April is Jazz Appreciation Month, and there’s no shortage of ways in which to show your appreciation in Philly over the next 30 days. The official kick-off came a couple of days early on Thursday, with Mayor Kenney presenting the Benny Golson award to bass great Jamaaladeen Tacuma at City Hall. Continue reading →
“Roots” is a word that comes up a lot in jazz circles, but it can refer to a pretty wide variety of things: the roots and rich history of the music; personal ties to places, people, or traditions; geographical or familial roots that continue to emerge even as people move from place to place. All of those emerge in this month’s jazz calendar. Continue reading →
As 2017 gives way to tentative hope for a better (-ish?) New Year, there’s one last bit of misery to report before blocking that appropriately reviled year from our collective memories for good. Just one day after Christmas, singer Michelle Lordi’s Huntingdon Valley home was destroyed in a horrific fire. Michelle, her husband and three children all escaped the flames safely, but everything else was a complete loss. She was back on stage for her regular Wednesday night gig at Vintage Bar & Grill in Abington the next night, so drop by there or for Sunday jazz brunch each week at Walnut Street Café. A GoFundMe page has been set up, and Jazz Bridge is accepting tax-deductible donations to help the family recover. Continue reading →
I’m not going to make things easy on you this month. Maybe it’s because the latter part of the month is swallowed by the holidays, or maybe it’s just sheer coincidence, but most of this month’s jazz highlights are crammed into a single weekend right at the outset. It’s possible to make several of these with some careful planning, but a couple of them may come down to coin tosses – but it’s worth catching as many as possible.
Thanks to an unexpected confluence of shuffled schedules, pet health scares, and weather-defiant vacation planning, it seems my wife and I will be heading up to New England the day after Thanksgiving. We’ve decided to fully embrace the coincidence, so that Saturday we’ll be sitting down for a second, (relatively) period-accurate holiday supper at Plimoth Plantation, the Williamsburg-like “living history” recreation of the Pilgrims’ first settlement, presumably surrounded by buckle-shoed and feather-headdressed reenactors.
That of course means that I’ll be missing out on the Philly jazz scene’s own venerable Thanksgiving tradition, guitar great Pat Martino’s weekend-long stint at Chris’ Jazz Café. This year he’ll lead his quintet, with his regular triomates, organist Pat Bianchi and drummer Carmen Intorre, supplemented by tenor saxophonist Adam Niewood and trumpeter Alex Norris. In the spirit of the season, Martino’s guitarist wife Ayako has been known to sit in as well.
