WBGO Blog

  • Celebrate Jazz Around The World With WBGO

    April 30, 2013. Posted by Tim Wilkins.

    Add new comment | Filed under: International Jazz Day, Jazz Alive, The Checkout, The WBGO Journal, WBGO Travel

    International Jazz Day kicks off WBGO's monthlong celebration of global jazz, and you can join the celebration by watching video from UNESCO’s April 30 concert in Istanbul, Turkey and listening to earwitness reports from Istanbul by WBGO producer Josh Jackson.

    Jazz is increasingly embraced and played around the world. Last year, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) partnered with the Thelonious Monk Institute to celebrate the contributions of jazz to world culture, staging concerts in Paris, New Orleans and at the United Nations in New York.

    This year's UNESCO concert in Istanbul featured more than 40 musicians, including Herbie Hancock, Robert Glasper, George Duke, Esperanza Spalding, Pedrito Martinez and dozens of others.

    WBGO's celebration of global jazz continues on The Checkout, which airs Tuesdays at 6:30 p.m., showcases new music from this year's Jazzahead! festival in Bremen, Germany on May 7 and 14, and from South Africa on the 21st and 28th. We also have special reports on South Africa on The WBGO Journal by producer Simon Rentner, who just returned from the Cape Town Jazz Festival.

    On WBGO HD2, the jazz bee, we are hosting a special round-the-clock mix of recordings by artists who appeared at this year's Jazzahead! festival, from as far away as Albania, Brazil and Israel.

    And WBGO's brand-new Travel & Events series offers behind-the-scenes tours to the Montreal Jazz Festival in June, and to Perugia and the Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy in July.

    Happy International Jazz Day - and join us every day to celebrate this music we love, in every part of the globe - at WBGO!

    © 2013 WBGO

  • April 27: International Jazz Day in Paris

    April 26, 2012. Posted by Becca Pulliam.

    Add new comment | Filed under: herbie hancock, International Jazz Day, Jazz Alive

    IJD2UNESCO -- the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization -- has named April 30 as International Jazz Day. And festivities begin on Friday, April 27, in Paris. For more information, visit the UNESCO web page.

    UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador Herbie Hancock spoke with Alex Dutilh of France Musique yesterday about the pianist's involvement in International Jazz Day, as well as changes in jazz worldwide since Herbie started to play the music as a teenager in the mid 1950s. Herbie says,

    . . .  my experience [then] was that for the most part, the best jazz musicians were Americans. I can’t say that these days. I can’t say that today because, in my experience traveling around the world and hearing jazz musicians from different countries and seeing also jazz musicians that have moved to the United States and gotten experience  working with great world class musicians in America and taken that back to their home countries, it’s expanded the professional level of jazz musicianship. Exponentially. So now it truly is an international music.

    At sunrise on Monday, April 30, there will be a worldwide hookup of young players in New Orleans, Rio, Cape Town and Paris on a synchronized live version of Herbie's "Watermelon Man!"

    Check out the April 30 events at UN headquarters in New York here.

    And Monday night at 6:30, we'll broadcast the New Orleans concert as a special. Listen to WBGO and wbgo.org for more info.

    © 2012 WBGO