Special Programs for February 15 thru February 20

Short List with host Bob Naujoks

Monday – Friday at 8:35 AM and Saturdays at 7 AM

Short List: “The Hits”

The Short List continues its feature of great jazz in the popular mind. This week, host Bob Naujoks celebrates full jazz albums that became widespread hits. We’ll hear stories and songs from Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters and Future Shock, Weather Report’s Heavy Weather, Dave Brubeck’s Time Out.

 

 

 

Jazz Corner of the World with Host Craig Kessler

Mondays at 6:00 PM

Jazz & the Spoken Word, Part One     

Craig will spin a variety of spoken forms in a jazz context. We’ll hear poet Barry Wallenstein with pianist Stanley Cowell, a story told by Duke Ellington, poetry by Jack Kerouac with saxophonist Zoot Sims, Barbara Simmons speaking in front of Jackie McLean’s Sextet, poet Ted Joans with the Archie Shepp Quintet, a Gunther Schuller narration in front of his orchestra, some work by Charles Mingus, and a variety of other goodies and rarities. Don’t miss it!

 

 

 

The Wednesday Night Special

Wednesdays at 6:00 PM

Trombone Shorty & Orleans Ave.

As anyone from the Big Easy will tell you, every day is a good day to party like it’s Mardi Gras! With that in mind, the Wednesday Night Special serves up a plateful of New Orleans flavor with Trombone Shorty! This amazing horn man brought the Crescent City to Iowa City for the 2009 Jazz Festival. Get your second line going and get ready to dance!

 

 

 

Jazz Night in America with host Christian McBride

Thursdays at 11:00 PM

A Fine Romance  

Host Christian McBride helps us celebrate Valentine’s Week with classic songs of love from a 2018 Jazz at Lincoln Center concert. Keeping us in the mood for love are the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, along with featured vocalists Brianna Thomas, Vuyo Sotashe, and an all-star big band.

 

 

 

 

Jazz Corner of the World with Host Craig Kessler 

Saturdays at 12:00 Noon

Tribute to Stanley Cowell, Part Two   

Craig continues his salute to the recently departed Stanley Cowell. We’ll primarily hear Stanley leading his own groups, as well as some choice material featuring Cowell as a sideman. He is one of the truly underrated and overlooked jazz pianists and will be greatly missed!

 

 

 

KCCK’s Midnight CD

Every Night at Midnight

Each night, KCCK gives you the chance to hear a new CD played start-to-finish.

Thank You, Mr. Mabern by Leon Lee Dorsey on Monday; Tip of the Hat by Joe Taina on Tuesday; Jazz Standards, Volume 2: Then Again the Henry Robinett Quartet on Wednesday; The Democracy Suite by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Septet on Thursday; One Woman Band by Ghalia Volt on Friday; Damage Control by Curtis Salgado on Saturday; 25 Years (Disc 1) by Edward Simon on Sunday

New Music Monday for February 15, 2021

      Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Five brilliant and focused musicians, against odds imposed by history and impossibility, have risen to the occasion to create a recording that provides depth, joy and emotional outreach in times of isolation and hardship. Developing their musical voices on the Seattle jazz scene, bassist Ben Feldman and saxophonist Santosh Sharma moved to New York for school and opportunity, while drummer Xavier Lecouturier, pianist Dylan Hayes and guitarist Martin Budde became invaluable creatives in Northwest music circles. Sidelined from various tours last year, the five ended up gathering in Alaska, composing, playing and discovering that as a quintet, the joy of music and creation was rekindled. Setting up in an airplane hangar, the quintet, known as Meridian Odyssey, recorded “Second Wave.”

 

 

 

 

     Legendary composer Leonard Bernstein once called jazz “the ultimate common denominator of the American musical style.” The music made a profound impact on Bernstein’s work, not only the more explicit “jazziness” of his work in musical theater, but throughout his serious orchestral music as well. With the new album, “Bernstein Reimagined,” the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra mines the composer’s vast repertoire for a vibrantly diverse set of music that delves into pieces rarely if ever performed in a jazz context.  The music was originally commissioned as part of the worldwide celebration of Bernstein’s centennial year in 2018.

 

 

 

                         

Also this week, “Collecting Things” is the newest recording by guitarist and composer Mike Scott, a pastiche of musical styles performed by some of the top jazz musician in Southern California;

 

 

 

 

               

 the Ira B. Liss Big Band Jazz Machine celebrates its 40th anniversary with “Mazel Tov Kocktail,” their sixth full length recording; 

 

 

 

 

 

           

      and Los Angeles-based reed player David Sills unveils his 17th CD as a leader, “Natural Lines.”

 

 

 

Remembering Chick Corea

Chick Corea clowns around in Coe bandmaster Bill Carson’s office before his Acoustic Band performed at the college in 1994. (No, he didn’t play Bill’s clarinet at the show)

Legendary pianist and composer Chick Corea passed away February 9 after a battle with cancer. He appeared in the Corridor many times, most recently in 2019 with his Trilogy Trio at Hancher in what would be his final tour.

In 2010, he played a solo piano gig at the Englert. Prior to the concert, he had a relaxed and wide-ranging chat with KCCK’s Gordon Paulsen. Chick talked about the intimacy of a solo piano concert, the anniversary of one of his seminal early works, and much more.

Never miss an artist interview or special event when you subscribe to KCCK Specials wherever you get your podcasts or using the link below.

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Talking Pictures 2-10-21

Lupin (Netflix), The Little Things (2021) and The White Tiger (Netflix) with Hollis Monroe, Phil Brown and Monica Schmidt.

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Culture Crawl 616 “Grant Wood Revealed”

The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art opens “Grant Wood Revealed” Feb. 13, an exhibit of rarely-seen work by the master artist, taken from the Museum’s 300-piece Grant Wood collection (the world’s largest), and pieces from private collectors.

