Legends of Jazz series on PBS

[Lois Gilbert]

Multi-award-winning guitar maestros Pat Metheny and Jim Hall join GRAMMY Award-winning composer/pianist Ramsey Lewis on the set of the national weekly series for public television, Legends Of Jazz, for the taping of the episode titled “The Great Guitars.” Hosted by Lewis, Legends Of Jazz is the first weekly series featuring live jazz performance and conversation to air on network television in over 40 years. Produced in multi-camera HDTV and Dolby Surround 5.1 audio, the full series of 13 half-hour episodes is set to air in April 2006, coinciding with National Jazz Appreciation Month.

Episode highlights include: “The Golden Horns” with Clark Terry, Roy Hargrove and Chris Botti; “The Jazz Singers” with Al Jarreau and Kurt Elling; “The Piano Masters” with Dave Brubeck and Dr. Billy Taylor; “The Great Guitars” with Hall and Metheny; “Contemporary Jazz” with George Duke, Lee Ritenour, and Marcus Miller; “The Altos” with Phil Woods and David Sanborn; and “Latin Jazz” with Eddie Palmieri and Dave Valentin.


Legends Of Jazz, created and produced by Larry Rosen, debuted nationally on June 16 with the hour-long special, “The Jazz Masters,” showcasing five legendary recipients of the prestigious NEA Jazz Masters Award -- Nancy Wilson, James Moody, Jon Hendricks, Paquito D'Rivera and George Wein -- as well as young jazz vocal sensation Renee Olstead.


A new “Jazz Masters” special will be taped in January 2006 during the IAJE Conference in New York City, and will feature 2006 NEA Jazz Masters Tony Bennett and Chick Corea.


For more information about Legends Of Jazz, visit http://www.legendsofjazz.net

[Mike Schwartz]

Sure, some of this will be OK, but damn, what conservative and predictable choices.

The Hall/Matheney is a proven combination and shows a inter-generational duo which I think is a positive, as does the trumpet show.

Hell, in the "Contemporary" only Miller is moving the music forward to any degree...the other two guys aren't actually very contemporary at all.

EST, or Bad Plus or Jason Moran, or Greg Osby, or Joe Locke/Geoffrey Keezer, or Stefon Harris and on and on and on would be "Contemporary."

Another huge disappointment [though not at all surprising] is the total absence of younger emerging talent. What lack of imagination here, programming wise, to not use the platform of the established musicians to introduce newer names.

PBS gears everything to the white haired crowd [I'm in my 50's so I'm just calling it as i see it] pandering to repeat broadcasts and fund raisers, and to selling CD's and DVD's to what they think is a very safe [for now] demographic.

How shocked will they be when they wake up the the fact that the Sesame Street generation, like my 30 year old daughter, has little or no use for PBS programming, and they missed the chance to give more than
mere lip service once again to the art of jazz, under the guise that they really care about it.

[hornplayer]

Episode highlights include: “The Golden Horns” with Clark Terry, Roy Hargrove and Chris Botti;

sousnds to me like Botti will be way out of his league......

[clinthopson]

The latest isssue of Downbeat features an article on the PBS series of "Legends of Jazz." From the line up, it looks like they are covering many facets. Unfortunately the shows will only have 24 minutes of program content and the performers rancge from greats like Benny Golson and Clarrk Terry to smoothies like Chris Botti.

Donna made the comment that whatever they have will probably not meet my standards. My response was that at least there's some kind of jazz on PBS.

40 years ago jazz was all over the place on tv.

I don't expect that future seasons, if there are any, will featutre Cecil or Ornette.

[Gentle Giant]

PBS used to air a lot of great jazz back in the day, especially in Boston. All before my time, but I learned about it while working at GBH (where, incidentally, Lee Tanner took a number of his famous photographs of jazz stars).

Sad to say, PBS's philosophy these days seems to be "if it doesn't pay, it doesn't play." I've been a PBS backer for many years, but with Wayne Dyer appearing around the clock, and a paucity of legitimate classical or opera (instead we get Andre Rieu and Andrea Bocelli) on air, it seems they've given up on fulfilling their to educate and inspire.

[frank m]

When tv first started out ( black and white---7 inch screen--big magnifiers in front) on cbs every week were to be found Eddie Condon and his mob.
My friends and I lined up in a row in front of the screen magnifier to see them, beer in hand. Later, in the early color era, Steve Allen or Dick Cavett had jazz guests on regularly. Siniatra, Ella, Kay Starr as guest stars on the many music shows.

Later the drought set in--tv- designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. We thought it was bad back then. Wow.

[Mike Schwartz]

Originally Posted by clinthopson

The latest isssue of Downbeat features an article on the PBS series of "Legends of Jazz." From the line up, it looks like they are covering many facets. Unfortunately the shows will only have 24 minutes of program content and the performers rancge from greats like Benny Golson and Clarrk Terry to smoothies like Chris Botti.

Donna made the comment that whatever they have will probably not meet my standards. My response was that at least there's some kind of jazz on PBS.

