tous ensemble

Brian Olewnick has a round-up of seven essential Art Ensemble of Chicago albums. I only have one of the seven (the amazing Les Stances à Sophie), it sounds like I have to get a few others.

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Visionsong reports on a Dave Douglas workshop. It's really interesting to read about Dave's ideas on the expression of identity in music, and the challenges posed when the identity/culture of the performer and the audience can no longer be taken for granted.

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J@LC faces fund-raising difficulties because of jazz's lack of philanthropic culture. Having to raise tens of millions of dollars every year doesn't make the task any easier, either. How do the Wall Street ties fit with Wynton Marsalis's upcoming From The Plantation To The Penitentiary? He says: "We're not taking a moralistic view. It's not, 'Let me tell y'all how I'm different from you.'" I guess that's good, because "Super Capitalism"'s denunciation of rampant greed could be applied to Marsalis himself.

I must admit that my favourite sentence in the article is a worthless one: "The smallest venue, the 140-seat Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, had to book artists each night to live up to its billing as a club offering jazz 365 days a year." You don't say?!

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"92% of the Rolling Stones' revenues comes from performance, not recorded music." [via The Rambler]