On Sunday, February 19, Dizzy’s new location in the Musicians’ Association Bldg., Bay Park, will come alive at the 9th Annual Brasil Jazz Festa, celebrating Brazilian jazz with four music sets: Brazilian singer-guitarist Téka Penteriche from São Paulo, award-winning flutist Lori Bell, the Danny Green Trio, and the Allison Adams Tucker Group. Featuring eight Southern […]
It’s been a pretty rough start to the year. And if you’re like most folks you’ve probably had a few Savoy Brown lyrics running non-stop through your head… ‘troubled by these days and times…’ With such widespread angst, the question remains how do we make it better? Well, I have a recommendation. Instead of ingesting […]
Judy Berman Silbert’s voice is filled with enthusiasm. “This is going to be a wonderful cross pollination of art genres,” she says. The San Diego native is excited about the concert and first-ever fundraiser for ArtReach, the organization Silbert founded to bring art and art education into San Diego schools. To be held on the […]
As we enter February, we can be thankful that we live in San Diego on the West Coast. The weather is generally good, and opportunities for bluegrass events abound. In most of the country there is a bluegrass festival season that extends through the summer and ends in the fall to accommodate the harsh weather […]
Maybe not since the Ohio Players, Slave and Zapp were making Dayton a veritable “Detroit south” of epic ’70s and ’80s power funk has southern Ohio been such a hub of top-flight pop music. While Cincinnati-based Dawg Yawp’s debut sits atop many critic’s “best of 2016” lists, Springfield, Ohio’s Griffin House is back with his […]
Bop, Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, and Drugs (by Martin Torgott, Da Capo Press) is a rather large subject, but author Martin Torgoff soft pedals his main thesis—that drugs were an essential ingredient in the creation of bold new music and literature by black musicians and white writers—with a light touch. Instead of weighing his […]
It doesn’t seem possible that it’s been 25 years since the passing of bluesman Willie Dixon. Willie lived life exactly like he wrote songs—simply, without pretense and gut level. A huge presence in both girth and talent, Dixon became a voice for the mistreated and broken-hearted. He was gifted in musical arrangement and composition; even […]
I’m always curious about how songs evolve, and I guess there’s no better documentation of that than by listening to recordings. Take Hank Williams’ “Lovesick Blues,” which most of us consider a country music standard. Recorded by Hank in December of 1948, it had been a country song when cowboy crooner Rex Griffin recorded it […]
Crooked is an acoustic quartet that plays music best described as a hybrid of bluegrass, folk, Irish, and what might be called jug band without the jug. The band features Anna Levitt on fiddle; Michael Nieman on banjo, harp, and percussion (bones and bodhran); Chad Pittman on upright bass; and Nick Montemarano on tenor banjo, […]
