Culture Crawl 265 “The Last Festival”

2017 will be the final year for the Irish District Music and Arts Festival in Northeast Cedar Rapids, but that doesn’t mean the festival is ending. Next year, it will be renamed in honor of the new College District neighborhood that now encompasses the area.

Perry and the Pumpers and New Orleans’ Honey Swamp Band headline this festival, which raises funds to provide cash grants to emerging musical artists to help develop their careers.

Tickets are $10 in advance through midnight June 15, $15 at the gate.

Details at www.irishdistrictfest.com.

Culture Crawl 264 “She Writes How Many Books a Year?”

The public libraries in Cedar Rapids, Marion, and Hiawatha present bestselling authors in a free reading and signing event each year in the “Out Loud” author series.

June 16, it’s poet and Newbury Award-winner Kwame Alexander. June 23, Debbie Macomber, whose books have spent 990 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists.

Admission is free, but pre-registration is recommended at www.metrolibrarynetwork.org.

Talking Pictures 6-15-17

The Mummy (2017), Wonder Woman, It Comes at Night with Hollis Monroe, Denny Lynch and Scott Chrisman 

Clean Up Your Act 7-12-17

Herbicides are likely causing insect-like damage to oak trees in Iowa.

Culture Crawl 261 “Puffy Sleeves Bigger Than Human Heads”

The University of Iowa Theatre program presents Oscar Wilde’s classic farce, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” June 15-25. A comedy set against the backdrop of the rigid social structures of Nineteenth Century Britain, the play is both social commentary but also set up many of the comedic rules and structures that we see in plays, TV, and movies to this day.

Best of all, all tickets are free! Details at www.iowasummerrep.com.

Special Programs: Week of June 12 – 18

Short List with Bob Naujoks    

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

Short List: Jazz Women – The Instrumentalists (Jennifer Leitham)

Jennifer Leitham

Jennifer Leitham is an outstanding bassist and has played with a host of top names in jazz: George Shearing, Woody Herman, Gerry Mulligan, Bill Watrous and Benny Carter. For the past few years she has had her own well reviewed trio. There is one unique thing about Jennifer, and that is she is a left-handed bass player. She is also a person who transitioned from being John to her more comfortable life as Jennifer.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jazz Corner of the World with Craig Kessler

Monday, 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM

“Blue Note Records In 1967 – Part Two”                                          

Craig travels back 50 years to continue his look at Blue Note Records during 1967. We’ll hear choice selections from Andrew Hill, The 3 Sounds, Bobby Hutcherson, Tyrone Washington, Jack Wilson, Larry Young, McCoy Tyner, and many others. Don’t miss this classic array of gems from the ever-changing jazz scene of the late 1960s!!                 

 

Night Lights (Classic Jazz) with David Brent Johnson

Monday, 10:00 PM – 11:00 PM (follows Jazz Corner the World) 

Night Lights, is a weekly one-hour jazz radio program hosted by David Brent Johnson, focusing on jazz from the 1945-1990 era—covering artists such as Jackie McLean, Charles Mingus, and Nina Simone and themes ranging from jazz recordings of spirituals to avant-garde interpretations of the Great American Songbook. Night Lights also features many lesser-known talents of post-1945 jazz. Every program is archived after broadcast for online listening. This week: “1961: New Jazz Frontier”.  

www.indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/archives/2017

 

Jazz Profiles with Nancy Wilson    

Monday at 11:00 PM (follows Nightlights)

Paul Desmond: ‘The Sound of a Dry Martini’ 

Paul Desmond

Alto saxophonist Paul Desmond’s airy tone was just one aspect of his great artistry. He was a wholly original improviser whose unfailing lyricism, clear logic, and advanced harmonic sense produced some of the finest solos on record. Many of these solos were recorded during his long association with pianist Dave Brubeck. Their chemistry led to enormous success during the ’50s and ’60s, including one of the most popular jazz recordings of all-time — Desmond’s “Take Five.”                                                                                    

 

Wednesday Night Special                

6:00 PM   

Highlights from the 2016 Iowa City Jazz Festival: Edmar Castaneda Trio

Edmar Castaneda Trio at the 2016 Iowa City Jazz Festival

Edmar Castaneda, the Colombian harp player is arguably one of the most original players hailing from the Big Apple. Castaneda pursued jazz trumpet once moving to New York from Bogota; but, he soon realized that he wanted to apply the jazz techniques he had learned to his original instrument, the harp. The harp has been utilized in jazz improvisation before by players like Dorothy Ashby, Zeena Parkins, and a few others, but is definitely an outlier where jazz instruments are concerned

Edmar Castaneda currently has four albums out, the latest being released in 2015, “Edmar Castaneda World Ensemble: Live At the Jazz Standard.”

