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Tag: University of Pittsburgh

Culmination: A Massive New Book Honors The Centenary of Sam Rivers

Monday, September 25, 2023, marks the centennial of Sam Rivers’ birth. Rivers was a composer, improvisor, theoretician, scenemaker mentor and instrumentalist of Promethean stature. It’s hard to think of anyone quite like him. So it’s appropriate that his centennial is commemorated by “The Sam Rivers Sessionography,” a new book by Rick Lopez that rivals Rivers in its panoptical audacity.

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Vocalist Ellie Martin Cultivates A Verdant Career With A New Recording And Tour

ELLIE MARTIN
photocredit: Jeff Dunn

“When I went to undergrad, I kind of did jazz in secret, like on the side,” said Ellie Martin. “I remember a teacher telling me once that jazz was going to ruin your voice. You’re not really supposed to do that. A lot of singers did though. You did it on the side and you didn’t say anything.”

Martin’s jazz hobby is no secret anymore. And with a new album, Verdant (self released, 2023), and a Midwest tour that concludes Saturday with an engagement at Akron’s BLU Jazz+, singing jazz has become more than a side hustle for the Toledo-based vocalist.

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Chicago’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble Returns To Erie With the Spirit

 

Ethnic Heritage Ensemble at Artlore Studio 2019

Lately there’s been a revival of interest in so-called spiritual jazz, a meditative offshoot of the 1960’s avant-garde that was advanced by figures such as the late harpist and organist Alice Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders, a tenor saxophonist very much with us whose “Promises,” a collaboration with British electronic musician Floating Points, topped many critics’ lists of 2021’s best jazz recordings.

The attention these once undervalued players are receiving is both gratifying and overdue, but spiritual jazz has never gone away, as anyone who has had the privilege of attending the nearly annual Erie concerts of Kahil El’Zabar‘s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble can tell you.

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