KCET has a good piece by our blog bud Nikki Darling on the Locals Only theme of the upcoming 2013 EMP Pop Conference in L.A. this weekend. Our friend Los Angeles magazine senior editor Elina Shatkin will be reading her treatise on Garth Brooks' bizarre Chris Gaines period at 3:15pm Friday at USC's Campus Tutor Center.
If you're still downtown a sort of "pop-up jazz club" called the House of Spades is happening Friday night and features vocalist Dee Dee McNeil with Jacques Lesure's group, who has been burning the house down every month at jam sessions in Leimert Park's Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center. (Wynton Marsalis recently sat in with them.)
The Beast just found this Kickstarter page for Lady Be Good: Instrumental Women in Jazz, a new documentary by Seattle filmmaker K.D. Ray that's narrated by local L.A. pianist Patrice Rushen. Obviously, funds are needed by April 19 (this week, y'all) so we'd thought we'd throw this up for anyone whose interested.
For our part, we've been fascinated with how indie jazz documentarians are using KS to fund their labors of love. There's been fund drives for films about Charles Mingus, Thomas Chapin, Jason Moran, Buddy Rich, Henry Grimes and The Peace Old Jazz Band (a.k.a., "The World's Oldest Jazz Band"). Now, all we need to do is come up with a KS campaign for "The First Annual Kickstarter Jazz Documentary Film Festival" because a lot of these have been successfully seeded and soon even PBS won't even be able to keep up with them.
As the Beast previously reported, Michael Heller, musical director of Harvard University's Dudley Hall Jazz Bands, put on a remarkably comprehensive tribute program to local L.A. jazz composer Horace Tapscott and his Pan Afrikan People's Arkestra back in 2011. What's more remarkable is that they tackled some of the Ark's most challenging tunes from Tapscott as well as other Ark affilitates like Jesse Sharps, Adnan Zunic and Fuasi Abdul-Khaliq. Here's the set list:
Dudley House Combo Band
1. To The Great House
2. Sonny's Dream
3. How to Choose Avocados
4. Sandy Niles
5. Ballad of Deadwood Dick
6. Warriors All
Dudley House Big Band
1. Lino's Pad
2. Daughter of Cochise
3. The Black Apostles
4. The Goat and Ram Jam
5. Mike's Tune
6. The Golden Pearl
7. Ballad for Samuel
8. Eternal Egypt Suite
What's more, the entire concert, which was broadcast live on Boston public radio, is now available on YouTube. Here's a smattering:
IN OTHER UNDERAPPRECIATED L.A. JAZZ ARTIST NEWS: This is nothing but scuttlebutt, but The Beast recently heard that the Board of Directors of the upcoming 2013 Angel City Jazz Festival are bandying about a pretty awesome idea: An entire recreation of Roots & Folklore, the epic five-album suite composed by late free jazz clarinetist John Carter (known mostly for his collaborations with cornetist Bobby Bradford) back in the 1980s. The proposal seems to be a multi-night event -- quite possibly staged at REDCAT downtown -- culminating in Carter's old pal Bobby Bradford playing his own tribute to Carter, the Death of A Sideman suite he recorded back in 1992 with David Murray. Will this even happen? Methinks Kickstarter would be a good place to, uh, start.
