Well, here we are a week into the new year. Historically, this is a slow time for new jazz releases. The record labels stop releasing new discs from about the end of November through mid-January, so things should start picking up again very soon. What we feature in the interim are things we haven’t had room to fit in for the latter part of the year, usually up-and-coming artists and lesser-known musicians who have yielded to the more well-know jazz artists ’til now.

For instance, we’ve unveiled some really neat cds over the past few weeks from D.D. Jackson, Luther Hughes, Ximo Tebar, Scott Neumann and Osage County,Gil Golstein and George Duke, to name a few, all which came out between summer and fall of 2006. Plus something from jazz master Chico Hamilton, who put out four different discs last year in honor of his 85th birthday. If only he had spread those out a little more!

I can tell you, though, that 2007 looks quite promising for new releases. Just to note a few, there are discs coming soon from Joshua Redman, Nicholas Payton, another Pat Metheny/Brad Mehldau collaboration, a get-together with Chick Corea & Bela Fleck, as well as cds from Kurt Elling, Jane Monheit, and Joey DeFrancesco. On the contemporary side of things, we can look forward to new jazz from Norah Jones, Joe Sample with Randy Crawford, Jeff Golub, and Jeff Lorber. And that’s just for starters! Enjoy.

I’ll be attending the first few days of the International Association of Jazz Educators Conference in Midtown Manhattan this week. Tough duty, eh? This is a huge and very exciting gathering of musicians, educators, recording people, vendors… anyone associated with jazz.

We’ve been asked to participate in a panel called “Jazz Radio in the Community-How To Make Your Station More Relevant.” I’ll be presenting information about Jazz Under The Stars, Jazz At the ‘Brary and Schoolhouse Jazz.

But the real fun of this conference is the chance to rub shoulders with jazz stars. Among the many performers are Doc Severinson, Joey DeFrancesco, John Patitucci, Randy Brecker, Matt Wilson, and many more who will be attending or hosting sessions.

Watch this space for the remainder of the week and I’ll let you know about any of my “brushes with greatness!”

Happy New Year everyone! I will be back on the air “live” on Sunday night, January 7, 2007.
Seems like it was yesterday we were bringing in 2006. With the Winter season upon us(even though it feels like Spring) the music on Nightbreeze seeems more solemn and reflective. Nightbreeze tends to be seasonal. The longer nights of Winter lends a quieter and meditative note to Sunday evening on the program.
Hopefully, you, the listener, will tune in to hear and, if you have a favorite instrumental or vocal artist that fits this reflective mood, pleases let me know and I will see if it is in the Nightbreeze Library. It has quite a large selection of music from the mid 1970’s until now and includes artists from David Arkenstone to Yanni.
Thanks for listening in 2006 and, I hope you will continue to listen and support Nightbreeze in 2007.
Mark Jayne
Producer and Host
mjnight@kcck.org

Today I’ll be presenting selections from my Top Ten CDs of 2006 in the 11:00am hour. Then on Jazz Masters today at noon, I’ll look back at some of the legends who passed away in 2006. That’ll be followed by our final thirty entries in our Top 88 Countdown for 2006. We’ve been giving you sections of that list all week and it culminates today. KCCK will present the entire Top 88 starting at 9am on Monday, New Year’s Day, and repeat the whole thing right after that. So you have plenty of opportunity to catch it all at one time or another. The Top 88 list, by the way, as well as all of our producers’ Top Tens can be found on our web site, too…kcck.org

Happy New Year!

Bob Stewart, Program Director www.kcck.org

As 2006 winds down, KCCK will be doing something just a bit different for our end-of-the-year countdown. As usual, we’ll run the full Top 88 Countdown of the top jazz discs of the year on New Year’s Day starting at 10am. In addition, the week leading up to that, Tuesday through Thursday, we’ll have a couple of hours of the countdown each day beginning at 1pm, with a three-hour-plus set to wind down the countdown on Friday. Also listen for each indvidual producer’s Top Ten favorites over the next couple of weeks.

