We kick off the summer of 2020 with a look back at one of 2019’s biggest jazz events, the Iowa City Jazz Festival. Listen all day for last year’s memorable performances, plus our exclusive backstage conversations with all the headliners. Our broadcast is a little bittersweet, as we learned Friday that the 2020 festival won’t take place, at …
Trumpeter Alicia Rau grew up in rural southwest Iowa, studied abroad in Senegal, and now makes her home in New York. She plays her trumpet each night at 7pm to join the daily tribute to New York’s essential workers, and has also recorded around 40 school songs to celebrate students whose graduations and other activities …
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and SpotifySome people are obsessed with Wayne Shorter’s music. Many of his compositions, which are known for their complex harmonies and memorable melodies, have become jazz standards. When two musicians of the caliber of guitarist Dave Askren and sax player Jeff Benedict team up to record an album of …
In the Seventies and Eighties, many Iowa natives found themselves on the coasts, meeting, performing, and forming lifelong friendships with some of the musicians who would go on to become the most important players of their generation. Dennis Carlson moved from Cedar Falls to Boston, where Gary Burton offered him a position teaching at Berklee. …
Hey, Jazz fans!!! Be sure to tune in this week as we celebrate the birthdays of cornetist/bandleader King Oliver, composer Irving Berlin, pianist/composers Gil Evans and Red Garland, singers Barbara Dane and Betty Carter, bassist Buddy Catlett, trumpeters Al Porcino and Stu Williamson, harmonicist Gregoire Maret and more!!! We’ll also mark the recording anniversaries of …
Author Derrick Bang has chronicled the life of pianist Vince Guaraldi and has also written dozens of articles on the Charles Schulz and the Peanuts comic strips. But he recently turned his attention to making an exhaustive survey of the role of Jazz in the music of TV and movies. His two-volume set, Crime and Spy …
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and SpotifySaxophonist Wayne Escoffery is renowned for his fiery, muscular and virtuosic tenor playing, but his explosive sound is paired with a soft-spoken and thoughtful demeanor off the bandstand. In many cases, both those aspects of his personality can be credited to the same inspirations–giants of the music who …
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and SpotifySisterhoods have been steadily moving toward the forefront of the jazz scene. Elevated by purpose and promise, and upholding the virtues of equality and community, these sororities have become a substantial force in the music today. Monika Herzig, a thoughtful composer and inventive pianist, has become a key …
