*The big news this week is the unfortunate announcement that the 2009 edition of the annual Rhythm & Ribs festival has been canceled. Here's The Star's story. The Pitch's Wayward Blog published the official press release. It's followed by a testy debate.
*Kansas City's jazz musicians should know just how high rapper Mac Lethal has set the bar. His new swing era-inspired video is mandatory viewing. And it's not even as good as his previous effort. Tech N9ne's latest video is also very impressive. These are independent, locally-based and self-financed artists. The creation of such essential promotional tools requires imagination, motivation and (perhaps most importantly) art-school friends with video equipment. Are any Kansas City jazz musicians prepared to meet the challenge?
*A Plastic Sax commenter alerted me to this great review of a recent performance by The Kansas City Jazz Orchestra.
*Did you miss The Mingus Big Band's concert at The Gem Theater last weekend? Me too. Thankfully, NPR is streaming a recent live performance.
*Kansas City-based Contemporary Jazz brought this exciting jazz documentary trailer to my attention. It's great. Seriously.
(Original image by Plastic Sax.)
I don't think anything's testier than the debate going on under the Star's R&R story. Damn. I'm fortunate in that the main guy on my blog's entry seems to be (or to have been) involved with the festival's planning and quotes some numbers.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Tech N9ne! I'm going to post that.
wow. that really was a great trailer. what's the documentary channel? is that something that requires more than basic cable?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the shout-out, Jason.
ReplyDeleteThe Documentary Channel is not among the 532 channels I get through Time-Warner, PJ. But I really want to isolate the audio on Blanchard's comments. I need to play it for myself and others on a regular basis.