing Emeralds first project, The Songbook Sessions:Ella Fitzgerald. Monheit manages a record that acknowledges her idol while giving her own stamp to the familiar Fitzgerald material. With the contributions of her producer and arranger and trumpeter Nicolas Payton, a real effort was made to update the material and make it fresh for Jane Monheit.
By Teresa Swan

  • Howard Reich Wants President Barack Obama to Hold Jazz Summit at White House

    One of America's oldest art forms, jazz and its associates are inquiring President Barack Obama to hold a jazz summit at the White House. The notion is predicated on earlier summits, those held by Jimmy Carter in 1978 and Bill Clinton in 1993.
    By Ian Holubiak

  • Blogarrhea: Melissa Aldana, Jon Stickley, Cristian Perez and Bastian Stein

    One of the supreme pleasures of my life is hearing music for the first time. That all-important first-listen can only happen once. To make matters even more dramatic, I purposely do not want to have any inkling whatsoever what I am about to hear. The instantaneous shock-of-recognition that accompanies, for instance, a riveting new cover version of an old favorite song, can keep me enthralled and talking about it for days on end to friends and family. They're used to it. Some of them are sick of it. So I write. The four CDs by Melissa Aldana, Jon Stickley, Cristian Perez and Bastian Stein made me smile. They're all keepers.
    By Mike Greenblatt