|
Stanley Crouch
Stanley Lawrence Crouch (December 14, 1945 – September 16, 2020) was an American poet, music and cultural critic, syndicated columnist, novelist, and biographer. He was known for his jazz criticism and his 2000 novel ''Don't the Moon Look Lonesome?'' Biography Stanley Lawrence Crouch was born in Los Angeles, the son of James and Emma Bea (Ford) Crouch. He was raised by his mother. In Ken Burns' 2005 television documentary ''Unforgivable Blackness'', Crouch said that his father was a "criminal" and that he once met the boxer Jack Johnson. As a child he was a voracious reader, having read the complete works of Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many of the other classics of American literature by the time he finished high school. His mother told him of the experiences of her youth in east Texas and the black culture of the southern midwest, including the Kansas City jazz scene. He became an enthusiast for jazz in both the aesthetic and historical senses ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to it's east. It covers about , and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pitzer College
Pitzer College is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. One of the Claremont Colleges, the college has a curricular emphasis on the social sciences, behavioral sciences, international programs, and media studies. Pitzer is known for its social justice culture and experimental pedagogical approach. History Pitzer was founded in 1963 as a women's college by Russell K. Pitzer (1878–1978), a California citrus magnate, philanthropist, and Pomona College alumnus. In April 1963, John W. Atherton, the dean of faculty and a professor of English at Claremont Men's College (now Claremont McKenna College) was hired as Pitzer's first president, and over the next seventeen months he recruited students, faculty, and trustees and constructed Scott and Sanborn Halls just in time for the fall 1964 semester. During the College's first year, students and faculty created the curriculum and the school's system of governance. The College graduated its first class of students in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American trumpeter, composer, teacher, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has promoted classical and jazz music, often to young audiences. Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards, and his ''Blood on the Fields'' was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He is the only musician to win a Grammy Award in both jazz and classical during the same year. Early years Marsalis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1961, and grew up in the suburb of Kenner. He is the second of six sons born to Dolores Ferdinand Marsalis and Ellis Marsalis Jr., a pianist and music teacher.Stated on ''Finding Your Roots'', PBS, March 25, 2012 He was named for jazz pianist Wynton Kelly. Branford Marsalis is his older brother and Jason Marsalis and Delfeayo Marsalis are younger. All three are jazz musicians. While sitting at a table with trumpeters Al Hirt, Miles Davis, and Clark Terry, his father jokin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the creative community of New York City. It ceased publication in 2017, although its online archives remained accessible. After an ownership change, the ''Voice'' reappeared in print as a quarterly in April 2021. Over its 63 years of publication, ''The Village Voice'' received three Pulitzer Prizes, the National Press Foundation Award, and the George Polk Award. ''The Village Voice'' hosted a variety of writers and artists, including writer Ezra Pound, cartoonist Lynda Barry, artist Greg Tate, and film critics Andrew Sarris, Jonas Mekas and J. Hoberman. In October 2015, ''The Village Voice'' changed ownership and severed all ties with former parent company Voice Media Group (VMG). The ''Voice'' announced on August 22, 2017, that it would cease pu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at several universities, including the University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University. He received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for ''Tales of the Out and the Gone''. Baraka's plays, poetry, and essays have been described by scholars as constituting defining texts for African-American culture. Baraka's career spanned nearly 52 years, and his themes range from black liberation to white racism. His notable poems include "The Music: Reflection on Jazz and Blues", "The Book of Monk", and "New Music, New Poetry", works that draw on topics from the worlds of society, music, and literature. Baraka's poetry and writing have attracted both high praise and condemnation. In the African-American community, some com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Murray (writer)
Albert L. Murray (May 12, 1916 – August 18, 2013) was an American literary and music critic, novelist, essayist, and biographer. His books include ''The Omni-Americans'', ''South to a Very Old Place'', and ''Stomping the Blues''. Biography Early life Murray was born in Nokomis, Alabama. His biological mother, Sudie Graham, gave him up for adoption to Hugh and Mattie Murray. He grew up in the Magazine Point area of Mobile, Alabama.Charles H. Rowell"An All-Purpose, All-American Literary Intellectual" ''Callaloo'', Vol. 20, No. 2 (1997): 399–414. Retrieved December 27, 2020. He attended Tuskegee Institute on scholarship and received a B.S. in education in 1939. One of his fellow students was Ralph Ellison, who would later write the novel ''Invisible Man'' (1952), which established his reputation and gave him a lifetime income. Murray briefly enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Michigan before returning to Tuskegee in 1940 to teach literature and composition. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ralph Ellison
Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1913 – April 16, 1994) was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel ''Invisible Man'', which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote ''Shadow and Act'' (1964), a collection of political, social, and critical essays, and ''Going to the Territory'' (1986). ''The New York Times'' dubbed him "among the gods of America's literary Parnassus." A posthumous novel, ''Juneteenth'', was published after being assembled from voluminous notes he left upon his death. Early life Ralph Waldo Ellison, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born at 407 NE 1st Street in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Lewis Alfred Ellison and Ida Millsap, on March 1, 1913. Oklahoma City's 407 East First Street buzzed with excitement as Ida Ellison, whom close friends called “Brownie,” neared term in early 1913. She and her husband Lewis lived in an apartment in a large rooming house owned by J. D. Randolph and his family. He was the second of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ladies' Fort
Joe Lee Wilson (December 22, 1935 – July 17, 2011) was an American jazz singer from Bristow, Oklahoma, who lived in Europe since 1977. Biography Part African-American and part Creek people, Creek Native American,John Fordham (jazz critic), John Fordham"Joe Lee Wilson obituary: Eloquent jazz vocalist who drew on the raw passion of the blues" ''The Guardian'', July 18, 2011. Wilson was born in Bristow, Oklahoma, to farming parents Stella and Ellis Wilson. As his band's name, Joy of Jazz, suggests, Wilson's baritone personified the life-affirming nature of jazz and blues. Seeing Billie Holiday perform in 1951 began his interest in a music-industry career. Moving to Los Angeles at the age of 15, he went to Los Angeles High School, where he majored in music and sang in an a cappella choir. Graduating with honors in 1954, he won a scholarship to the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, where he studied opera, leaving after a year and then attending Los Angeles City College, Los Ange ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avant-garde Jazz
Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz and experimental jazz) is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. It originated in the early 1950s and developed through to the late 1960s. Originally synonymous with free jazz, much avant-garde jazz was distinct from that style. History 1950s Avant-garde jazz originated in the mid- to late 1950s among a group of improvisors who rejected the conventions of bebop and post bop in an effort to blur the division between the written and the spontaneous. Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor led the way, soon to be joined by John Coltrane. Some would come to apply it differently from free jazz, emphasizing structure and organization by the use of composed melodies, shifting but nevertheless predetermined meters and tonalities, and distinctions between soloists and accompaniment. 1960s In Chicago, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians began pursuing their own variety of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loft Jazz
Loft jazz (or the loft scene or loft era) was a cultural phenomenon that occurred in New York City during the mid-1970s. Gary Giddins described it as follows: " new coterie of avant-garde musicians took much of the jazz world by surprise... ey interpreted the idea of freedom as the capacity to choose between all the realms of jazz, mixing and matching them not only with each other, but with old and new pop, R&B and rock, classical music and world music... emingly overnight new venues - in many instances, apartments or lofts (hence the phrase 'loft jazz') - opened shop to present their wares." According to Michael Heller, "lofts were not an organization, nor a movement, nor an ideology, nor a genre, nor a neighborhood, nor a lineage of individuals. They were, instead, a meeting point, a locus for interaction." Heller stated that "loft practices came to be defined by a number of key characteristics, including (1) low admission charges or suggested donations, (2) casual atmospheres tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Tin Palace
The Tin Palace was a jazz nightclub on the Bowery in New York's East Village founded by Misha Saradoff and Charlie Burck that opened in 1973 and operated there throughout much of the 1970s. History The Tin Palace nightclub opened in the fall of 1973 at Bowery and Second Street in New York's East Village. Its founder, Misha Saradoff, lived in the neighborhood on the same block as the Tin Palace. He wanted to open a jazz club that captured the high energy of old downtown jazz clubs but not the hard drugs and doomed history set by Charlie Parker and Lee Morgan. The first six months catered to the Bowery/Soho crowd, which included painters in the lofts, such as Mike Goldberg and Robert Indiana." The club opened with Murray Shapinski Quartet, Charlie Turyn, saxophonist, Vinnie Giangreco, guitarist. Stanley Crouch (not then the traditionalist he became) had proposed opening an avant-garde Sunday afternoon series, which was very successful "turning Sunday afternoons into prime time ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood on the East Side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is roughly defined as the area east of the Bowery and Third Avenue, between 14th Street on the north and Houston Street on the south. The East Village contains three subsections: Alphabet City, in reference to the single-letter-named avenues that are located to the east of First Avenue; Little Ukraine, near Second Avenue and 6th and 7th Streets; and the Bowery, located around the street of the same name. Initially the location of the present-day East Village was occupied by the Lenape Native Americans, and was then divided into plantations by Dutch settlers. During the early 19th century, the East Village contained many of the city's most opulent estates. By the middle of the century, it grew to include a large immigrant populationincluding what was once referred to as Manhattan's Little Germanyand was considered part of the nearby Lower East Side. By the late 1960s, many artists, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
