David Adler
The JJA Top Tens
The Jazz Journalists Association presents its members’ annual Top Ten CD lists, including mine. I’ll be publishing more year-in-review comments on this blog in the coming days.
Erasing torture
Important detail in this NY Times piece on the CIA torture video coverup. The FBI got Abu Zubaydah to give up Khalid Shaikh Mohammed without using torture; then the CIA began torturing him and it’s far from clear that they got anything. Gov’t officials are cited saying: …Zubaydah, who had been taken to a secret location in Thailand, cooperated with
Stockhausen: a political postscript
I listened to a fair amount of Stockhausen while writing my recent Anthony Braxton feature [pdf]. Now that he has died, I want to vent on an obscure political detail likely to be left out of most of the obits. No, not the notorious 9/11 comment. I’m speaking of Cornelius Cardew’s 1974 essay Stockhausen Serves Imperialism, largely and very deservedly
On Sex Mob
My review of Sex Mob’s Dec. 4 show at Johnny Brenda’s — part of an Ars Nova Workshop triple bill — in today’s Inquirer.
On the radio
I’ll be a guest panelist on J. Michael Harrison’s The Bridge, WRTI 90.1 FM Philadelphia, on Friday, December 7 at 10pm EST. We’ll be spinning recent tracks and talking about why we like ’em. I believe you can stream the program live, info here.
Six Picks: December 2007
My monthly list of recommended CDs, as published in All About Jazz-New York, December 2007: Harry Allen, Hits By Brits (Challenge) Martin Bejerano, Evolution/Revolution (Reservoir) Michael Blake Sextet, Amor de Cosmos (Songlines) Peter Evans, The Peter Evans Quartet (Firehouse 12) His Name Is Alive, Sweet Earth Flower: A Tribute to Marion Brown (High Two)Henning Sieverts, Symmetry (Pirouet)
A fair question
Darcy James Argue, quite unwittingly, has tied together my two previous posts in an interesting and morally serious way: He asks why Dudamel is getting heat from some for not forcefully opposing Chávez, while Gergiev (whose work I just happened to praise unreservedly) gets a free pass on his close ties to, and explicit political support for, the odious Vladimir
Amid noise, clarity
I can’t let Alex Ross’s refreshing anti-Chávez comments in the The New Yorker of Dec. 3 go without praise here. Writing about Gustavo Dudamel’s recent New York appearance with the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, Ross reflects on the celebratory atmosphere during the encores: The players don jackets with the Venezuelan national colors and swivel around, marching-band style. Delirium