This author has yet to write their bio.Meanwhile lets just say that we are proud vailjazzteam contributed a whooping 95 entries.
Meet two students training in this week’s intensive 2019 Vail Jazz Workshop The flight to Colorado to attend the Vail Jazz Workshop marked Natalie Barbieri’s first time on an airplane. However, like all of the young musicians selected for the workshop, the 17-year-old from Long Island, NY, has notched several experiences outside the range of […]
Niki Haris’ Vail Jazz Party performance is all about finding one’s goodness Those unversed in gospel music might view it as a purely Christian genre … a style of music geared toward praising the lord and clapping for Jesus. But really, gospel is a music that speaks to everyone, regardless of religion, faith or belief […]
When Vail Jazz presents its 25th annual Vail Jazz Party over the Labor Day Weekend, it will continue a Colorado jazz tradition that is 56 years-old and was nurtured right here in Vail. The story begins in 1963 when Dick Gibson, a Denver investment banker, and his wife Maddie, gathered 10 jazz musicians and 200-plus […]
As usual, the Vail summer is flying by at mach speed, but the season’s crowning event – the Vail Jazz Party over Labor Day weekend – is geared up to be summer’s grand finale like never before. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the 2019 Vail Jazz Party is pulling out all of the stops and you […]
Poncho Sanchez recounts his decorative path of pounding rawhide Growing up with 10 siblings in a Mexican-American family in Los Angeles, Poncho Sanchez had to work for everything he got starting from a young age. Music drew him from the time he was a small child, but percussion was not his first calling. Sanchez, the […]
Previously I have written about the differences between Afro-Cuban jazz and American jazz and examined the reasons why the descendants of the same African ancestors, living only 90 miles apart in the New World, created two distinctively different forms of jazz. I concluded that that the outcome was predictable considering that each group’s music evolved […]
The chart-topping vocalist opens up about musical childhood and singing in the car Catherine Russell was born with music in her genes. Her father was Louis Armstrong’s long-time collaborator and her mother was a Juilliard-educated member of the storied International Sweethearts of Rhythm, the first integrated, all-female band in the U.S. Growing up in New […]
The Academy Award-winning documentary film, Twenty Feet from Stardom (2013) explores the careers and lives of a number of rock/pop “backup” singers. These very talented women backed up Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Sting, Stevie Wonder and other iconic rock/pop performers, but while the public may have known their voices, they were largely anonymous, performing while […]
Young jazz stars bring spontaneity and exploration to musical storytelling If you think it’s an exaggeration to say that a talented singer’s vocal chords can do acrobatics, you have not heard Veronica Swift. Yet, the 25-year-old rising jazz star does not describe herself as a vocal acrobat. She doesn’t even refer to herself as a […]
This year is the centennial of the birth of Anita O’Day (Anita Belle Colton), a daring jazz vocalist who developed her own style and created a vast body of innovative vocals while being tagged “The Jezebel of Jazz,” for her nonconformist ways. At mid-20th century, she was considered to be one of the top female […]
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