Story about Earl.

Alvin Ailey

Alvin Ailey is a choreographer who was huge in popularizing modern dance in the American ballet scene. He also cast many African-American dancers, who often could not find work in traditional ballet companies. He based many of his works on music by blues and jazz musicians.

His ballet titled "The River" was a work of his set entirely to music by Duke Ellington.



Here's a narrative ballet by Alvin Ailey. It really gets going around 4.45. A less conceptual ballet, but very clearly a tribute to jazz.



On another note, a huge jazz center is being built in San Francisco called SFJazz.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/arts/music/07festival.html?scp=1&sq=sfjazz&st=cse

Billie Holiday clips

Good afternoon, everyone.
Here in a couple hours I am going to be giving my presentation on Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, & Charlie Parker and their influences within Jazz Poetry. But seeing as we have already heard a couple of presentations that have mentioned Billie Holiday, I thought that I would only mention her briefly today during my presentation and instead, offer everyone some really good songs of hers that I have used during my research. I hope that you like them and I will see you all after tea! See ya soon, Drew

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQlehVpcAes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGNc1yLGPug

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5ddqniqxFM

Satin Doll

Here are two videos of the same jazz standard, one by the writer Duke Ellington and his band, and one by the guitar legend Joe Pass. Note how Pass uses his unique playing style to make his guitar emulate the sound of the entire big band.

Ballet and Jazz

So very beautiful!

Don't forget: a jazz concert in Spooner tomorrow (Friday) at 7 p.m.

Chicano Jazz

George Lipsitz talks about this song in terms of Chicano culture in the 1960s. This is a cover of "jazz artist Gerald Wilson's tribute to a famous Mexican bullfighter...The song and the band soon became emblematic objects of pride for the Chicano movement in Southern California."

This song is clearly a cross-cultural hybrid. This hybridity is made only more clear when viewed through the group's later work, banda music very located in a different cultural tradition.



This group illustrates the ability jazz has to cross cultural boundaries and reaffirms the music's tradition of subversion and location as an alternative to tradition Anglo-American culture.

KC Film Fest - Jazz Inspired Films

The Kansas City Film Festival featured several films inspired by jazz this year in their Cinema Jazz Division. Check some of them out at the facebook event:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=114142741945253

Jazz & Visual Art/Alain Kirili

Here's a Basquiat jazz thing:



On another jazz/visual culture note: one of my dad's good friends, Alain Kirili, is a sculptor, and he does a lot of his work with jazz musicians. Here is a link the Music/Sculpture section of his website: http://www.kirili.com/pagesE/Music.htm

He says that "Jazz and Sculpture are created urgently. Extreme risk is the minimum condition of this creation, the absolute measure of the musician and sculptor... Revival of verticality in my sculpture is linked to statuary, music and dance."

He has musicians over to his studio and they play while he sculpts.







Here's an installation of his in Paris called "Hommage to Charlie Parker"



Here is a video that another artist made of him, and the French at the end is him reading "Charlie Parker's Blues," from Kerouac's Mexico City Blues!

http://www.c-egal.com/openwindow/film/quickkirili.htm

Romare Bearden

A Circle With a Hole in the Middle

This is an image Ornette painted for his album "The Art of the Improvisers."

The performance slated for this Wed has been cancelled.

Coolidge on Kerouac.

Amiri Baraka and Lester Young

Good evening everyone!

I was just looking up some information on Amiri Baraka and came across some really interesting readings of his poetry that he has done. In many of his poems he references Lester "Prez" Young, the great tenor sax player. In one of Baraka's poems, written after Obama's inauguration, the poet utilizes Young and his nickname as a reference to the new "prez," Barack Obama. Not that I am trying to push any liberal agenda here, just thought it was a way of utilizing jazz influences that we had not yet come across in class. Below are links to some readings of Baraka (all of which include blatant jazz influences) as well as some really incredible works by Lester Young that I feel help give Baraka's work some context.

I hope you enjoy them and I'll see you tomorrow in class, Drew.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPK9eH4EFTU&feature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuuourbkraE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKcPlbVHdy0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6ogRiaWXaU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmXxpCTpK3E&feature=related