Jazz Journalists Association

The following post is one of many being featured in the Jazz Journalists Association’s 2012 Jazz Day Blogathon, with a focus on jazz in local communities. Sometimes I tell friends that a key benefit of living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side is the ease of subway travel. A couple of blocks to the 1-2-3 train and I can zip down to

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The JJA has started posting Best-Of lists for the year 2011 — my entry here.

The list is up. Great event yesterday! Congrats to all.

Details are shaping up nicely for the Jazz Awards on June 11th – Randy Weston, Wallace Roney and other top players are set to perform. Plus a special slate of “Jazz Heroes” awards. View the nominees and get your tickets!

I’ve posted this on Twitter and Facebook but I neglected to do so in this space: After close to a decade serving as editor of the Jazz Journalists Association’s publication Jazz Notes, which was reborn in early 2010 as the website JJA News, I have opted to step aside. The reasons are straightforward: increased teaching responsibilities, the demands of full-time

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Winners to be revealed on June 11 at City Winery. Congrats to all the nominees!

Soon after my first post on Randy Sandke’s book Where the Dark and the Light Folks Meet, Ethan Iverson posted a far more detailed two-part critique (here and here) at Do the Math. As always with Ethan, it’s a must-read. He’s also announced that he’ll be publishing a guest post by Sandke in reply. At the risk of spending too

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There’s been some heated discussion since Howard Mandel published his thumbs-down review of Where the Dark and the Light Folks Meet: Race and the Mythology, Politics, and Business of Jazz by Randy Sandke. I’ve remained mum, largely because I edited the review. It appeared in December in JJA News. Sandke is a talented trumpeter and composer as well as an

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