NPR’s Toast of the Nation will again ring in the New Year for us. We’ll start at 7pm on the East Coast on Sunday night with Kendrick Oliver and the New Life Jazz Orchestra from Berklee College of Music in Boston, followed by a tribute to the late Jay McShann from Bobby Watson’s Kansas City Jump Band. Then we’ll move on to the Big River Concert for New Orleans from Chicago’s Symphony Center with Branford and Ellis Marsalis, Nicholas Payton and others. A set by Steve Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchesta at Tonic in New York City follows that, before we move on to Kansas City with Karrin Allyson from the Repertory Theater there. The night will conclude with a set of blues from the Derek Trucks Band at the Kreswick Theater in Philadelphia, the jumpin’ jive of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy from the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and the McCoy Tyner Trio with Joe Lovano from Yoshi’s in Oakland.

Happy New Year from all of us at KCCK!!

Bob Stewart, Program Director bobs@kcck.org

With Christmas closing in fast, Jazz 88.3 is ramping up our holiday music accordingly. In the days leading up to Sunday and Monday, we’re increasing the number of holiday tunes you hear during the programming day. Plus, this week our Midnight CDs are the newest addtions to our holiday jazz library. The pickings have been pretty slim as far as new jazz releases go this season in comparison to past years. But the handful that have come in are quite good.

Last night we featured Kerry Strayer and his orchestra with “Christmas in Kansas City.” Strayer is the musical director for the Plaza Lighting Ceremony in K.C. every year and he’s put together a collection of some of his really fine arrangements of holiday favorites. Tonight it’s “Tidings of Comfort and Joy” by Skafish, a pianist out of Chicago who made his name in the rock and New Wave genres in the 80’s, but has now crossed the street to the jazz side of things. Some really nice trio arrangments. Mack Avenue Records has put out their second compilation of music from some of its stable of artists, most notably the young trumpeter Sean Jones, but also the Gerald Wilson Orchestra, the Hot Club of Detoit, and Oscar Castro-Neves. “Jazz Yule Love II” will be featured Wednesday night. And then on Thursday night, our Featured CD for December, “The Harlem Nutcracker,” will be spotlighted. This was originally out in 1999, but didn’t get widely released. It’s a really fine addition to our holiday collection featuring David Berger and his Sultans of Swing Big Band performing music based on Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, including three Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn arrangements.

All of our vintage jazz programs on Sunday along with Bob Naujoks Gentle Jazz will be in the holiday mode, as will Nightbreeze Sunday night, highlighted by specials from the Paul Winter Consort and by Ian Anderson. And then from midnight Sunday to midnight Monday, KCCK will have our annual mix of non-stop holiday classics and newer releases. Included will be the debut of our Jazz at Riverside concert with Dan Knight, A Swingin’ Jazz Christmas, at 10am on Christmas Day, and a special with Dave Brubeck combining holiday music and conversation with the legendary pianist at 6pm that night.

Then it’s on to our End-of-the-Year specials the following week, which we’ll talk about more in an upcoming post. Enjoy!

Bob Stewart, Program Director

The following is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in the program for the Dianne Reeves Christmas concert at Hancher. Thanks to Rob Cline for allowing me to reprint it here!

There are two groups of people who are already tired of Christmas music before most of us have even started our shopping: Anyone who works in retail, and…. DJs.

“Christmas Creep” gets worse every year, as decorations and music often pop up before Halloween. And the recent competition in pop radio to be “your holiday music station” guarantee that we get a full dose of Christmas cheer well before Thanksgiving.

(Yes I mean you… and especially YOU.)

And if you think you get tired of Christmas music, imagine the announcer sitting in the studio playing those songs day after day.

Personally, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with holiday music for years. As a young radio announcer, I would watch with a sinking feeling as the program director hauled a scarred cardboard box into the studio with the word “XMAS” scrawled on the side in faded block letters. This sight signaled four endless weeks of format-busting tedium, as even the most contemporary station’s playlist suddenly sprouted Perry Como, Bing Crosby and the Boston Pops. For a young DJ who prided himself on being on music’s cutting edge…. pure torture.

