Category Archives: On Music

Astor Piazzolla and a GRAMMY Nomination

16 Wednesday Nov 2022

Posted by in Home, On Music

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quinteto2piazzolla

Astor Piazzolla (center) and his exceptional Quintet, with which he recorded two of the albums of his great “American” trilogy. From left to right, Horacio Malvicino, electric guitar; Hector Console, double bass; Fernando Suárez Paz, violin; and Pablo Ziegler, piano.

When an old friend at the Recording Academy surprised me yesterday morning with a message congratulating me on the GRAMMY nomination in the Album Notes category, my natural response was to thank her — and immediately think she was likely mistaken. We all have high hopes for our friends. But I didn’t want to say anything until I saw the list — and I did, and there it was.

It’s a nomination for the notes for Nonesuch’s Astor Piazzolla The American Clavé Recordings, a trilogy that includes Tango Zero Hour (1986), The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night (Tango Apasionado) (1987), and La Camorra (1988)

It’s a privilege to have your work considered by your peers, in my case, writers I’ve read and learned from for many years. But it is also special for me that these notes are about Astor Piazzolla (my musical hero growing up in Buenos Aires) and his work with Kip Hanrahan, one of the most creative and generous people I know, and a dear friend.

The 2023 GRAMMYs take place Sunday, Feb. 5.

  1. Best Album Notes
  • The American Clavé Recordings
    Fernando González, album notes writer (Astor Piazzolla)
  • Andy Irvine & Paul Brady
    Gareth Murphy, album notes writer (Andy Irvine & Paul Brady)
  • Harry Partch, 1942
    John Schneider, album notes writer (Harry Partch)
  • Life’s Work: A Retrospective
    Ted Olson, album notes writer (Doc Watson)
  • Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (20th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition)
    Bob Mehr, album notes writer (Wilco)

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Luis Olazábal: Making Music for Your Eyes

13 Monday Jul 2020

Posted by in Home, In Other Words, On Music

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Luis Olazábal photo courtesy of Sandra Abousleiman @mypinkpanthetravels ©

Not every musician plays an instrument or writes music.
Luis Olazábal used his camera to make music with images. A dear colleague and arguably the premier performing arts photographer in South Florida, Luis died in his native Lima, Peru, on June 30 of pancreatic and liver cancer. He was 52.

Luis worked for notable clients, including the JVC Jazz Festival, Sony-BMG Music, Miami-Nice Jazz Festival, Miami International Jazz Fest, Miami Light Project, Tigertail Productions, and the adventurous Subtropics Festival. But since 2004, he was the official photographer of the Rhythm Foundation, a Miami Beach-based non-profit that presents music from around the world.

We shared many moments in the back rows of the North Beach Bandshell talking about music and musicians while taking in all kinds of shows – from Haitian roots music and jazz to Cuban funk, classical, gospel, you name it. He was an informed and astute listener with a great eye.

It made his photographs different.
His work illustrated many stories on this blog. The picture on the header is his.

When I told him about the idea behind the blog I was starting and asked him for an image for it, he said he would think about it, and later that day he sent me some photos. The one I chose was just the second or third I saw. He had some technical objections I didn’t understand and, frankly, he wasn’t crazy about it. But I loved it, so we agreed it would be a placeholder, just to get rolling. Of course, I had no intention of changing it. His photo was, and remains, a better statement about what this blog is about than any description I could write.

That’s the power of his work.

As it turns out, Luis didn’t plan on being a photographer, but, as he was fond of recalling, he saw an exhibit of black & white images of jazz and blues performers by Herman Leonard while on a walk on Lincoln Road. Those photos, he said, “made me realize exactly what I was meant to do. At that moment, I knew that music photography was my calling.” We were lucky he did.

In a town too often dazzled by loud, shiny, and inch-deep, Luis was unassuming, truly talented, and serious about his craft. You can enjoy more of his work here.

Some day we will have concerts at the Bandshell again, and then, I hope to be somewhere in the back rows, listening and taking notes — and I know it will hit me.

I will miss him.

The Shape of Jazz To Come

30 Tuesday Jun 2020

Posted by in Home, In Other Words, Jazz, On Music

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From left: Linda May Han Oh, Kris Davis, Terri Lyne Carrington, Aja Burrell Wood  Photo by Kelly Davidson

Women have been part of jazz from its beginning. It’s a rich but complicated story framed by limited opportunity mixed with unwritten rules, sexism, and benign neglect. None of this is surprising: Generous as jazz can be, as art, it both reflects and shapes the society that produces it. 

“We live in a patriarchal society, and that patriarchal thread has run through this music as well,” says Terri Lyne Carrington, drummer, and producer, as well as the artistic director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice.

She founded the institute to explore a fundamental question: What would jazz sound like in a culture without patriarchy? The question has surfaced at a moment in which society seems open to an important set of conversations and institutional changes, says Farah Jasmine Griffin, a Columbia University professor who has written extensively about issues of race, gender, feminism, and cultural politics, and who sits on the institute’s advisory board.

“Oh, I don’t know that jazz is any worse on these issues than many other parts of our culture,” says Griffin, who is also the author of If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday, and collaborated with the late composer and pianist Geri Allen on theatrical projects. “But I’ve always felt that because jazz is so capacious and it’s always been historically at the forefront of social change and modeling social change, jazz would be a great place to try and do something like [the institute] to really kind of challenge our notions of gender norms.”

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