TeledyN

The previous year was very good to us at NPR Music: We made a whole bunch of stunning concert Webcasts and recordings in 2009. And for many of them, the artists have graciously agreed to make the audio archives available as free downloads. The least we could do is put 'em all in one place for your convenience.

Remember, streaming audio, and now video archiving, is available for many of these shows too -- including a number of Village Vanguard, Newport Jazz Festival, and now, Toast Of The Nation recordings that aren't cleared for download.

Happy listening.

Live At The Village Vanguard (full series)
--Kurt Rosenwinkel Quartet (two sets)
--Terence Blanchard Quintet
--Edward Simon Quartet (selections)
--David Sanchez Quartet
--Bill McHenry Quintet (two sets)
--JD Allen Trio
--Billy Hart Quartet
--Dave Douglas Quintet

Newport Jazz Festival 2009 (full series)
--Vijay Iyer Trio
--Cedar Walton All-Stars
--Hiromi's SonicBloom
--Rudresh Mahanthappa's Indo-Pak Coalition
--Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra
--The Bad Plus with Wendy Lewis

Assorted Performances
--Terence Blanchard Quintet: Live In New Orleans
--Fight The Big Bull With Steven Bernstein
--Dave Douglas Brass Ecstasy: Tiny Desk Concert

anyone surprised? it won't be among the longtime readers here, because we've been waiting for artists to click into the share-friendlies since back when you could still download a Cello. Or it seems so. Great to see such a list of dignitaries who now dig the value of 'free'; let's show 'em some love and give them a bit of our precious attention, shall we?

For the end of the year (and for closing this little ex-cursus about
the 70s/80s Big Bands) i want to propose one of the rare recordings
of the J.Hemphill B.B. : God Bless Julius!
And Happy New Year To You All.

Rec. live at "The Public Theatre", NYC, on November 1980
(mics recording)

Julius Hemphill,reeds,composer,conductor
Stan Strickland/John Purcell/Marty Ehrlich/Henry Threadgill,reeds
Baikida Carroll/John Clarice/Charles Stephens/Erritt McDonald,brasses
Ed Schuller,bass
Warren Smith,marimba
Pheeroan akLaff,drums

1. The Hard Blues (16:47)
2. For Billie (08:51)
3. Open Air (02:23)
4. Border Town (11:56)
5. All Harmony (15:07)
6. Unknown [inc.] (02:43)

Total Time 57:49

Here for 2010, the Future of Jazz, the Future of R'n'B and the Future of Hip-Hop all rolled into one bold musical prognostic: From beyond time, from beyond space, from beyond even Money itself, Big Bands are Back.

2010 will see the return of the Big Band in a big way. They will cheer the tenacious survivors; already we have seen Carla Bley's return, we see Mingus charts the mainstream of highschool and community swing-bands, youtube proclaimes even Ornette Coleman arranged for dance orchestra and my autobot websearch on "Sun Ra Arkestra" has gone from a clean like clockwork one hit per day to a flood of web references so numerous I separate out the Marshall Allen hits. They will mourn the passed and passing heros, digging out ever more box sets of Mingus, of Stan Kenton, rarities stretching way back back into antiquity with each iTune download seeding some little local centre of influence. Next will come the Prodigal Sons, the Marselises and the Miles Alumni, suddenly seeing the light, calling everyone they know and dusting off the old bandbooks for some post-Hop enlightened modernized rewrites. And then the New Heroes, already toping the best-of charts all over the world, pulled together as if out of thin air, impossible new names like Secret Society and the Industrial Jazz Group, Hypnotic Brass, all thumbing their noses at the money machine, cramming into the smallest crevace stages and making the Big Sonic Blast happen, not for dreams of fame or fortune, but for the sake of making it happen, because the sound is needed, scratcing an itch, finally correcting an abberant path in Jazz set adrift in Cotton Club days when somehow the tangle with Prohibition obscured the social function with a dual-space of 'business plan', 2010 is the return to a music-in-the-real experience uncapturable by ipods and bootlegs, food for a half-century's hunger for an experience that is socially and musically important.

This is it, baby, for 2010 and on, Ellington's Revenge, Mingus Reborn, the Astral Perihelion Return of Planet Sun Ra.

The Big Bands, they are back.

More proof you don't need a gazillion dollars to tell a story, this 5 min video was made on budget of $300 for Uruguayan band "SNAKE" (Panic Attack is the name of the song). The YouTube post scored millions of hits in a few days, grabbing the attention of director Sam Raimi (Spiderman, Evil Dead), and the rest, as they say, is History.

most of us in the arts have a completely wrong-headed idea of our true mission. Jim Collins argues that we mistakenly assume our mission is to present our particular and beloved artistic canon, the greatest artworks, old and new. He suggests our core values are exactly not that, that our favorite artworks are the means by which we have try to fulfill the core values of art, and according to his research, that is exactly where we must experiment. To rediscover our purpose, to live long and prosper, we must let go of our focus on programming favorite artworks, old and new, and instead boldly experiment with engaging people in artistic experiences. We must reconnect with the human art instinct.

