Music

Arts, Jazz, Music

Jazz: Spaces And Places, by George Grella

Music making is a social activity. Anyone with a laptop and a bedroom can make an album, but there’s limits to that, not the least how far one’s imagination can go without the stimulus of other personalities. When musicians get together to play it’s a social activity, they make something together whether or not they’re in front of an audience. […]

Arts, Music

Music: Wiggly Air, by Kurt Gottschalk

A step ahead at looking back. In April, I wrote about Joe Jackson’s 1981 album Jumpin’ Jive in a review of Taj Mahal’s recent album of early jazz songs. Since then, Rickie Lee Jones has issued a respectable collection of crooner tunes, and countless rockers-of-certain-ages have done so before, generally with far lesser results than Jackson, Jones and Mahal (special […]

Arts, Music

Wiggly Air – On Music by Kurt Gottschalk

A band everyone should like. There was a time, back in the distant 1980s and ’90s, when recording and distribution outpaced the spread of information. The post-punk DIY movement encouraged artists and fans to seize the means of production and make their own records and zines but there was no guarantee they’d end up in the same places. As a result, […]

Arts, Jazz, Music

On Jazz: The State of Shipp, by George Grella

Pianist Matthew Shipp has had such a consistent, sustained career, nearly 40 years as one of the foremost free jazz players, that it’s easy to lose sight of what he’s done as a musician. His built a grand discographical forest through his own albums and those on which he’s part of another ensemble—coming up with the important David S. Ware […]

Feature Story, Music

When the future of rock and roll was in Windsor Terrace, by Raanan Geberer, photos by J.R. Rost

If you Google “rock clubs, Brooklyn,” you’ll see more than a dozen, most of them in Williamsburg, Bushwick, Gowanus or nearby. But before any of them were there, Lauterbach’s, at 335 Prospect Ave. in the South Slope, had a thriving scene featuring original rock bands. None of the Lauterbach’s bands – Frank’s Museum, Chemical Wedding, Cryptic Soup, Formaldehyde Blues Train, […]

Feature Story, Music, Religious News

Nationwide shortage of church organists a challenge, by Erin DeGregorio

Imagine not hearing the majestic sounds produced by thousands of metal or wooden organ pipes echoing around you during a wedding, funeral, or Mass. That’s the reality some houses of worship are facing as an organist shortage unfolds nationwide, on the heels of a pandemic that brought in-person services to a screeching halt for months and has since affected attendance. […]

Arts, Music

The Year’s Best Recorded Jazz, by George Grella

Just in time for your shopping lists, and just before you might, I hope, have some time off and can spend some of your evenings these dark days listening to fine music, here are my choices for the best jazz albums of 2022. I make this list because I think lists are useful, and year-end ones help focus the mind […]

Arts, Music

Music: Kurt Gottschalk’s Wiggly Lines

Beauty runs deep. The surprise hit of the summer may turn out to be Kate Bush’s 1985 single “Running Up That Hill” which, after placement in an episode of the Netflix series Stranger Things, hit the top 10 in 14 countries and raced to the top of the Apple Music charts in the states. It’s not exactly a deep cut. […]

Feature Story, Music

J.R.Clark: Finding Success and Stability as an Independent Music Artist

The story of the independent music artist is usually marked with challenges and hopes of eventually ‘making it big,’ and of course, signing a record contract with a major label. For rapper J.R.Clark, his path as an independent artist has brought challenges, but also success without a major label deal. Here’s how J.R.Clark found stability and success as an independent […]