lintonchiswick.org

Minton's Playhouse on Radio 3

I managed to create a little buzz for the Minton's Reopening over on Radio 3, and presented a short segment on Thursday's Nightwaves. It's still available for a couple more days, by using the Listen Again facility. If you want to hear it, try this link, then "Radio 3", and then choose Thursday's programme.

Karin Krog

She's been a favourite of mine for many years... ever since first hearing some of her trippier, electronically distorted work from the 1970s. And her story's fascinating - from a Norwegian pop session to working with Dexter Gordon, Archie Shepp and Don Ellis, leading a band with a very young Jan Gabarek, and her long-standing duo with sympatico saxophonist-composer-producer John Surman. I talked to her and John for BBC Radio 3's Jazz on 3, in advance of their date in Bath. It's available for another week, and you can catch it here.

Movie mashup mayhem

In today's Times, I talk to PR guru Steve Rubel (of Microspersuasion), film critic Mark Bell (of FilmThreat.com) and gifted film editor Mike Hindes... the man behind the amazing Toy Story 2: Requiem trailer mashup. The mashup - the combination of one film trailer with footage or sound from another - is an interesting area right now - and rapidly turning from renegade art form to essential marketing feature for the studios. The piece has just gone online, here.

Bebop's Holy Site - reopens Friday

Minton's Playhouse - in Harlem - is commonly credited with being the birthplace of bebop. It was there, in a series of impromptu jams, that Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Charlie Christian and other curious experimenters, pulled jazz apart and put it back together different. It closed its doors in 1974, and it's since passed into that kind of mythology-plus-tantalising-photographs-and-amateur-recordings status that's peculiar to jazz. There've been a number of attempts to reopen it in the meantime (perhaps most notably by Robert De Niro). The latest opening, courtesy of a Mr Earl Spain (who owns the Cecil Hotel, housing the club) is on Friday, and there are high hopes.

You can see some photos of the inside here.

[via Curbed]

Matisyahu on Radio 3

I make a brief appearance on BBC Radio 3's arts show - Nightwaves - tonight, presenting a segment about Hasidic reggae star Matisyahu, Heeb magazine and the Radical Jewish Culture movement. It's on at 9.30pm.

UPDATE - Matisyahu enthusiasts can still hear the show by taking advantage of the BBC's Listen Again button. Go here and click on Tuesday's programme.

Any advance on Bowdoin and Berkeley?

Yes, actually. You can sample Stanford's lectures, too - via iTunes. Typically - in these days of free and speedy access - the only limitation is time.

UC Berkeley on iTunes
Bowdoin podcasts