MUSIC I LOVE - Donald Fagen

"The Nightfly"

Donald Fagen 1982

MEMORIAM - Hugh Masekela, Died at 78

"Remembering Hugh Masekela, master musician who fought for South African freedom" PBS NewsHour 1/23/2018

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SUMMARY:  Over the course of his six-decade career, Hugh Masekela's jazz and anti-apartheid activism made him a beloved international figure.  In exile, he used his music as a form of activism to call for Nelson Mandela's release from prison and freedom in South Africa.  Masekela died Tuesday in Johannesburg at 78 years old.

MUSIC - Trombone Shorty's Hometown

"How Trombone Shorty is training the next generation of musicians in his hometown" PBS NewsHour 10/19/2017

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SUMMARY:  Troy Andrews, better known as Trombone Shorty, grew up with music all around him in New Orleans, first playing on the streets at age 4.  Now with a Grammy, an international following and a new album, Andrews also devotes himself to the role of music educator in his hometown.  Jeffrey Brown reports.

ARTS - World's Jazz Capital

"Why Copenhagen is becoming the jazz capital of the world" PBS NewsHour 7/14/2017

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SUMMARY:  The Copenhagen Jazz Festival ends this weekend in Denmark's capital.  The organizers claim it's the world's biggest such event.  Some musicians from the U.S. express envy that this quintessential American genre now thrives abroad, thanks to Danish government investment.  Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports on why the city's jazz is attracting international attention.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  The Copenhagen Jazz Festival ends this weekend in Denmark’s capital.  The organizers claim it’s the world’s biggest such event, and that Denmark has now become the epicenter of global jazz.

Some of the American musicians there express envy that this quintessential American music now thrives abroad, thanks to Danish government investment.

Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant is based in Copenhagen and he brings us all that Danish jazz.

MALCOLM BRABANT, special correspondent:  The streets and squares are alive to the sound of improvisation, as the city stages 1,400 concerts in 10 days, leading to claims that Copenhagen is now the jazz capital of the world.

ART OF MUSIC - Improvisational Jazz

"The ‘white heat' and vulnerability of improvisational jazz" PBS NewsHour 12/6/2016

Jazz is my first love in music since my discovery of Dave Brubeck way back when.

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SUMMARY:  What is improvisational jazz all about?  Saxophonist Joshua Redman and pianist Brad Mehldau agree that the answer is vulnerability.  Their musical genre requires players to follow one another's lead -- often letting another performer dictate the musical conversation.  Jeffrey Brown sits down with Redman and Mehldau to discuss emotion in their art and why "it's a great time to be a jazz musician."

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  The song, Hoagy Carmichael's 1938 ballad “The Nearness of You,” performed as a kind of conversation between two master musicians who happen to be peers and friends; saxophonist Joshua Redman, pianist Brad Mehldau.

BRAD MEHLDAU, Pianist:  If you're going to play a ballad with someone, and you want it to be anything deeper than this just sort of surface, you're going to have to be vulnerable for the other person.  And that's what the audience wants to see, too.

JOSHUA REDMAN, Saxophonist:  Yes.  Jazz is all about vulnerability.

BRAD MEHLDAU:  So, you got to…

JEFFREY BROWN:  Vulnerability?

(CROSSTALK)

BRAD MEHLDAU:  Yes.

JOSHUA REDMAN:  I think so, yes, because we're improvising, you know?  And we're not coming to the bandstand with a preconceived notion of what we're going to play.

We have to be open and available and vulnerable to really make that connection with ourselves and with the other musician.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Redman, 47, and Mehldau, 46, have been filling concert halls and jazz clubs, on their own, as band leaders, and together, for more than 20 years.

This fall, they have joined forces again in a recent performance at New York's Jazz at Lincoln Center, and on a newly-released album titled “Nearness,” a mix of original material and jazz standards recorded live on tour in 2011.

JOSHUA REDMAN:  I feel so fortunate to be able to make the music that I believe in, and to get up there every night and just play from the soul and go for it.

BRAD MEHLDAU:  As an improvising musician, I really feel committed to not going out there and playing some nonsense for people, you know?

(LAUGHTER)

BRAD MEHLDAU:  There's a bit of a script.  We have some plan, but what they want to hear is, they really want to hear us try to be creative.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Both men came to music early.  Redman, in California, was raised by his dancer mother, and is the son of well-known saxophonist Dewey Redman.  Mehldau in Florida and Connecticut in a family home never without a piano.

They arrived separately in New York in the early 1990s, where each found his own early success.

We spoke recently at the Steinway Piano Showroom in Manhattan just before a concert.

BRAD MEHLDAU:  Even when I'm ostensibly accompanying him, and he's ostensibly taking the solo, we're still having this conversation.  So it may mean, for instance, that he plays a melodic idea, and then I respond to it sort of in real time, and I might even give him something back, that then he responds to again.

JOSHUA REDMAN:  I'm always looking for something.

MUSIC - Jazzman Jason Morgan's Goal to Enthrall New Jazz Listeners

"Jason Moran strikes up the band — and a conversation — to enthrall new jazz listeners" PBS NewsHour 6/16/2014

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JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  Pianist and composer Jason Moran is one of today’s best-known younger jazz musicians.  Performing solo and with his trio around the world, he’s a true believer that his art form can transport and transform an audience.

JASON MORAN, Artistic Director for Jazz, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts:  Well, there’s a power that kind of starts to stir in the body.  The molecules start to, start to want to jump around.  It has a possibility to change how the body feels, how the mind feels.

And that is something that you can’t quantify.  And then, when the music hits the audience, and when it hits the space, the air, it has the possibility to change everything in that person’s being.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Now the 39-year-old has a distinctive public perch here at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., where he’s been named artistic director for jazz, with a goal of both preserving a tradition and building new audiences.