Nat King Cole: An Incandescent Voice. Everyone knows about Nat King Cole the magisterial singer, but the popular vocalist first came to prominence in the jazz community as an inventive pianist and group stylist. Possessing a gorgeous touch, unerring taste, melodic imagination and a harmonic and rhythmic approach that hinted at the forthcoming innovations of [...]
Violinist Robert Vijay Gupta joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the age of 19. He made his solo debut, at age 11, with the Israel Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. He’s got a master’s in music from Yale. But his undergraduate degree? Pre-med. As an undergrad, Gupta was part of several research projects in neuro- and [...]
Books &Music &Photography Entropy | 20 Mar 2010
The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965 From 1957 to 1965 legendary photographer W. Eugene Smith made approximately 4,000 hours of recordings on 1,741 reel-to-reel tapes and nearly 40,000 photographs in a loft building in Manhattan’s wholesale flower district where major jazz musicians of the day [...]
Books &Music Entropy | 18 Dec 2009
The music is a bridge across the abyss, it is often the final means of human connection, our closing form of comfort. It is what we have when we have nothing else. In this brief video the writer-doctor/ Neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks discusses his book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain an investigation into [...]
For more than half a century we’ve seen incredible advances in sound technology but very little if any advance in the quality of music.. Read this thoughtful commentary by Glenn Branca in NYT. The End of Music We seem to be on the edge of a paradigm shift. Orchestras are struggling to stay alive, rock [...]
Books &Music Entropy | 26 Nov 2009
This important new biography restores the great Satchmo to his deserved place in the pantheon of American artists — as a dazzling innovator and pioneer, who indelibly shaped the emergence and evolution of jazz. – Pl read this Book Review By NYT Books Critic Michiko Kakutani Louis Armstrong, a k a Satchmo, a k a [...]