The Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium
Branford at KCCK
“The only way to play this music well is to sound like crap until you don’t sound like crap any more.”
Branford Marsalis talks about developing a “sound” (and why that idea is silly), the transition between playing in a small group and with a symphony orchestra, and even his Twitter “feud” with Kurt Elling in this interview with KCCK’s Hollis Monroe prior to Branford’s appearance with Orchestra Iowa.
Culture Crawl 236 “He’ll Have to Re-explain Everything These Two Rubes Said.”
Orchestra Iowa welcomes jazz legend Branford Marsalis to the Creative Corridor March 10 and 11 for two concerts, Friday at Hancher and Saturday at the Paramount. In between, there will be a free Q&A session with Branford, March 11 at 10am in the Opus Concert Cafe.
Airing just before Branford himself stops by the KCCK studios, Tim and Dennis are pretty sure that the jazz master will have to correct everything they said about the relationship between jazz and classical music.
Hear for yourself Friday or Saturday! Tickets at www.artsiowa.com or www.orchestraiowa.org.
Talking Pictures 3-9-17
All About Eve and Logan with Hollis Monroe, Denny Lynch and Scott Chrisman
Special Programs: Week of March 6 – 12
Short List with Bob Naujoks
Monday – Friday at 8:35 AM and Saturday at 7 AM
Corridor Jazz (Damani Phillips)
Damani Phillips at the 2016 Iowa City Jazz Festival
This week The Short List profiles the outstanding alto saxophonist Damani Phillips. He teaches both jazz music and African-American studies at the University of Iowa. He may be better known as the instrumentalist who plays with the groups Ritmocano, and the Dap Squad, as well as his own. He has several recent and fine albums available also. Originally, he studied to be a classical saxophonist, but he turned his head to jazz and was coached by some of Detroit’s jazz veterans, including trumpeter Marcus Belgrave.
Jazz Corner of the World with Craig Kessler
Monday, 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM
“Tribute To Bassist Bob Cranshaw”
Craig salutes the memory of recently departed Bob Cranshaw. Bob was best known for his long association with Sonny Rollins, but he also provided the “rock solid” bass for literally hundreds of famous jazz recordings over the years. We’ll hear great records of Hank Mobley, McCoy Tyner, Bobby Hutcherson, Duke Pearson, Nat Adderley, and so many more. A very important musician who will be greatly missed!
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: “Jazz Her Way: Nancy Wilson in the 1960’s”. http://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/archives/2017/1/
Jazz Profiles with Nancy Wilson
Monday at 11:00 PM (follows Nightlights)
Billie Holiday: ‘Lady Sings the Blues’
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was the consummate jazz singer. She could take any song and make it her own. She could re-work a melody, sing a lyric with impeccable diction, add her unique phrasing and embrace it with the raw emotional intensity of her life experience. All of the great bandleaders loved Lady Day: Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw. Billie’s personal battles are legendary — with a racist society, with men, with drugs — and it was that pain that fueled her songs. But she worked at her craft, found her own voice, and inspired countless singers and musicians. This show focuses on Billie’s music and its impact on jazz. Interviewees include her longtime accompanist Bobby Tucker, biographer Robert O’Meally, Abbey Lincoln, and Joni Mitchell.
Wednesday Night Special
6:00 PM
Christopher Merz with the Kirkwood Jazz Ensemble (new)
Chris Merz
Saxophonist Christopher Merz, has served as Director of Jazz Studies and Director of the award-winning UNI Jazz Band One at the University of Northern Iowa since 2002. Under his direction, the band has traveled to Thailand as well as the east coast of the US, and has recorded 13 CDs featuring many original compositions and arrangements by student and faculty writers.
The 2006 recipient of the CHFA University Book and Supply Outstanding Teaching award, Merz was the 2016 recipient of the John L. Baker Faculty Development award, and was inducted into the Iowa Jazz Educators’ Hall of Fame in 2015. He is a Past President of Jazz Educators of Iowa (JEI), and the founder and director of the UNI Combo Camp, an annual event for high school jazz students and music educators, which takes place each June.
His recording credits include Steve McCraven, Darius Brubeck, John Rapson and Jon Snell, as well as his own projects; Counterculture, the Chris Merz/Bob Washut Duo, The X-tet, Equilateral, and Christopher’s Very Happy Band. His 1997 release with the X-tet, Mystery is My Story, prompted Dave Brubeck to write, “I am very pleased with this wonderful band. Naturally I would admire a group like yours that, to me, is a grand extension of what we were doing…when we were the ‘new thing’”. Current projects include Colossus Central (an exciting new big band led by UNI alum Michael Conrad) and the quartet, Christopher’s Very Happy Band., which performs Merz’s originals exclusively. An accomplished composer/arranger for large jazz ensembles, Merz has received commissions from university and high school big bands throughout the country, and is published through UNC Jazz Press and ejazzlines.
