News and Notes

NPR has a nice web site set up with lots of photographs and archived concerts from this weekends Newport Jazz Festival.

One of the most diverse and intriguing lineups in recent memory comes to the annual jazz festival in Newport, R.I., celebrating its 55th year this August. NPR Music, with partners WBGO and WGBH, will present live coverage and recording archives of George Wein's CareFusion Jazz Festival 55.

NPR's A Blog Supreme also weighs in on the important conversation initiated by Terry Teachout about the audience for jazz:

But furthermore: has Teachout recently talked to or seen in concert any jazz musician under the age of 35? I'm fairly certain that jazz musicians, and especially young jazz musicians, don't exist in hermetic bubbles. They listen to the popular music of their peers and their generation, and often themselves make it for fun and/or for a living. And so they don't think jazz is anything intrinsically different than good rock, or hip-hop, or whatever it is. If there's one thing I can say about young jazz musicians, it's that their first favorite records were probably not jazz albums. Their musical outlooks probably reflect that.

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