Author: Mike Shaw

In light of ongoing racial injustice and the Black Lives Matter movement, universities have been pressured to better represent a more diverse music, to include more Black composers. But too often they’re only picking composers who write in the European tradition. Duke Ellington never seems to come up and yet he’s the most important American…

I’m sure you know the song “My Funny Valentine.” It’s from Babes in Arms, a 1937 musical by Rodgers and Hart, and has been recorded more than 1300 times by more than 600 artists, from Frank Sinatra to Sarah Vaughan to Miles Davis to an enshrined version by jazz trumpeter/vocalist Chet Baker. I guess those…

It’s no stretch. Jazz is an expression of democracy. So much so it was outlawed in Nazi Germany, and later banned in the Soviet Union where it was not uncommon to see signs like, “If you let people play jazz they will revolt,” or “if you play saxophone, you’re a degenerate.” What makes jazz so…

The other night I was watching a report on the unrest on college campuses over the Israel-Hamas War and heard a student leader respond to an interviewer’s question of what he wanted from the opposing side as “see me, feel me, hear me,” paraphrasing the line from the Who’s 1969 rock opera Tommy. It was…

In a recent blog we talked about The Great American Songbook, the collection of songs composed in the first half of the 20th century by the likes of Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Richard Rogers, the Gershwins, and Duke Ellington. It was the first truly American popular music genre, and those songs,…

One of our favorite things to do with our Music Life and Times podcasts is to interview other musicians about their perspectives and pathways. Vinnie D’Agostino—saxophone, clarinet, and flute—first performed as an 8-year-old and started playing professionally at 15. Throughout his youth he was convinced he would live his life as a professional musician. But…

The other night my trio performed at an event where the crowd was so loud we could hardly hear ourselves playing. It can be frustrating. Hours of practice getting ready for the gig. The afternoon spent hauling equipment and setting up. Then such a lack of respect for the players and the music. Are we…

One of my favorite pastimes is writing about jazz for ArtsATL.org, the Atlanta arts community website. In 2009, as the Atlanta Journal Constitution, like most newspapers in America, was thinning, one of the areas that had to be cut back was coverage of the arts. Catherine Fox and Pierre Ruhe, at that time leading critics…

On August 10, pianist Joe Alterman released his latest album, Joe Alterman Plays Les McCann: Big Mo & little joe, a tribute to his long time friend and mentor, the epochal composer, pianist, and vocalist. Big Mo is hospitalized and unable to play. He is more than 50 years Alterman’s elder, and the two have…

One of the differences between playing classical music and jazz is that jazz is all about improvisation. Never play the same song the same way. You might repeat certain lines or phrases, but especially when you’re soloing it’s a freedom dance. You don’t want to be restricted to something you’ve memorized; you want to employ…