Special Programs: Week of February 6 – 12

Short List with Bob Naujoks   

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

Corridor Jazz (Ray Blue)

Ray Blue

Ray Blue

Saxophonist Ray Blue is really a New York native but his home away from home is Eastern Iowa. He comes back each year to perform and conduct workshops. He has a degree in sociology from William Penn University and a masters in social work from the University of Iowa, and was a professional counselor at one time. But jazz music was in his heart, and his big sound harks back to those masters like Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Rollins. He is also a teacher and clinician through his Cross-Cultural Connection organization.

 

Jazz Corner of the World with Craig Kessler 

Monday, 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM

“Jazz Pianist, Jutta Hipp”             

Craig notes the birth date anniversary of the extraordinary German jazz pianist, JUTTA (YOO-tuh) HIPP. She was born in Leipzig, Germany February 4th, 1925 and passed away April 7, 2003. We’ll hear from her classic Blue Note releases as well as from a number of European recordings…trios, quartets, and quintets, studio recordings, as well as live material, all from the 1950s.  Check out this obscure and underrated player!

 

Night Lights (Classic Jazz) with David Brent Johnson NL 

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: “Art Blakey: Class of 1957”. http://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/archives/2017/1/

 

Jazz Profiles with Nancy Wilson     

Monday at 11:00 PM (follows Nightlights)

Charlie Parker: ‘Bird Lives!’ Part 1

Charlie Parker

Charlie Parker

Charles “Yardbird” Parker was a self-taught innovator who could fly higher and cut deeper than any other musician of his day. Parker pioneered the bebop movement in jazz with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. He influenced generations of musicians. He accomplished all of this and other feats despite a crippling drug addition that ended his life at thirty-four. This program focuses on “Bird” the improviser, and traces his instrumental virtuosity from his early days in Kansas City to his bebop experiments in New York to his ill-fated trip to Los Angeles in 1945.

 

Wednesday Night Special                 

6:00 PM   

Jazz Legends at the Iowa City Jazz Festival: Andrew Hill Quartet

Andrew Hill

Andrew Hill

The Jazz Shelf describes Andrew Hill as “…one of the most original pianists to emerge in the 1960s, Andrew Hill teetered between straight-ahead playing (as a sideman) and the avant-garde, and most of his own albums exist in the middle of those two patches, never banal or too extreme. Hill was one of the rare birds who forged his own style as a player and a composer”. Many of the Blue Note Records featuring Andrew Hill as a sideman or leader are now considered classic examples of 60’s post-bop progressive jazz. He recorded and performed with some of the best during that period including Eric Dolphy, Joe Henderson, Woody Shaw, Tony Williams, and Freddie Hubbard. He passed away at the age of 75 in 2007 and was posthumously awarded a Honorary Doctorate of Music by the Berklee College of Music, and was named a 2008 NEA Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition to Andrew Hill, the quartet also featured Craig Tardy on tenor sax, Nasheet Waits on drums and John Hébert on upright bass.

 

Jazz Night in America with Christian McBride 

Thursday at 11:00 PM

Dew Drop Jazz Hall with Leroy Jones 

Leroy Jones

Leroy Jones

Trumpeter Leroy Jones started playing New Orleans back when Bourbon Street was lined with jazz clubs instead of bars.  The city has changed since then and Leroy has evolved right along with it. He’s led second lines with the Fairview Brass Band and its successor, The Hurricane Brass Band, played club gigs with modern jazz combos, and toured with Harry Connick Jr’s band for two decades.  Always dapper and always swinging, Leroy Jones is known in the Big Easy as the “Keeper of the Flame” for keeping these New Orleans traditions foremost in his playing and his personal character.  He brings his septet to the historic Dew Drop Jazz Hall in Mandeville, LA for a special Big Easy Jazz Night in America.

 

 

Jazz Corner of the World with Craig Kessler     

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

“Riverside Records in 1957” RR5Craig travels back 60 years to look in on the incredible recordings put together by label owners Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer. With the humble beginnings of RIVERSIDE’S modern jazz era beginning just a few years earlier (1954), the label skyrockets to 40 + recording sessions in 1957, from jazz luminaries such as Thelonious Monk, Donald Byrd, Abbey Lincoln, Benny Golson, Coleman Hawkins, Kenny Dorham, Sonny Rollins, and so many more! This is the stuff!!