The arts have been around since at least Day Two of human history (ornamental jewelry goes back 80,000 years, painting almost as far—and that’s not mentioning our impulses to create dance, music and to tell stories, which undoubtedly are even more ancient). Artistic expression is not just the province of artists; it appears spontaneously, irrepressibly, throughout each of our lives, mostly in forms and venues not identified with Art with a capital A. So, how have we let the identity of art get quarantined as an occasional pricey event in a special building?

Art appears in every endeavor raised to its highest level of expression, and more commonly in our conversations, hobbies, homes, as we dance at parties … anywhere people slip into the work and play of art. The core value for those of us in the arts professions—engaging people in the richness of the artistic experience—is to prompt that universal sense of meaning, richness, “specialness,” and satisfaction. It feels good—really good—the kind of good feeling that is hard to find in our overstimulated, materialistic, multitasking lives.

In order to unify our disparate arts, we need to find the quintessential elements of that human experience. We need to identify the fundamental particle or particles at the basis of the attraction, a Higgs boson for the human movement toward the artistic experience. And if we can agree around that unifying principle, I believe we can begin to answer the Jim Collins challenge in a powerful way, by experimenting boldly to bring people into the common, universal, highly-valued human experience of art. Not just those who already value the arts, but also those who aren’t in the club and don’t think about or care about the arts, yet yearn for fullness in their lives. We need to move the experience of art to the center of our intention, and reclaim Homo sapiens’ cultural birthright of artistic engagement.

Precisely. I refer to this all the time as the "Sacred duty" of the performance, be that as a theatre group, as musicians or as a painter, I ask if the performers were aware of their sacred duty to deliver the message.

And I don't mean the story line or the author's politics.

"No wonder the arts have sustained since the beginning of human history—this is the list of the best parts of being alive. They provide unity, attraction, and the reason there is something to being a human instead of being nothing.

"What can we do, as believers in the power of the fundamental act of creation, to align our actions, our creations, our organizations, our intentions and interactions with everyone inside and outside the arts to maximize that power? How can we create environments that effectively, irresistibly support and nurture that power? What events can we devise that are dedicated to that power, not merely to the presentation of artworks that we hope will contain it for those few who pay to attend?"

The answers, say Eric, are in the Unknown, in new collaborations, new artistic environments, new dialogs, in bold and brilliant new ways of retelling old stories. Which is to say, the answers, say Eric, are in the practice of Art.

The LA Examiner has some news up about a contest put on by la-based RamenKlub. ... The contest is fairly simple, make your own original "How to make Ramen Video.” Once you make it, post it on Youtube and send the link to the folks at RamenKlub and you’re entered.

Gee, they make it sound like so much fun, but what are they doing? They are attempting to boost their inbound links and inflate an illusion that folks are hyper keen on their wares/festival/whatever when in fact the entries are stuffing your search engine results with irrelevent and effectively paid-for advertising that dilutes the Internet Collection. Are they asking kids to upload their vid to their own hard-drives, showing the entries at their own expense? Or are they making a ploy to hijack a free public resource and slant it to their own product-line shareholder needs?

Gets me ire up, it does.

Is this any different than paying people to write stories about medical dysfunctions and then tag each with the brand name and like that conveniently sells the associated pharmaceutical and then blast them across random blogs as 'comments'? If I tell a thousand people to write glowing Wikipedia reviews of my shows on the chance they might will a $500 prize, does that mean my shows are great? Or have I committed a sinister kind of payola. Even if it isn't soliciting positive product endorsements, it doesn't matter to the search engine ranking algorithms. As Andy Warhol said, you measure your reviews not by the like or dislike, you measure your reviews in inches.

You may feel differently, but what this tells me is that these advertisers (and their clients) think so little of the Internet, they don't see it as the great information salvation for humanity, but as an endless free 'unmonitized' fence-space that deserves no more respect than to be plastered with their crowdsourced marketing handbills.

via coreysmith.com

What caught everyone's attention was that this totally independent musician, with no record label, no radio play, no massive publicity campaign had grossed about $4 million in 2008. Now, of course, tour grosses (which made up the lion's share of that amount) are a bit misleading, as the venues take a cut of that, and there are certainly other expenses to be paid, but as a starting number it's still really impressive. Luckily, Corey is now sharing some more details about his path to success.

Corey recently did a fantastic podcast with CDBaby where he details how he went about building up a fan base and building up support, and it basically involved exactly what we discussed before: good music, a real connection with the fans, hard work through touring and careful targeting. While he jokes about the $4 million gross touring number, he does admit that his "corporation" (as he now has a support staff) netted over $2 million last year. Frankly, that's more impressive than the $4 million gross numbers. He notes, of course, that there are still expenses on top of that, including staff (manager, accountant, full-time salaried musicians who play with him, recording expenses and touring expenses -- especially in support of new markets, where the return isn't guaranteed). But, even with all that, bringing in over $2 million in topline revenue is really impressive for a musician without any additional outside backing.

One of the things that he discusses in the podcast is that what really got him started down this road was realizing that it could be done. He read Dave Kusek and Gerd Leonhard's excellent The Future of Music, and it made him realize "hey, this is possible." And that, alone, made a huge difference. It's amazing what you can do once you realize that something is possible -- and one of the great things we've seen in writing about Corey and numerous other musicians and their success stories is that they, in turn, inspire many other musicians who realize that it really is possible to do quite well despite the naysayers and the doom and gloom.

what we think, we become.