“Seriously Funny,” an exhibit of American Gothic parodies continues as well. Learn more at www.crma.org.

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City High Student Wins Corridor Jazz Art Contest

Diego Loria-Eivins, a freshman at City High School in Iowa City, has been chosen as the winner of the 2021 Corridor Jazz Project CD Cover design. Diego will receive a $100 cash prize from KCCK-FM.

His design will serve as the cover of the “The Corridor Jazz Project XIV”, a compilation of recordings from the top jazz bands from Jefferson, Kennedy, Prairie, Xavier and Washington High Schools in Cedar Rapids, Linn-Mar and Marion in Marion, Liberty, Center Point Urbana, Solon, Mt. Vernon, and Lisbon.

The Corridor Jazz Project is a jazz education and mentoring program for jazz band students in Eastern Iowa. The program matches each high school’s top jazz band with a professional jazz player, who performs as a guest soloist with the band. The subsequent recordings have been collected and will be released on a compilation CD.

The program has been modified for 2021 because of COVID-19. Instead of the students traveling to a recording facility at Orchestra Iowa’s Opus Concert Café, KCCK will bring an audio and video production team to each school to make the recording, with masking and social distancing protocols in place.

“Unfortunately, the Iowa City School District’s COVID protocols will prevent City and West High Schools from participating this year,” says KCCK general manager Dennis Green. “But City will still be represented by Diego’s excellent cover design.”

Normally, a spring concert involving all participating schools happens each spring. This year, the album release party will move online for an event that will stream in early May, and feature video performances from each school produced by GMixEast.

Support for the Corridor Jazz Project comes from MidWestOne Bank, Latta Harris, Orchestra Iowa, and West Music.

This Week In Jazz February 7 thru February 13


Hey, Jazz fans!!! Be sure to tune in this week as we celebrate the birthdays of pianists Eubie Blake and Sir Roland Hanna, bassist Walter Page, singer Roberta Flack, vibist Ben Gillece and more!!! We’ll also mark the recording anniversaries of John Lewis’ “Grand Encounter” (1956), John Coltrane and Red Garland’s “Soultrane” (1957), Art Blakey’s “Free for All” (1964), Shirley Horn’s “Travelin’ Light” (1965), Ray Brown Trio’s “Black Orpheus” (1991), Barbara Morrison’s “I Wanna Be Loved” (2017)  and many more throughout the week and Mondays thru Fridays at noon on our ‘ MASTERS’ program on Jazz 88.3 KCCK

Special Programs for February 8 thru February 13

Short List with host Bob Naujoks

Monday – Friday at 8:35 AM and Saturdays at 7 AM

Short List: “The Hits”

The Short List continues its listen to great jazz tunes in the popular mind. Join host Bob Naujoks as he spotlights jazz tunes that crossed the boundaries of jazz and other genres. This week, it’s Etta James’s “At Last,” Tommy Dorsey’s “Tea For Two Cha-Cha,” Si Zentner’s “Up a Lazy River,” “Street Life,” made popular by the Crusaders and Randy Crawford, and “Dire Straits’s “Sultans of Swing.”

 

 

 

Jazz Corner of the World with Host Craig Kessler

Mondays at 6:00 PM

4 More Who Recently Left Us

In this show, Craig pays tribute to four more jazz artists who have moved on to that “big stage” in the afterworld – Candido Camero Guerra (aka Candido), pianist Frank Kimbrough, baritone sax and tubist Howard Lewis Johnson, and Junior Mance. Each of these artists were, in their unique ways, pioneers in jazz and they left behind a treasure in their recorded legacies.

 

 

 

The Wednesday Night Special

Wednesdays at 6:00 PM

Don Byron Music For Six Musicians

All month long, our Wednesday Night Specials celebrate African-Americans who raise jazz to the level of high art. This week, we listen back to the 2003 Iowa City Jazz Festival for Don Byron’s Music For Six Musicians. Byron, a celebrated, innovative composer, performer, and jazz educator, never stops reinventing jazz. His experiments with tone, tempo, and ensembles break new ground and inspire legions of fans.

 

 

 

Jazz Night in America with host Christian McBride

Thursdays at 11:00 PM

Channeling Cannonball  

This week, we’re introduced to young saxophonist Patrick Bartley, whose love of Julian “Cannonball” Adderley’s music and musicianship is defining his career. Plus, host Christian McBride tells stories from the recording of Cannonball’s classic live album, “Black Messiah.”

 

 

 

 

Jazz Corner of the World with Host Craig Kessler 

Saturdays at 12:00 Noon

Jazz & the Spoken Word, Part One     

Craig will spin a variety of spoken forms in a jazz context. We’ll hear poet Barry Wallenstein with pianist Stanley Cowell, a story told by Duke Ellington, poetry by Jack Kerouac with saxophonist Zoot Sims, Barbara Simmons speaking in front of Jackie McLean’s Sextet, poet Ted Joans with the Archie Shepp Quintet, a Gunther Schuller narration in front of his orchestra, some work by Charles Mingus, and a variety of other goodies and rarities. Don’t miss it!

 

 

 

KCCK’s Midnight CD

Every Night at Midnight

Each night, KCCK gives you the chance to hear a new CD played start-to-finish.

Cartoon Bebop by the 14 Jazz Orchestra on Monday; Been Down That Road Before by Clifton Anderson on Tuesday; The VJE: Very Live! by the Verve Jazz Ensemble on Wednesday; Baker’s Circle by Dave Stryker on Thursday; What Is Real by Trevor B. Power on Friday; One More Mile by Dave Thomas on Saturday; Spirit Garden by Tivon Pennicott on Sunday