 

 

 

Tropical Heat (hosted by Kpoti Senam Accoh)

Sunday, 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Featured Album: “Thailande – Danses” by Gérard Kremer & Local Traditional Artists TH

Dance in Thailand is the main dramatic art form of Thailand. Thai dance, like many forms of traditional Asian dance, can be divided into two major categories that correspond roughly to the high art (classical dance) and low art (folk dance) distinction. Although traditional Thai performing arts are not as actively embraced as they once were, suffering from competition from modern and western entertainments and generally changing tastes, Thai dance is still very much alive. It is an integral part of the culture of Thailand at all levels. Royal patronage of classical forms of dance has preserved some dances in their original form for centuries. Rural people have their own forms of folk dance, collectively known as rabam phun muang. https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/thailande-danses/id389866248

 

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 February 6, 2017

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As the name of composer and pianist Cynthia Hilts’ octet Lyric Fury implies, her writing and playing are defined by powerful contrasts. She likes to build from long, meditative passages to explosive endings. The technique of tension and release seldom yields more satisfaction or surprise. As heard in the brisk, striking originals on “Lyric Fury,” her third jazz album, Hilts’ orchestrations can go in different directions and different keys in the same moment within the same beat or phrase. Her music can fill the senses even as it swings like crazy. Imagine a peaceful waltz through the meadow and a frantic run through a rainstorm happening together, music that sounds like a celestial collision of Mingus and Debussy.  

 

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“Blooming Tall Phlox” is Yelena Eckemoff’s tenth album since shifting gears from the classical music of her early career and a mid-career break to raise her children, into a more firmly and decidedly jazz focus with the 2010 release of “Cold Sun.” Playfully imbued with vitality, energy, creativity and, perhaps most importantly, an unrelenting sound of surprise that reveals more with each and every listen, the new disc proves that it is possible to reinvent oneself. Over six years and ten recordings, the Russian-born Eckemoff has evolved into a deeply creative jazz artist: not just a pianist capable of engaging with some of the finest jazz musicians on the planet, but a composer/arranger who can surprise them with unexpected and enigmatic music that drives them to even further levels of excellence. Following a string of recordings with internationally renowned Norwegian musicans and A-list Americans, she recruited some of Finland’s best young, up-and-coming players for this outing.  

Also this 71I3CyyAlnL._SY355_week, following the success of Peter Erskine’s “Dr. Um and the Lost Pages,” the drummer and his Dr. Um band are ready to offer a “Second Opinion”.   61XmrFDDBNL._AC_US160_

Acclaimed guitarist John Stein expands his already impressive sonic palette on “Tones,” adding flutist Fernando Brandao and trumpeter Phil Grenadier.  

 

 

Washingtofred hughes matrix front cover finaln, D.C.-based Fred Hughes Trio unveils its eighth release, “Matrix.”  

 

 

 

Culture Crawl 228 “Almost Too Many Bands for a 2-Day Fest”

The Central Iowa Blues Society presents the Winter Blues Fest, Feb. 20 & 11 at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Des Moines. Sixteen bands will perform, including state Blues Challenge winners from Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota. Other headliners include the Scottie Miller Band, Davina & The Vagabonds, Toronto Cannon, and Ronnie Baker Brooks (son of legendary bluesman Lonnie Brooks).

Tickets and information at www.cibs.org.

Culture Crawl 227 “How Printeresting!”

The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art has two new exhibits going up, “Carved” and “America on Paper.” Both deal with woodcuts and print-making, with examples that range from the Sixteenth Century to today.

Curator Kate Kunau invites the whole family can get involved in learning about and making prints Feb. 4 during a Family Fun Day at the Museum called “How Printeresting.”

Details at www.crma.org.

Talking Pictures 2-2-17

Gold, Fences, Resident Evil 7, Jackie, A Dog’s Purpose with Hollis Monroe, Denny Lynch and Phil Brown.

Kirkwood Board of Trustees to meet February 9, 2017

The regular meeting of the Kirkwood Board of Trustees will take place February 9, 2017.

Time, place, and meeting agenda can be found at this link.

KCCK’s Featured CD for February 2017

dizzyThe KCCK Featured CD for February is “Concert of the Century” by Dizzy Gillespie and Friends. On November 24th, 1980, Dizzy invited five jazz legends–Milt Jackson, James  Moody, Hank Jones, Ray Brown and Philly Joe Jones–to join him onstage in Montreal to pay tribute to the  legendary Charlie Parker. A limited quantity bootleg album of the concert soon appeared, and then disappeared, from the marketplace and the tapes lay dormant for over thirty years. The pristinely restored and fully re-mastered disc features beautiful ballads and rollicking jams that give everyone a chance to stretch out. “Concert of the Century: A Tribute to Charlie Parker” is on Justin Time Records. Click here to purchase the CD.

