Archive for July, 2009

Jazz Awards comments from Konitz, Rudd

July 13th 2009

Lee Konitz, recipient of the JJA’s 2009 Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Award wrote on July 2:

I want to thank you and your Jazz Journalists Colleagues for your acknowledgment of my life’s work. A great honor, to be sure.

My really greatest achievement is still being around to say thanks!! I’m playing more than ever — the travel is difficult (for everyone) but that’s what we’re paid for, after all.

I intend to continue playing nice, spontaneous variations on nice songs as long as possible. So, many heartfelt thanks.
Love, Lee

Roswell Rudd, named Trombonist of the Year by the JJA, wrote on June 26:

The special folks who have been able to experience
music performance and write about it in such a way that it continues the sound
(from sublingual to lingual)
I’ve always admired this

And you support us in so many ways

The annual awards get together is just one other

It’s great to see yourself and others who are skilled this way

You’re players too!
Many thanks for your work

Good health and happy landings

Roswell Rudd

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Videos: JJA 2009 Jazz Awards

July 11th 2009


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arnold jay smith: Montreal Jazz Fest @ 30:
Business as Usual (sort of)

July 11th 2009

The Festival International de Jazz de Montreal (FIJM) celebrated year 30.  Thanks to its efficient publicity department you already know that.  My personal “handler” on the international press desk was the multinational Carola Duran who instinctively knew how to calm our consternation when we asked for tickets to long sold-out indoor events.

Let’s begin with the spanking new physical plant.  The new pressroom is in a Canadian government gifted building just off the Festival grounds (Place des Arts).  It is spacious and welcoming with a bar serving beer, wine, water, both flat and gaseous, and a new pleasant wrinkle: an espresso machine for coffee, latte and cappuccino, all gratuit.  One could spend most of one’s time hanging out speaking with fellow fourth estaters you haven’t seen in a year(s) or perhaps ever.  I was there over our Independence Day weekend (July 2-6) –FIJM ran from June 30-July 12– when the rain came and went not daily, but hourly. No exaggeration that.

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