ITALY: NEW SPRING Enrico Pieranunzi Quartet Live At the Village Vanguard

 Enrico Pieranunzi  piano
  Donny McCaslin tenor sax
  Scott Colley bass
  Clarence Penn  drums

“Recorded on the 80th anniversary of one of the world’s best-known jazz stages, I am presenting here my second live album at the Vanguard, flanked by such outstanding exceptional American artists.”

(Enrico Pieranunzi)

LIVE!

USA: Bruce Katz Band - Out From The Center (American Showplace Music 2016)

Bruce Katz - Hammond B3, Acoustic Piano, Hammond B3 Bass (2,3,6,8,10,11)
Chris Vitarello - Guitars, Vocals
Ralph Rosen - Drums, b/vocal (9)
Jimmy Bennett - Guitar (3,5,9)
Peer Bennett - Electric Bass (1,4,5,7,9)

Tracks
1. Don't Feel So Good Today (3:33)
2. Schnapps Man (5:33)
3. The Struggle Inside (7:35)
4. Blues From High Point Mountain (6:29)
5. Out From The Center (8:30)
6. All Torn Up (5:21)
7. Bessie's Bounce (4:26)
8. Dis-Funkshunal (5:00)
9. Another Show (5:12)
10. Think Fast (4:00)
11. You Got It (4:33)

USA: Dave King Trucking Company – Surrounded By the Night (Sunnyside Records 2016)

Celebrated drummer Dave King (Happy Apple, The Bad Plus) bonds fellow Minnesota jazz musicians with like-minded New York artists on the Trucking Company’s third release. His drums are constructed with bamboo and other woodgrain materials, which is a novel engineering process by the Milwaukee- based outfit Rat Rod drums. King’s resonating sound envelops his fluid and punchy timekeeping prowess. And while the album’s running time hovers near LP territory at around 36-minutes, the band makes full use of it with a mélange of disparate works, designed with a continuum of zesty song-forms and passionate exchanges.
World-renown saxophonist, clarinetist Chris Speed’s somewhat patented, lilting clarinet lines add a buoyant outlook to several movements, yet King and bassist Chris Morrisey generate the high-impact goods on budding pieces such as “Parallel Sister Attack,” paving a route for the frontline’s climactic attack. Otherwise, the program contains thorny progressive jazz frameworks along with bop, swing, rock and other genres amid intermittent exoduses into the free zone.Sunnyside Records

GERMANY Arne Jansen Trio – Nine Firmaments (2016)

1. Here We Go [04:38]
2. Deep Wood [05:48]
3. Ahead of Us (Down the Hillside) [03:46]
4. The Three of Us [04:10]
5. It’s Always Night [01:17]
6. Klingsor’s Last Summer [06:30]
7. Neither Powder nor Plaster [02:47]
8. Between Two Moons [04:38]
9. Lee’s Summit [02:07]
10. He Who Counts the Stars [05:23]

Arne Jansen – guitar, Robert Lucaciu – bass, Eric Schaefer – drums

Arne Jansen Trio - Nine Firmaments
"He can conjure up wonderfully lyrical meshwork, flare into off-the-wall themes, and also commemorate the explosiveness of rock music: Arne Jansen's trio is a pleasure for the senses and the intellect."
Jazz-Zeitung 2006/02, Critics' Choice, Roland Spiegel, BR
As a guitarist, Arne Jansen has never thought in genre categories. The ECHO prizewinner has already played a special role, particularly in Germany, with his first two trio albums. Melodic compositions, transparent arrangements and a warm guitar sound have been his trademark to this day. On his new album Nine Firmaments there are many "songs without words" and some of them, quickly and without any detours, make their way into our consciousness where they seem to have always felt at home. Jansen prefers clear lines and avoids unnecessary exhibitionism. Today, more than ever, he is motivated by his selective choice of the means he uses to develop intense atmospheres and stronger statements. This does not rule out that at times his fingers dance over the strings with their very own aesthetic approach. 

USA: The Birth of a Movement: The 1st Annual New York Jazz Film Festival

The New York Jazz Film Festival is starting a movement in Harlem to put jazz back in the streets and showcase jazz musician-actors.

New York, NY (PRWEB) October 17, 2016

Jazz is dead. Jazz lives--within academia. No matter what your vantage point, a movement comprised of jazz musician-actors, writers, directors, composers and fans, all assembled under the roof of "Jazz Cinema" has been born in 2016 in Harlem with a mission of pulling jazz back into pop culture.

