Even though in-person performances for the 2020 Iowa City Jazz Festival have been cancelled, we still think the airwaves should be filled with live jazz July 3-5. Since 2001, KCCK has recorded and broadcast nearly all of the mainstage performances. That’s nearly 500 hours of unforgettable shows! In addition to the online performances that Summer …
Category: KCCK Blog
New Music Monday for June 8, 2020
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify Guitarist John Scofield celebrates the music of his friend and mentor Steve Swallow on “Swallow Tales,” made in an afternoon in New York City last year “old school,” as Scofield says, acknowledging that more than forty years of preparation led up to it. John was a 20-years-old student …
New Music Monday for June 1, 2020
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify Grammy-winning New York drummer Robby Ameen has had an established recording and touring career stretching from Dizzy Gillespie to Paul Simon over the last four decades, highlighted by a 20-year run in the band Latin icon Ruben Blades. Although he is of Lebanese origin, Ameen is best known …
This Week In Jazz May 24 thru May 30
Hey, Jazz fans!!! Be sure to tune in this week as we celebrate the birthdays of Miles Davis, bassists Eugene Wright, Max Bennett and Niels-Henning Osted-Pedersen, trumpeters Claudio Roditi, Wallace Roney and Randy Sandke, singers Peggy Lee, Gladys Knight, Ann Hampton Callaway, and Dee Dee Bridgewater and more!!! We’ll also mark the recording anniversaries of …
New Music Monday for May 25, 2020
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and SpotifySix years after Pat Metheny’s last studio recording, and fifteen years after the final Pat Metheny Group album, comes a set of brand new pieces recorded with a new band. “From This Place” features drummer Antonio Sanchez, bassist Linda May Han Oh and pianist Gwilym Simcock along …
Iowa City Jazz Festival Memorial Day Broadcast
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 …
“Little by Little, You Catch the Monkey” – Alicia Rau
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 …
New Music Monday for May 18, 2020
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 …