Had you asked me in those days, I would have told you the only Christmas song worth the vinyl on which it was pressed was Bruce Springsteen’s “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” As time passed, a few other tunes made my “tolerable” list: Bing Crosby and David Bowie’s “Little Drummer Boy,” Santa Baby” (Eartha Kitt’s original, not Madonna’s horrifying remake), and the Russian and Chinese Dances from the Nutcracker (although that may have been due more to Disney’s “Fantasia”).

But in 1984 a record arrived that changed how I, and millions of others, perceived Christmas music forever.

It was by a little-known Midwestern group whose music combined the forms of classical music with the rhythms of rock & roll. Up to this point, the major market for their albums had been to audiophiles and the occasional stereo store, who used their high-quality vinyl pressings to demo stereo speakers.

I’m speaking, of course, of Mannheim Steamroller. Chip Davis began writing what would become his Fresh Aire series when he was a junior high music teacher. Adding some drums and electrics helped his students relate to the classical structures he was trying to teach them. Later, as the leader of the “Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant Band,” backup group for 70s star C.W. McCall, Davis parlayed some particularly savvy instrumental work on the novelty hit “Convoy,” into a Grammy award for best Country Instrumental and subsequently a chance to record his own unique music.

But classically-inspired rock wasn’t easy to pigeon-hole, and Mannheim Steamroller’s Fresh Aire might have remained just a musical footnote (or perhaps, grace note), had Davis not turned his attention to Christmas music.

For my money, the release of “Christmas” is one of the major musical landmarks of the last thirty years, because it completely rejuvenated the holiday music industry. It no tonly made people take holiday music more seriously, it paved the way for other artists to get their Christmas music heard, even if it didn’t fit into the usual pop milieu.

Certainly, Mannheim Steamroller changed the way I thought about Christmas music. I was captivated not only by the fresh spin Davis put on familiar tunes, but also the obvious passion and love he had for this music. It made me listen to other Christmas music with a different perspective. Gradually, I began to hear that same passion in other, more conventional arrangements. The velvet-smoothness of Nat King Cole’s “Christmas Song,” Bing Crosby’s heartbreaking wistfulness in “White Christmas.” Even Whitney Houston, then a pop icon, now a self-parody, returned to her gospel roots in a soaring “Do You Hear What I Hear” that still stands up well today.

When I got to Jazz 88.3, I didn’t know what to expect when Gordon Paulsen pulled out the boxes with the Christmas CDs (aluminum instead of cardboard, it was the Nineties, after all). Would Christmas jazz meet my new “it’s OK if they’re serious about the quality” test or be the jazz equivalent of the Beach Boys “Little Saint Nick?”

I was pleasantly surprised. Instead of changing KCCK’s sound, our Christmas music enhanced it, as every tune was good jazz, just jazz that happened to feature holiday melodies. Now, Christmas on 88.3 is one of my favorite times to listen, as I get to hear all-time jazz greats from Miles Davis to Oscar Peterson to Harry Connick Jr. make the music of the holidays their own.

So what makes good Christmas music? I suggest that a great Christmas song needs to embody the same qualities of an artist’s entire body of work. The song needs to stand on its own, regardless of whether it’s a Christmas song or not.

Springsteen’s “Santa Claus” works because it’s a good Springsteen tune. Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, and of course Chip Davis bring the same passion to their Christmas music they sought to achieve with their “regular” recordings.

Good Christmas music? Yes. But good music first.

Remembering Martha Tilton is the theme of this Sunday’s Big Band Memories between 3 and 5pm. I’ll feature many of her great sides with Benny Goodman in the 1930s, and on the Capitol label and elsewhere in the 40s and 50s. One of my favorite Martha Tilton records is a V-Disc recorded especially for servicemen, called “Beyond the Blue Horizon.” Hope you can join me this Sunday, December 17th on All That Jazz, 88.3 and 106.9 FM, KCCK. (On the web, too, at kcck.org)–Murray