In 2012, Castaneda produced an album featuring Miguel Zenon, “Double Portion.” Castaneda uses an assortment of influences like joropo, Latin, tango, Brazilian, and flamenco vibes to create his music. He has comprised a talented trio, but you may be surprised what he accomplishes on his harp alone. He plays lead melodies, harmonizes, lays down bass lines, and even adds rhythmic depth to the trio.

Paquito D’Rivera, Edmar’s frequent collaborator, describes him as “an enormous talent. With his versatility and enchanting charisma, he has taken his harp out of the shadows, and become one of the most original musicians in the Big Apple.”          

 

Jazz Night in America with Christian McBride

Thursday at 11:00 PM

Gary Burton Retires

Gary Burton

Gary Burton’s final stop on his farewell tour was at the Jazz Kitchen in Indianapolis, Indiana — Gary’s home state. The master vibraphonist has retired from music on his own terms and in the comfort of playing duets with his pianist of three decades, Makoto Ozone. This episode Jazz Night in America features music recorded at The Jazz Kitchen, Burton in conversation with WBGO’s Nate Chinen, and words from some his closest friends and colleagues.                      

 

Jazz Corner of the World with Craig Kessler     

Saturday, Noon – 4:00 PM and Monday, 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM

“The Piano Artistry of Malcolm Earl ‘Mal’ Waldron” 

Craig examines the 50 year career of the brilliant pianist who began working in jazz in 1950. We’ll hear solo and group recordings under Mal’s name, as well as a number of classics featuring his piano work with John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Jackie McLean, and many others. Waldron was a true “jazz original”, who remains overlooked and underappreciated!                  

 

 

 

Tropical Heat (hosted by Kpoti Senam Accoh)

Sunday, 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Featured Album: “Exchange” by The JuJu        

Nico Segal, the Social Experiment member formerly known as Donnie Trumpet, has a new band called The JuJu. The Chicago quartet is a jazzy instrumental outfit that features pianist Julian Reid, bassist and former Kids These Days member Lane Beckstrom, and Julian’s brother Everett on drums.Today, they’ve released their debut album, Exchange.The record features additional production from Chance the Rapper collaborator Nate Fox, who mixed and recorded the effort alongside Segal. Jamila Woods also features on a track called “We Good”.

“It’s not like we’re trying really hard to make a jazz album,” Segal explained to Noisey. “Yes, if we’re putting an iTunes description on it we’ll call it jazz, but it’s really nothing like anything we’ve ever made—all four of us.” He also added, “We tried bringing to light the fact that instruments can produce sounds that people, one, want to listen to and, two, can remember and sing forever in the same way that their favorite vocalist can do.”

http://pitchfork.com/news/72362-nico-segal-fka-donnie-trumpet-releases-new-album-exchange-with-new-band-the-juju-listen/

 

KCCK’s Midnight CD

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

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

New Music Monday for June 12, 2017

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

For an incredible eight decades now, feisty vibraphonist and jazz icon Terry Gibbs has demonstrated the sheer joy of performing. In performance, he behaves like an exuberant fan of his own band, cheering them on, punctuating arrangements and solos with non-verbal interjections. His spirit was cultivated over the years, having played in significant jazz eras with the formative giants of the genre, including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman. The same spirit is in abundance on “92 Years Young: Jammin’ at the Gibbs House,” a collection of songs recorded live in Gibbs’ living room. Terry’s son, Gerry, leads the ensemble backing Terry, whose tone is impeccable and whose energy belies his senior status.

 

 

 

Drummer Louis Hayes, who turned 80-years-old this May, has performed over the years with such jazz titans as Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane, Oscar Peterson and Freddie Hubbard. When he moved to New York in 1956 at age 19, he was introduced to the jazz world as the driving force in the legendary Horace Silver Quintet, in which he would spend three years, appearing on a string of classic Blue Note albums. Now for his label debut as a leader for the label, Hayes pays tribute to his former boss with “Serenade for Horace,” putting his own spin on a program of Silver compositions.                           

 

 

 

Also this week, Mats Holmquist leads the Latvian Radio Big Band, with special guests Dick Oatts and Randy Brecker, on “Big Band Minimalism”.

 

Japanese pianist and composer Yoko Miwa offers up her fifth disc as a leader, “Pathways”.

 

 

Pianist Theo Hill unveils his sophomore effort, “Promethean.”

 

 

 

 

 

Culture Crawl 263 “Say His Name!”

Riverside Theatre Summer in Lower City Park opens June 9, with two plays. “Macbeth,” the well-known Shakespearean tragedy (which theatre folk do not refer to by title, because it’s supposed to be bad luck), is the first of two plays being staged. The setting and costumes for the show are inspired by World War I, including heavy wool greatcoats in an Iowa summer.

The other play, “Bomb-itty of Errors,” incorporates soul and hip-hop in a hilarious retelling of “The Comedy of Errors.”

Director Sean Lewis talks about keeping The Bard relevant in today’s society.

Details and tickets at www.riversidetheatre.org.