The New York Jazz Film Festival (NYJFF), created as an annual festival that is free to the public, will take place on November 12 and 13, 2016 at the famed Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building on 125th Street; the Festival is the first of a three-pronged project establishing Harlem as the Mecca for this movement, says Executive Producer Sue Veres Royal.

Created by jazz trombonist Gregory Charles Royal, who as artistic director of American Youth Symphony has worked to transition jazz performers into actors in mediums such as theatre, TV and film, comments on the festival:

"Although music never dies, the industry framework in which jazz music existed has been dead for a long time. The instrumental musician, the jazz musician, unlike say the hip hop performer, never transitioned from the nightclub to those 21st century vessels of communication: dramatic and reality TV, film and theatre. Music videos and audio recordings are simply not sufficient for a variety of reasons. My duh moment though is that we 'got it' in the Golden Age of film with Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong and even in more modern times with Harry Connick Jr. and Reuben Blades, but what's happened since then? We need to put jazz, as August Wilson said, 'right in the people's lap'."

The 2016 NYJFF lineup will screen a handful of films that showcase some up- and-coming jazz-acting talents including "Kojo" featuring jazz drummer prodigy Kojo Roney (nephew of Grammy Award winning trumpet legend Wallace Roney);"Thrive" featuring blind piano prodigy Matthew Whitaker (who is also the subject of the new docu-series "Young Marvels" on the Ovation Network); and Duke Ellington Orchestra and Broadway alum Gregory Charles Royal's "World's Not for Me", which won the Harlem Spotlight Award for Best Narrative Short at the 2016 Harlem International Film Festival and whose musical score was performed by him in 1978 when he was just 17 years old as a trombonist with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Another standout of this year's festival in narrative fiction featuring a jazz musician-actor "Lunches with Mel" starring virtuoso violinist Aaron Weinstein.

In its first year, the Festival received approximately 400 international jazz submissions in the categories of Features, Shorts, Music Videos and Out of Competition. Forty-four films have been selected for screening.

The 2016 NYJFF Full Lineup including synopses, and screen times are available here:

The two other components of the jazz movement in Harlem will include regular street jazz on 125th Street throughout the year and a 125th Street livestream hangout staffed by hosts who will interview jazz musicians in public view year round. The 2017 NYJFF will transition into a larger outdoor festival and will be moved to the month of September.

The festival is produced by SVR & Associates and American Youth Symphony.

 

USA: Charlie Haden -Time / Life(Impulse 2016)

 

With a career that spanned more than a half a century, Charlie Haden proved to be not only one of jazzs finest bassists and composers, he was also a staunch champion of justice. Throughout his career, his rebellious yet gentle spirit addressed various socio-political injustices, particularly with his galvanizing Liberation Music Orchestra, which he founded in 1969. The following year, it released its prophetic, eponymously titled debut album on Impulse Records!, which boasted a stellar lineup that included such fellow jazz renegades as Don Cherry, Gato Barbieri, Dewey Redman, Paul Motian, and the arranger, composer Carla Bley whom Haden would eventually ask to arrange all of his subsequent Liberation Music Orchestra recordings.

Two years after Charlies passing in July 2014, his musical vision continues to ignite that esteemed ensemble with the release of its latest disc, Time/Life (Song for the Whales and Other Beings). The disc documents the final recording on which Charlie performed with the Liberation Music Orchestra.

The concept for Time/Life originated in 2007 when Charlie felt the environment was being abused to such a dangerous extent that they had to speak out about it. It was long overdue. Four years later in August, the Liberation Music Orchestra performed at the Middelheim Jazz Festival in Antwerp, Belgium; Bertrand Flamang, the festivals director, wanted the thematic focus for that year to be on the environment. So with Carla Bleys ingenious arrangements, the Liberation Music Orchestra delivered a luxuriant rendering of Bill Evans and Miles Davis Blue in Green and an evocative exploration through Song for the Whales, a lamenting composition Haden penned in 1979, and first recorded with the band Old and New Dreams.

