Culture Crawl 440 “Lucky He Didn’t Brush His Teeth”

The Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre premieres a brand-new work, celebrating Eastern Iowa’s hometown art legend, Grant Wood. “Strokes of Genius: The Grant Wood Operas” is three one-act original operas, each written by a composer with Iowa ties.

Cedar Rapids native Robert Lindsay Nassif’s contribution is “American Gothical,” a comic look at how Wood may have gone about creating “American Gothic,” one of the most iconic paintings in the world, including scenes in Dr. McKeeby’s dental chair, who served as the male model for the painting, and convincing Grant’s glamorous sister Nan to allow him to paint her as the dowdy woman.

Also, original works by the UI’s Jean-Francois Charles, and Michael Ching, a famous opera composer who lives in Ames.

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Culture Crawl 439 “Body Switching”

Clear Creek/Amana High School presents the Iowa premiere of the new musical “Freaky Friday,” based on the popular Disney movies.

Seniors Brie Bevans and Mikayla Tackaberry play the body-switching mother and daughter, and say playing different minds in different bodies creates a fun challenge.

7:00pm April 11, 12, 13, with a 2:00 matinee also on April 13. Tickets available at the door.

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Kirkwood Board of Trustees to meet April 11, 2019

The regular meeting of the Kirkwood Board of Trustees will take place April 11, 2019. Time, place, and meeting agenda can be found at this link.

Special Programs for April 1 thru April 6

Short List with host Bob Naujoks    

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

Galloping Guitars: Chris Flory  

Some critics rate Chris Flory high on the list of jazz guitarists today. Flory has been around since the 1970s and has a reputation as a dependable sideman. He has played with such revered musicians as saxophonist Scott Hamilton, trumpeter Roy Eldridge, singer Rosemary Clooney and stride pianist Judy Carmichael. Flory has six albums under his own name, and many as a sideman.

 

 

 

 

 

Jazz Corner of the World with host Craig Kessler

Mondays at 6:00 PM

CTI Records in 1970

Craig looks back 49 years at Creed Taylor’s famous jazz label.  We’ll hear classics from Freddie Hubbard, Bill Evans, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joe Farrell, Stanley Turrentine, Hubert Laws, and others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday Night Special

Wednesdays at 6:00 PM   

Hollis Monroe & The ISU Jazz Ensemble 

For Jazz Appreciation Month, KCCK celebrates the work of student musicians. The Wednesday Night Special features KCCK’s own Hollis Monroe as he joins the Iowa State University Jazz Ensemble. Recorded February 20, the program, entitled “The 1917 Riot in East St. Louis That Started the Civil Rights Movement: A Lecture Concert in Jazz,” is powerful performance, combining spoken word, visual presentations, and live jazz.

 

 

 

 

 

Jazz Night in America with host Christian McBride

Thursdays at 11:00 PM

Muldrow, Moran, and Mingus

Multi-instrumentalist, producer, and vocalist Georgia Anne Muldrow joins pianist Jason Moran and his cohorts at the Kennedy Center for a program featuring her own original compositions and their interpretations of music by Charles Mingus.

 

 

 

 

Jazz Corner of the World with host Craig Kessler

Saturdays at Noon

Chronological Andrew Hill, Part Four

Craig continues with his presentation of the artistry of pianist and composer, Andrew Hill.  This week, we pick up with the August 5, 1968 Blue Note session that yielded the LP Grass Roots.

 

 

 

 

KCCK’s Midnight CD

The Monday – Sunday Midnight CD for this week can be found at: 

http://www.kcck.org/midnight-cd/

This Week In Jazz March 31st thru April 6th

Hey, Jazz fans!!!

Be sure to tune in this week as we celebrate the birthdays of vocalists King Pleasure, Frankie Laine, Astrud Gilberto, Stacey Kent and the Divine Ms. Sarah Vaughan, saxmen Ben Webster, James Moody, and Matt Catingub, and Lanny Morgan, bassists Steve LaSpina, Victor Bailey, Larry Gales and more!!! We’ll also mark the recording anniversaries of Duke Ellington’s Seattle Concert (1952), Kenny Dorham’s “Afro-Cuban” (1955), Cannonball Adderley’s “Them Dirty Blues” (1960), and many more throughout the week and Mondays thru Fridays at noon on our ‘JAZZ MASTERS’ program on Jazz 88.3 KCCK.

 

 

First Friday Jazz May 3

Gerardo Gomez and “Uncharted” will perform at First Friday Jazz at the Opus Concert Cafe Friday, May 3, at 5 p.m. The first set will be broadcast live on KCCK. The First Friday Jazz Series features an eclectic mix of jazz, Latin, contemporary music and more in an intimate, upscale environment. For a $12 cover, enjoy live music and drink specials at the Opus Concert Café bar the first Friday of every month. Purchase tickets.

New Music Monday for April 1, 2019

      Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.

The quartet that saxophonist Branford Marsalis has led for the past three decades has always been a model of daring, no-apologies artistry, of ever-widening horizons and deepening collective identity. With like-minded support from pianist Joey Calderazzo and bassist Eric Revis (each with 20 years of service to the group) and drummer Justin Faulkner (the “rookie” who has been aboard since 2009), the band has long been a model of how to sustain and enlarge a musical outlook that is both historically and stylistically inclusive. Successive recordings have revealed new plateaus, and “The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul,” the band’s first since 2016 and first pure quartet effort since 2012, captures a new emphasis on both how to express and how to document the music.

 

 

 

 

     Six talented female musicians join together to deliver an entertaining and melodically engaging debut as the new collective Lioness roars into action with “Pride & Joy.” The record features the front line talents of alto saxophonist Alexa Tarantino, tenor saxophonist Jenny Hill, and baritone saxophonist Lauren Sevian, along with the talented rhythm section of guitarist Amanda Monaco, organist Akiko Tsuruga and drummer Allison Miller. Four of the six, incidentally, have appeared at the Iowa City Jazz Festival in recent years. With a dazzling combination of talents and an evocative program of originals and musical selections by other female composers, the ear-catching performances are sure to bring bright moments to jazz fans everywhere.

 

 

 

 

         

Also this week, Five Play, the sister group of the world renowned Diva Jazz Orchestra, unveils its fifth release, “Live From the Firehouse Stage”;

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                     

bassist Pete Coco pays homage to his mentors and influences on his debut disc, “Lined With a Groove,” with fresh arrangements of tunes by bassists Ron Carter, Milt Hinton, Ray Brown, Charlie Haden and Paul Chambers;

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

     and New Orleans icon Herlin Riley offers up “Perpetual Optimism,” an album made against the backdrop of serving as caregiver and then saying farewell to both of his parents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Celebrate The Joy of Jazz!

Fill out the form below and tell us the name of a favorite jazz song or album, along with a sentence or two about why it sparks joy for you.

Beginning April 5, we’ll play back the tunes submitted, both to celebrate the music that brings us joy and to remind other listeners that supporting KCCK is an important way to keep that Joy Spring flowing.