Jazz Night in America with Christian McBride
Thursday at 11:00 PM
Celebrating Betty Carter
In this episode of Jazz Night in America, we hear stories from alumni of “the school of Betty Carter,” an esteemed collection of singers bound together by the thrall of Carter’s titanic influence on jazz. One of the most powerful voices in the American musical tradition, her lasting legacy is celebrated by vocalist Charenee Wade along with many past members of Carter’s band through the years.
Jazz Corner of the World with Craig Kessler
Saturday, Noon – 4:00 PM and Monday, 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM
“Birthdate Anniversary of Jazz Trumpet Master, Blue Mitchell” 
Craig celebrates the birthday of Richard Allen “Blue” Mitchell (3/13/30 to 5/21/79). We’ll hear many recordings that feature Blue as a leader, for Blue Note, Riverside, and Mainstream Records. We’ll also hear him as a side man with the likes of Grant Green, Lou Donaldson, bluesman John Mayall, Chick Corea, Horace Silver, and a host of others. Uplifting music from one of the true jazz greats!
Tropical Heat (hosted by Kpoti Senam Accoh)
Sunday, 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Featured Album: “Xenophonia” by Bojan Z 
Xenophonia is an album of the Serbian jazz pianist Bojan Z released in 2006 at Label Bleu. The name of the album, built from “xenos”, “the stranger” in Greek, is a reference to the situation of Bojan Z as a Franco-Serbian.
On this album Bojan Z plays the “xenophone”, instrument of his invention, a sort of Fender Rhodes trafficked, with a temperament different from that of the piano, close to that of “Arabic” music. Bojan adds to this instrument many effects pedals (distortion, phaser …) which ends up bringing it closer to an electric guitar. Bojan Z goes so far, on Wheels, to play “note à note” on his instrument a solo of RM Točak, star of the Serbian rock.
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/xenophonia-bojan-z-label-bleu-review-by-ian-patterson.php
KCCK’s Midnight CD
The Monday – Sunday Midnight CD for this week can be found at:
New Music Monday for March 6, 2017
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
A native of G
eneseo, Illinois, Jim Buennig is a saxophonist now based in Iowa City. He received a Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Studies from Western Illinois University and is currently completing a Master of Arts degree in Jazz Studies at the University of Iowa, where he serves as a Teaching Assistant in the program. Buennig is also the director of the Bix Beiderbecke Youth Jazz Band, an auditioned group of middle and high school students from the Davenport area. He and his groups perform extensively throughout the Midwest and have been invited to perform at the Iowa City Jazz Festival and the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival. Jim’s quintet on his debut disc as a leader, “It’s Like This,” features other familiar names from the Eastern Iowa jazz scene, including bassist Blake Shaw and guitarist Dan Padley, on a program of the reedman’s originals.
While drummer Gerry Gibbs has tackled myriad projects in the past, from 2006’s Thrasher Big Band project to 2010’s Electric Thrasher Orchestra playing the music of Miles Davis to the 2013 Grammy-nominated Thrasher Dream Trio with Ron Carter and Kenny Barron, his new 2-disc set, his 11th as a bandleader, “Weather or Not,” is his most audacious and fully-realized project to date. The first disc is a Weather Report tribute, with Gibbs reimagining that band’s material from the point of view of an acoustic piano-led trio. The featured instrument is played by luminous new talent Alex Collins, with the brilliant Austrian-born Hans Glawischnig on bass. Disc two features Gibbs cranking up the creative juices on a set of originals, traversing everything from flamenco to pulse-quickening funk, calypso, gospel, Latin jazz, R&B and plenty of all-out swing.
Also this week, the eighth CD in the “Live at the Deer Head Inn” series is from singer/songwriter and pianist Bob Dorough and his trio recorded on his 92nd birthday in December of 2015.
Saxophonist Greg Abate, who has worked tirelessly across five decades to keep the flame of classic jazz lit, is joined by pianist Tim Ray and his trio on a bebop “Road to Forever”.
Trumpeter Jeremy
Pelt, who has worked with such legendary jazz veterans as Johnny Griffin, Cedar Walton, Wayne Shorter and James Moody, taps into a generous and encouraging vibe with his four handpicked musical compatriots on “Make Noise!”
Culture Crawl 235 “Like a Cole Porter Greatest Hits Album”
Evan Hilsabeck and Josh Holmes direct the Iowa City Community Theatre production of “Anything Goes,” March 3-12 in Iowa City.
The score is rich with hit after hit from the legendary Cole Porter, including “I Get a Kick out of You,” You’re the Top,” It’s De-Lovely,” and the title song.
The story, a madcap shipboard romance between a stowaway and an heiress, was co-written by P.G. Wodehouse, famous for the Wooster and Jeeves stories.
March 3-12 at the Iowa City Community Theatre, www.iowacitycommunitytheatre.com.
Talking Pictures 3-3-17
Get Out, Patterson and Alice in Wonderland with Hollis Monroe, Denny Lynch and Monica Schmidt.