Jazz Fest is upon us. And beyond the action of the two Downtown Jacksonville stages, music will be pouring out of venues across the city. There’s a lot going on. Here’s what the JME team has their ears on this week. NOTE: The CDC recommends wearing a mask indoors in public if you are in an area of substantial or high transmission even …
PARIS — Colette Maze welcomes me warmly into her apartment on the 14th floor of a building overlooking the Seine River. From her flowered balcony, she has a view of the Eiffel Tower. She offers me a whiskey or a cognac — along with a hearty laugh as it’s 10:30 in the morning. It’s that humor, a sense of optimism …
The trademark gondolas of Venice’s Grand Canal played second fiddle this weekend to a very unusual vessel: A giant violin carrying a live string quartet. “Noah’s Violin” is the most recent creation of Venetian artist Livio De Marchi. He’s sent plenty of other wooden works out to sea, including a giant shoe and an origami hat. This large-scale replica is …
St. Augustine was once a bastion for Black musicians in the South, as both a home to, and a stopping off point for, some of the most influential performers of their time. It’s on the threads of that legacy that St. Augustine-based music promotion company Underwire Collective tugs. Established in 2019 by Bianca Dawson and Kinsley Stewart, Underwire Collective uses …
There’s so much high quality music pouring out of Northeast Florida right now that we aren’t quite sure what to do with it all. We’ll start by writing about it below. And we’ll also continue to add the standout tunes to our monthly Fresh Squeeze playlist. Beyond that, the rest is up to you. But we’d highly recommend putting these …
The month-long Sing Out Loud Festival comes to a close this weekend with several free showcases ‘round town and some epic headliners at The Amp in St. Augustine. JME Contributors have singled out two FREE SOL showcases featuring some of the Sunshine State’s premier talent sandwiched between two performances by living legends at the Florida Theatre in Jax and the …
“I guess I’m a lot more confident… “ When Lil Nas X first dropped “Old Town Road” at the end of 2018, the country-rap banger broke the internet. In the process of wrangling viral fame, Lil Nas X’s trajectory sparked debate over the racial boundaries of genre. While some might have thought this was just a teenager’s 15 minutes of …
There’s so much great music coming out, seemingly everyday, that keeping up with it all can feel overwhelming. The JME team is here to help. Each month, JME contributors pick the juiciest noise emanating from Northeast Florida and beyond for our monthly Fresh Squeeze playlist. Featuring a few dozen new tunes from local, regional, national and international artists, there are …
For its 50th anniversary, join us in an online listening party for John Prine‘s self-titled debut. NPR Music’s Ann Powers will be joined by John’s wife Fiona Prine, their son Jody Whelan, legendary singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt and producer Jim Rooney in a live conversation about this monumental album. The event will take place on the anniversary of the album’s release, …
Music impresario George Wein, who spawned the modern music festival when he helped launch the Newport Jazz and Newport Folk Festivals, has died at the age of 95. According to a statement from his family, Wein died peacefully in his sleep early Monday morning. Wein co-founded the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954 and the Newport Folk Festival in 1959. Newport …
Last week marked the return of St. Augustine’s Sing Out Loud Festival. The month-long fest features more than 100 performances, including big-time headliners and dozens of local acts. There’s more to check out in St. Johns County. You can read about all of our SOL staff picks here. There’s also plenty of music in Duval this week. Here are our …
Picking one Tiny Desk Contest winner from the thousands of amazing entries we received this year wasn’t easy. Over the past few months, we’ve spent time with early standout entries; asked our judges about their top picks; and celebrated tons of creative videos. And after all that, one entry rose to the top: a song that our judges said stopped …
Jonah Pierre’s been up to something. Easily recognizable with his close-crop afro and effortless cool, the Jacksonville-based pianist and percussionist has become a fixture in the local music scene, sharing the stage with the region’s top-tier jazz players, as well as performing with the Afro-Cuban salsa band, LPT (disclosure: I also perform with LPT). As busy and in-demand as Pierre …
MTV’s Video Music Awards returned to the stage after 2020’s socially distanced show. The show also marked the network’s milestone 40th year. It was a big night for Olivia Rodrigo, Justin Bieber and Lil Nas X, among others. Here are some of the memorable moments and “Moon person” winners. Standout performances and memorable moments The night saw performances from Justin …
Something clicked for Freddy Bricks in 2020. He’d had been floating around the Jacksonville music scene for more than a decade before releasing his first studio album The Man Who Remembered Too Much, which earned Bricks high marks that year from Duval County’s hip-hop community. Then the floodgates opened. That same year, he fed the scene, 11 Forks 1 Knife, …
Jacksonville artists are making a habit out of turning genre conventions on their ears. New tracks from Sailor Goon and K.UTIE find the vocalists toying with the protocols of pop, while Freddy Bricks offers up a singular approach to hip-hop (with a little help from his Duval friends). Here are the best new tracks from Jacksonville artists out right now. …
Media Contact:Neily BrarenPromotion & Marketing Associate, WJCT904.318.2633 | nbraren@wjct.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Dr. Joe Sirven, host, will address listeners’ health care — and health care system — questions with trustworthy answers JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Sep. 9, 2021 — WJCT Public Media today announced its newest original program and local production, “What’s Health Got to Do with It?” The program will …
Singer-songwriter, R&B super-producer and 12-time Grammy winner Babyface will headline the Jacksonville Jazz Festival on Sunday night, October 3. Born Kenneth Brian Edmonds, Babyface get his start as a multi-instrumentalist for prominent funk acts in the late ’70s and ’80s before making his mark as a songwriter and producer working with pop and R&B acts including Bobby Brown, Karyn White …
