WBGO Blog

  • Charles Lloyd's Sangam at Newport on JazzSet

    November 11, 2011. Posted by Becca Pulliam.

    Add new comment | Filed under: charles lloyd, Jazz Alive, JazzSet, roy hargrove
    Harland, Hussain, Lloyd on the Fort Adams Stage at Newport
    Harland, Hussain, Lloyd on the Fort Adams Stage at Newport

    Photo by Boston Photographer Erik Jacobs for NPR.

    This just in: JazzSet will be recording the Either/Orchestra on Saturday, November 19, at Tishman Auditorium, 66 W. 12th St. at Avenue of the Americas in New York .. 2pm .. FREE .. reservations recommended, here .. premiere of a new suite made possible through New Jazz Works grant from Chamber Music America. See you there!

    Tune in to JazzSet Sunday, November 13, at 6pm and/or Wednesday, November 16, at 6:30, for Sangam, the confluence of Eric Harland on drums and piano, Zakir Hussain on tablas and vocals, and Charles Lloyd playing saxophone, piano, maracas, Hungarian tarogato,  and flute (so lovely, Lloyd's flute). Here's a 30-second preview.

    The show is available on demand any time this week, here.

    Host Dee Dee Bridgewater tells us that her father Matthew Garrett was Charles's music teacher at Manassas High School in Memphis, and how much she loved Lloyd's million-selling LP Forest Flower Live at Monterey in the mid 1960s. Surround Sound mixer Duke Markos hears the music as changing textures. I hear it as meditation with momentum, and a cool-down at the end.

    Oy, I am feeling bad about a lapse: last week's post about Roy Hargrove on JazzSet never made it to the blog. Operator error. But you can still enjoy the show at jazzset.npr.org. Here is the post that wasn't:

    Roy Hargrove by John Rogers for NPR johnrogersnyc.com
    Roy Hargrove by John Rogers for NPR johnrogersnyc.com

    During a two-week run at the Village Vanguard, WBGO broadcast Roy's “early” show live. The video stream is archived on this blog, here. Now JazzSet brings you the late set in Surround Sound, hosted by Dee Dee Bridgewater.

    Onstage Roy is all music (by Duke Pearson, McCoy Tyner, bassist Ameen Saleem, Roy himself), no talk, and he connects: at the end, the audience applauds the set for more than two minutes.

    © 2011 WBGO

  • Great Live Moments - Michel Petrucciani

    April 28, 2008. Posted by Joshua Jackson.

    Add new comment | Filed under: bassist, big sur, blue note records, bones disease, cerra, charles lloyd, death in 1999, eliot zigmund, glass bones, jazz world, jim hall, Listening Post, Live Music, michel petrucciani, montreux, morning sunrise, one of my favorites, ron mcclure, thon, three feet, wayne shorter, wbgo jazz

    Michel Petrucciani

    In 1985, Dorthaan Kirk presented Jazz-a-Thon, a marathon of live music that doubled as a fundraiser for WBGO. It attracted some of the jazz world's biggest talent.
    Pianist Michel Petrucciani was both the smallest and largest that jazz had to offer that year. He was three feet tall and little more than fifty pounds, due to osteogenesis imperfecta, the rare "Glass Bones" disease. Yet he had one of the greatest commands of the piano - one that was classically virtuosic, effusively romantic, and heavily improvised. By this time, Michel had recently toured with Charles Lloyd, whom Petrucciani had nudged from retirement at California's Big Sur. Michel was now on the east coast, with his own band. Specifically, he was the Ritz in New York, with bassist Ron McClure and drummer Eliot Zigmund. Petrucciani had just signed with the recently revived Blue Note Records. In December of 1985, he recorded his extraordinary debut for the label, Pianism, followed by one of my favorites, Power of Three, a live concert from Montreux with Wayne Shorter and Jim Hall. Michel Petrucciani played until his death in 1999, age 36.
    Listen to "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise," from the WBGO Jazz-a-Thon.

    You can also read Steve Cerra's blog post about Michel Petrucciani here.
    -Josh

    © 2008 WBGO