Juana Molina’s nighttime missives have been keeping us happily awake
Rochester International Jazz Festival
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Finding a groove
In a music industry that insists on categorization, Medeski Martin & Wood have successfully refused to be pigeonholed. With very little radio airplay, they have built a following across the country and around the world. Perhaps most surprisingly, they have managed to combine borderline avant-garde jazz with catchy grooves, drawing fans from all over the […]
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Pacin’ the Trane
When Rashied Ali was growing up in North Philadelphia in the 1940s and 1950s, he may have occupied the most fertile ground for the development of jazz talent anywhere on earth. His second cousins, Charlie and Bernard Rice, were both drummers playing gigs with an up-and-coming local saxophonist. “I grew up on his music […]
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Arranging to soar
Maria Schneider has to admit it; she was not quite the average child when it came to music. It may have been normal to dance around the room when her mother put on a Duke Ellington or Artie Shaw record. But then there was that time when she was 7… “My mom had […]
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Who are these guys?
Read on for City Newspaper’s profiles of the acts in this year’s Rochester International Jazz Festival. Friday, June 6 George Benson George Benson had firmly established his career as a jazz guitarist when he began to highlight a unique method of scat-singing along with his solos. Before long, his voice took center stage. In the […]
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Tailoring a sound
Watching Keter Betts’ fingers glide effortlessly over the strings of the bass, you might think that a pint-size bass awaited him in his cradle when he was born. But Betts began his musical life as a drummer. It’s just that there was this problem. “I’d worked my way up to the Gene Krupa […]