The voice of Phil Schaap was as distinctive as the trumpet of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk’s piano, or the sumptuous saxophone harmonies of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, but he didn’t didn’t make his mark as a musician. Instead, Schaap was one of the leading jazz scholars in America, and the genre’s foremost evangelist. He was a radio host, a record …
The folks that run the popular weekly open-mic showcase at Five Points bar and music venue Rain Dogs are looking for artists to feature at upcoming Songwriter Spotlight events. The showcase put out an all call via its Instagram account last week. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Songwriter Spotlight (@songwriter_spotlight) Every Wednesday night, Songwriter Spotlight offers …
The jam session has played a central role in the evolution of American music for over a century. As with so many other things, the jam session concept has its roots in Storyville, New Orleans, where jazz music began in the late 1800’s. In the era before records, before radio and before the modern touring infrastructure, the prominent musicians of …
When Víkingur Ólafsson was 8 years old, he threw a tantrum over Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As he tried to play the runs in the deceptive little Sonata facile in C major, the so-called “Easy Sonata,” he grew so frustrated that he literally scratched out the notes with a pencil. Since then, the 37-year-old Icelandic pianist has made peace with Mozart. …
It’s hard to believe the Doo Wop Revival recently celebrated ten years on the air at WJCT. It’s been a dream sharing seminal street-corner-harmony music with listeners in Jacksonville and those who stream the station around the world. From an early age I wanted to be a disc jockey. The music of the ‘50s consumed me. It all started when …
The month-long Sing Out Loud Festival kicks off in St. Johns County this week. With more than 100 performances scheduled in and around St. Augustine’s historic district, SOL is set to dominate the September calendars of JME Contributors. (You can read our staff picks for SOL here.) It’s a busy month of music. Here’s what the JME team will be …
Sailor Goon remains as inscrutable as she is enigmatic. Previous cuts like 2019’s “Milk & Bones” and “Just For Me” up-tuned the equalizers to the Duval psychediva’s signature approach to holograph soul; especially within the latter tune’s overall effect resembling 50 years of R&B micro-dosing and collapsing onto itself. This spring Sailor Goon (aka Kayla Le) regenerated her dreamscapes with …
While recording Donda, Kanye West paid $1 million per day to live in the belly of Mercedes Benz Stadium, in a stuffy room that resembled a jail cell. As with his last several records, his hulking new album arrived in fits and starts, like a lawnmower revving up for three weeks. Three stadium listening parties – two at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, …
Music just can’t catch a break in 2021. The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival has been cancelled. The impetus: flooding from Hurricane Ida, which made landfall near Louisiana on Monday, and has been dumping heavy rainfall as it charts its path toward the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. “While this weekend’s weather looks outstanding, currently Centeroo [the main festival area] is waterlogged …
The JME team has already reviewed a lot of great local music this year. And it’s only July. Just to catch our breath, we decided to dig through everything that’s come across our speakers or headphones during the first six months of 2021 and pick out our faves. Here are JME contributors’ picks for the best local and best not-local …
The Jacksonville building that once housed the Woodcrest Grocery store, which was immortalized in the Lynyrd Skynyrd song “The Ballad of Curtis Loew”, was demolished last week, according to the Florida Times-Union. The song, written by Skynyrd singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Allen Collins appeared on the band’s 1973 album Second Helping. Van Zant sings of collecting “soda bottles” …
Remember livestream festivals? Right. Not the same. The return of live music got going in earnest early this summer, when Lollapalooza welcomed 300K-plus (vaccinated) fans to Chicago. Popular online music publication Pitchfork brings its indie-heavy fest back to Chicago during the second week in September. Here in Northeast Florida, music fans have been chomping at the bit, reveling in the …
The Karnofsky Tailor Shop, a New Orleans jazz landmark that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places was destroyed when Hurricane Ida made landfall on Sunday, according to CNN. In the early 1900s, the Karnofsky Tailor Shop played an integral role in the history of jazz. The building and the family that occupied it, the Karnofskys, are said …
While rock music may not be the cultural-needle-mover it once was, the genre remains a relative unit shifter in an increasingly genre-agnostic music ecosystem. This week JME contributors have their eyes and ears on five shows featuring bands performing on trad-rock setups––guitar, bass and drums. But that’s about all these five shows have in common. Here’s what we’re masking up …
When the pandemic arrived, it hit artists like Jennifer Koh hard. A classical violinist whose repertoire runs from Bach and Beethoven to newly minted pieces, she returned to her New York home from a concert in March 2020, and within a day found all of her engagements postponed. “My first reaction was panic, because I lost all of my work,” …
The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music’s Tiny Desk (home) concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It’s the same spirit — stripped-down sets, an intimate setting — just a different space. By the time Quavo hits the second half of his opening verse on “Avalanche,” all three members …
A towering figure in reggae, the pioneering Jamaican musician and producer Lee “Scratch” Perry has died at 85. Early in his career, Perry famously worked with Bob Marley’s fledgling group, The Wailers, helping to turn the band from a buttoned-up rocksteady outfit into a spiritual and politically conscious force. He was an instrumental figure at Kingston’s famed Studio One, where …
John Coltrane‘s A Love Supreme, recorded near the close of 1964 and released early the following year, inhabits an exalted plane beyond the realm of most other albums, in any musical genre. Easily one of the most celebrated jazz recordings ever made, it radiates a deep, devotional gravitas — a palpably focused ardor that has long inspired actual worship, as …