Special Programs: Week of January 30 – February 5

Short List with Bob Naujoks   

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

Corridor Jazz (Steve Grismore) 

Steve Grismore with The Beaker Brothers at KCCK's Jazz Under the Stars 2015. Photo by Ann Kinney

Steve Grismore with The Beaker Brothers at KCCK’s Jazz Under the Stars 2015. Photo by Ann Kinney

Guitarist Steve Grismore has his own trio, but also appears with organist Sal Salomone’s trio and the Beaker Brothers. He was a member of the famed Orquesta Alto Maiz group for ten years. Steve also has been a teacher of jazz music at the University of Iowa for nearly 30 years. His appearances in the Corridor are numerous as well as his performances at many festivals across the country. He even made an appearance at Montreux in 1998.

 

 

 

Jazz Corner of the World with Craig Kessler (new time)

Monday, 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM

“Jazz In Paris — Part One”       

Nearly 9 years ago, Craig first presented a series of 3 or 4 shows dealing with jazz in Paris. This week, he begins a new series looking at French jazz artists, as well as Americans living and/or performing in Paris. We’ll hear from Pierre Michelot, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Alain Goraguer, Earl Hines, Henri Crolla, Django Reinhardt, and a host of others…full of lots of surprises!

 

Night Lights (Classic Jazz) with David Brent Johnson (new) SR

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—a timespan that, as Johnson notes, “weirdly parallels Miles Davis on record and the Cold War.”

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, such as saxophonist J.R. Monterose, trumpeter Freddie Webster, and piano/singer duo Dick and Kiz Harp.

Every program is archived after broadcast for online listening. This week: “SAVOY RECORDS”. http://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/archives/2017/1/

 

Jazz Profiles with Nancy Wilson (new time)    

Monday at 11:00 PM (follows Nightlights)

Remembering Max Roach, Rhythmic Innovator

Max Roach

Max Roach

An innovative drummer, bandleader, composer, and educator, Max Roach is a musical renaissance man. He was Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie’s drummer of choice as they developed bebop in the ’40s, and his innovations forever changed the way drums are played. In the ’50s he co-led (with trumpeter Clifford Brown) one of the seminal groups of jazz, bringing bebop to new levels of sophistication. In the ’60s, he created a range of compositions reflecting the struggle for civil rights.

 

Gentle Jazz with Bob Naujoks and Ron Adkins (expanded replay at a new time)

Tuesday, 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM (Bob Naujoks) / 9:00 PM – 12:00 Midnight (Ron Adkins)

 

Wednesday Night Special (new time)               

6:00 PM   

Jazz Legends at the Iowa City Jazz Festival: Legends of the Bandstand 

Cedar Walton

Cedar Walton

An all-star group of jazz veterans dubbed Legends of the Bandstand –Cedar Walton on piano, David “Fathead” Newman on tenor sax, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Earl May on bass and Louis Hayes on drums-gave a virtual clinic in the art of swinging with sophistication and verve in their set at the 2002 Iowa City Jazz Festival. Sadly, only Louis Hayes is alive today.

 

 

Jazz Night in America with Christian McBride (new day and time)

Thursday at 11:00 PM

Marilyn Maye: The Queen of Cabaret

Marilyn Maye at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola.

Marilyn Maye at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola

88-year old singer and actress Marilyn Maye is a living legend. She’s shared the stage with artists like Count Basie and Charlie Parker, and appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson an unprecedented 76 times.  Now, for the first time, May performs at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s most intimate venue — Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola.

 

 

 

Jazz Corner of the World with Craig Kessler     

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

“Jazz Pianist, Jutta Hipp” JH2             

Craig notes the birth date anniversary of the extraordinary German jazz pianist, JUTTA (YOO-tuh) HIPP.  She was born in Leipzig, Germany February 4th, 1925 and passed away April 7, 2003. We’ll hear from her classic Blue Note releases as well as from a number of European recordings…trios, quartets, and quintets, studio recordings, as well as live material, all from the 1950s. Check out this obscure and underrated player!

 

 

 

Tropical Heat (hosted by Kpoti Senam Accoh)

Sunday, 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Featured Album: “Musica Di Natale” by Newpoli TH3

http://www.newpolimusic.com/listen.php?psi=30

The Christmas Story told through the folk music of Southern Italy, through shepherd songs from the Appenini Mountains to the music of the courts and piazzas of Naples. Two singers and seven instrumentalists bring the stories to life in a dramatic fashion. Newpoli is a group of exceptionally talented musicians, all alumni from Berklee College of Music, New England Conservatory and Longy School of Music, who specialize in Southern Italian Folk Music from the regions of Campania, Calabria, Basilicata and Puglia. Newpoli integrates a wide variety of styles such as Tarantella-Pizzica, Tammuriata, Villanella, Moresca and the Neapolitan Canzone, encompassing music from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.

 

KCCK’s Midnight CD

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

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