USA: JIM WEIDER FALL SHOWS

JIM WEIDER"S PRoJECT PERCoLAToR
 LIVE at The Falcon
Date: October 29, 2016
Time: 8:00pm

1348 Rt. 9W
Marlboro, NY 12542
Jim Weider - guitar
Rodney Holmes - drums
Jesse Murphy - bass
Avi Bortnick -Guitar
will be performing songs from
Percolator CD & "PULSE" and more !(845)236-7970
opening act at 7pm
www.liveatthefalcon.com

THE WEIGHT BAND
      ONE WORLD THEATER
Date: November 3, 2016
Time: 7:00pm

7701 Bee Caves Road
Austin, TX - USA
PLAYING SONGS OF THE BAND
Jim Weider, guitar and vocals,Randy Ciarlante on Drums and vocals,Brian Mitchell on Keyboards and vocals,Albert Rodgers on bass and vocals,Marty Grebb on Keyboards, Vocals, Sax
http://www.oneworldtheatre.org
Tickets 888.616.0522
512.330.9500 ext 101

THE WEIGHT BAND
      Texan Theater
Date: November 4, 2016
Time: 7:00pm

2712 Lee St,
Greenville, TX 75401
Tickets Phone: (903) 259-6360
PLAYING SONGS OF "THE BAND "
Jim Weider, guitar and vocals,Randy Ciarlante on Drums and vocals,Brian Mitchell on Keyboards and vocals, Albert Rogers on bass and vocals,Marty Grebb on Keyboards, Vocals, Sax

THE WEIGHT BAND
      ROCKEFELLERS
Date: November 5, 2016
Time: 8:00pm

3620 Washington Ave
Houston TX 77007
PLAYING SONGS OF "THE BAND "
Jim Weider, guitar and vocals,Randy Ciarlante on Drums and vocals,Brian Mitchell on Keyboards and vocals, Albert Rogers on bass and vocals,Marty Grebb on Keyboards, Vocals, Sax
THIS SHOW WAS MOVED TO ROCKEFELLERS BUT TICKETS CAN BE BOUGHT AT http://theheightstheater.com/
tickets call 214-272-8346

THE WEIGHT BAND
      THE KESSLER THEATER
Date: November 6, 2016
Time: 8:00pm

1230 W. Davis St.
Dallas, TX 75208
PLAYING SONGS OF "THE BAND " Free Show
Jim Weider, guitar and vocals,Randy Ciarlante on Drums and vocals,Brian Mitchell on Keyboards and vocals, Albert Rogers on bass and vocals,Marty Grebb on Keyboards, Vocals, Sax
http://thekessler.org/contact/
tickets 214-272-8346

THE WEIGHT BAND with KING HARVEST HORNS
      NTE Arena Rock City
Date: November 25, 2016
Time: 7:00pm

Namsos, Norway
THE LAST WALTZ
Jim Weider, guitar and vocals,Randy Ciarlante on Drums and vocals,Brian Mitchell on Keyboards and vocals,Albert Rodgers on bass and vocals,Marty Grebb on Keyboards, Vocals, Sax with KING HARVEST HORNS Plus very special guests

THE WEIGHT BAND
      The Colonial Theatre
Date: December 9, 2016
Time: 8:00pm

227 Bridge Street
Phoenixville, PA 19460
PLAYING SONGS OF "THE BAND
Jim Weider, guitar and vocals,Randy Ciarlante on Drums and vocals,Brian Mitchell on Keyboards and vocals, Albert Rogers on bass and vocals,Marty Grebb on Keyboards, Vocals, Sax
tickets 610-917-1228

THE WEIGHT BAND
      The Wellmont Theater   
Date: December 10, 2016
Time: 8:00pm

5 Seymour St
Montclair, NJ 07042
PLAYING SONGS OF "THE BAND "
Jim Weider, guitar and vocals,Randy Ciarlante on Drums and vocals,Brian Mitchell on Keyboards and vocals, Albert Rogers on bass and vocals,Marty Grebb on Keyboards, Vocals, Sax
tickets call (973) 783-9500

Masters of Telecaster Jim Weider &GE Smith & Jon Herington
      BOULTON CENTER
Date: December 16, 2016
Time: 8:00pm

37 West Main Street,
Bay Shore, NY 11706
Jim Weider >guitar ,Ge Smith ,Guitar &vocals and Jon Herington ,guitar and vocals with Lincoln Schleifer ,bass and Randy Ciarlante ,drums and vocals
TICKETS : 631-969-1101 or866-811-4111
https://boultoncenter.org/contact-us/

Rock Legends Cruise
      Fort Lauderdale, FL
Start Date/Time: January 19, 2017 11:00am
End Date/Time: January 23, 2017 11:00am

Fort Lauderdale, FL
PLAYING SONGS OF "THE BAND
Jim Weider, guitar and vocals,Josh Dion on Drums and vocals,Brian Mitchell on Keyboards and vocals, Albert Rogers on bass and vocals,Marty Grebb on Keyboards, Vocals, Sax with many special guest Bands