Blog Posts by Subject: Jazz

It is 8th Street, but from Third Avenue to Avenue A it is called St. Marks Place and is named for St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, which is not even on 8th Street, or St. Marks Place, but at the intersection of 10th Street, Second Avenue, and Stuyvesant Street. The land there has been a site of Christian worship since 1660. The history of St. Marks Place doesn’t go back that far, but a surprising amount of history has happened on these four blocks.

January 23, 2010 marks the centennial of the birth of Django Reinhardt. Reinhardt grew up in gypsy camps outside Paris and began playing violin, banjo, and guitar at a young age.

After a number of years in an historic Greenwich Village library I’ve spent the past few weeks in an equally historic East Village library. The Ottendorfer Branch of The New York Public Library is surrounded by literary, political, and musical history. From Leon Trotsky and Abbie Hoffman to Allen Ginsberg and Joey Ramone,

I recently had the pleasure of sitting in on Peter Apfelbaum’s oral history, conducted by long-time friend and jazz writer, Dan Ouellette. I was most pleased to hear about the origins of The Hieroglyphics – a band Peter formed in his teens. I am fascinated by how the band has successfully shifted and transformed alongside him - growing as he did throughout the years. There is a touch of sadness about this being my last opportunity to hear a Duke Jazz artist tell his story like this – laughing with a friend while articulating the first musical sounds he ever made, pausing to find the right words to describe his artistic process, or discussing the true impact of a commission from 

We're slowly approaching the end of the Duke Jazz Series performances, and we would love to have you join us on Wednesday, September 23, 2009, to welcome Brian Lynch and Spheres of Influence. The performance will take place in the Bruno Walter Auditorium at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, 111 Amsterdam Avenue @ 65th Street. The program is free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors open at 7:00 p.m. For more information, please call 212.870.1793 or visit nypl.org/lpaprograms.

Film noir is the theme for Jefferson Market’s Monday night films this month. We’ll start the series with Fritz Lang’s Hangmen Also Die. Please take a look at The New York Public Library’s online calendar for our other upcoming films.

We’ll also have a special non-noir Saturday film screening of Blithe Spirit on March 21, 2009 at 2pm. Based on the play by Noel Coward, Blithe Spirit is getting a revival on Broadway this month. The 1945 movie poster described the film as “super-naturally spicy screen entertainment” in “blushing Technicolor. Can you resist? I think not!

Our February films came to an end with a screening of a film about 

Did you know that jazz musician Jane Ira Bloom...

...prodded by her friend, the actor Brian Dennehy, wrote a letter to NASA to ask what they thought about the future of the arts in space and ended up as the first musician ever commissioned by the NASA space program and with an asteriod (6083janeirabloom) named in her honor?

Please join us for our next Duke Jazz Talk featuring father/son artists Bucky and John Pizzarelli on Wednesday, February 11 at 8:00 p.m. Duke Jazz Talks put the spotlight on four GRAMMY® -nominated and -award winning jazz artists. Bucky and John will discuss their lives and work with Bob Santelli, Executive Director of The GRAMMY MuseumSM; following the dialogue will be a brief performance.

Duke Jazz Talks are part of the two-year Library for the Performing Arts’ project funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to present, document, and preserve jazz, contemporary dance, and theater performances and related oral histories.

These oral histories are offering 

Beginning in late September 2008, The Performing Arts Library (LPA) hosted two Duke Jazz Series concerts with Dafnis Prieto Sextet and Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto. The members of those groups were wonderful individuals with extraordinary talent. Every musician expressed their love for the music; we witnessed that excitement and burst of energy when they performed. My favorite musician was Jeff Busch from Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto who is the percussionist for that group. The piece that he stood out the most was “Feira Livre,” from Jovino Santos Neto’s album Canto do Rio.

We are pleased to start the New Year and our new Jazz season with Donny McCaslin, who is 

The Duke Project team -- consisting of Sarah Ziebell (middle), Flordalisa "Lisa" Lopez (right), and myself (left) -- are gearing up for the second concert in the Duke Jazz Series.

For those of you who missed September's show, the wonderfully talented Dafnis Prieto Sextet were featured, filling the Bruno Auditorium with Cuban-infused jazz. We had an excellent turn out for the event -- despite having to compete with presidential debates and pouring rain -- and hope to match the turn out next week with the sounds of Brazilian pianist/flutist/composer Jovino Santos Neto and his Quintet. In addition to the quintet (traveling to NY from Seattle to perform) are special guests 

Through the exceptional generosity of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Library for the Performing Arts’ Music and Dance Divisions and the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive have been awarded two years of funding to present, document, and preserve jazz, contemporary dance, and theater performances and related oral histories. Those of us on the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Project have the distinct pleasure of leading these efforts.

In the exhibition, “A Rakish History of Men’s Wear,” I tackled the issue of music as a key factor in the development of street fashion. Twentieth century casual sportswear took many cues from hip hop. If you walk the short round through “Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve,” you’ll find you don’t want to escape from the twelve-minute tape loop of music in the gallery.

Therein lies a genuine clue. The toe-tapping quality of 1920s syncopation filtered right into the realm of fashion. Jazz babies, flappers—their garments go with the beat of George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Milton Ager, and Jimmy Johnson. There’s an irrepressible