40 years ago jazz was all over the place on tv.

I don't expect that future seasons, if there are any, will featutre Cecil or Ornette.

PBS knows EXACTLY where the donation dollars are and program music accordingly, usually the music of the teenage years of the largest demographic groups, and quite frankly, a number of the current shows are complete garbage [imo].

At one time, no matter what style of music it might be, the quality had to be pretty high to get on the air. Today, it's largely about CD and DVD membership perks.

[Mike Schwartz]

Originally Posted by Gentle Giant

PBS used to air a lot of great jazz back in the day, especially in Boston. All before my time, but I learned about it while working at GBH (where, incidentally, Lee Tanner took a number of his famous photographs of jazz stars).

Sad to say, PBS's philosophy these days seems to be "if it doesn't pay, it doesn't play." I've been a PBS backer for many years, but with Wayne Dyer appearing around the clock, and a paucity of legitimate classical or opera (instead we get Andre Rieu and Andrea Bocelli) on air, it seems they've given up on fulfilling their to educate and inspire.

Amen! I just posted similar observations...

[hornplayer]

I guess most of you don't consider the music played on WBGO Jazz, but I do. and I would be lost without it. I realize the station doesn't always play everything I love, but it's FAR superior to any other station on the air! and truth to tell, if more avant fans listened to BGO and requested "their" music, they would play more of it. because as public radio, and relying on the subscription of listeners, they HAVE to listen to what we want..... most of us at this time don't prefer Out stuff. or not very out...

[Darryl G. Thomas]

Our old friend Chris Albertson used to host a regular show on PBS back in the early '70s (then PBS was just the educational channel). BET on Jazz used to run some of the shows. He had cats like Mingus and Bill Evans on.

[Doc Martin]

Originally Posted by hornplayer

I guess most of you don't consider the music played on WBGO Jazz, but I do. and I would be lost without it. I realize the station doesn't always play everything I love, but it's FAR superior to any other station on the air! and truth to tell, if more avant fans listened to BGO and requested "their" music, they would play more of it. because as public radio, and relying on the subscription of listeners, they HAVE to listen to what we want..... most of us at this time don't prefer Out stuff. or not very out...

Very nice post! I do consider, and financially support Jazz 88.

[clinthopson]

Count me amongst the WBGO fans and members. I've given up paying KKJZ.

My example of Cecil and Ornette was just to point out that I expect them to play it pretty safe.

[John P. Cooper]

I can pull in three PBS stations where I live.

Rule of thumb - the less politically correct and/or socially concious the station is, the more Jazz shows they run.

KVCR in San Bernardino runs Jazz programming that I never see on the bleeding heart KCET in LA or the almost as bloody K-whatever down in orange County, LA.

[John P. Cooper]

This Legends show is the one that has....ummmmm......what's her name....17 y/o singer....STILL STANDING.....Renee Olstead.

Yeah.
This discussion came up before.

[John P. Cooper]

Father Norman J. O'Connor aka "The Jazz Priest" had a live jazz show on either WNET or WCBS in NYC back in the 60s. I remember seeing Charles Lloyd on the show and was baffled.

[John P. Cooper]

If someone put togethar a program on gay jazz musicians, it would turn up on PBS immediately...if it has not already. I think I caught something about Billy Strayhorn on some gay-themed PBS Jazz show.

[bluenoter]

Originally Posted by clinthopson

From the line up, it looks like they are covering many facets.

Let's take a look!

http://www.legendsofjazz.net/television

Originally Posted by clinthopson

The latest issue of Downbeat features an article on the PBS series of "Legends of Jazz."

Legendsofjazz.net has arranged for us to take a look at that Downbeat article too:



Ready for Prime Time

03/15/2006

Ramsey Lewis Brings 'Legends of Jazz' to Living Rooms Across the Country (that too is a link to the .pdf)

View PDF

Reprinted Courtesy of Downbeat
© 2006 Downbeat

[kenny weir]

Moi, Kenny Weir, presents The Pearls every Sunday arvo from 1-3pm, Melbourne time, on PBS.

www.pbsfm.org.au

[lkaven]

Originally Posted by hornplayer

I guess most of you don't consider the music played on WBGO Jazz, but I do. and I would be lost without it. I realize the station doesn't always play everything I love, but it's FAR superior to any other station on the air! and truth to tell, if more avant fans listened to BGO and requested "their" music, they would play more of it. because as public radio, and relying on the subscription of listeners, they HAVE to listen to what we want..... most of us at this time don't prefer Out stuff. or not very out...

Do you ever listen to WKCR ten-or-so hours of jazz every day? That is some of the best jazz radio there has ever been. Their archives and their archivists are incredible.

WBGO caters exclusively to convervative tastes and doesn't play anything that is threatening to those tastes. There is a large such audience in NJ that is well organized and highly patronized. WBGO used to have a program dedicated to one or another of the major labels. Apparently a big donation from Verve or GRP got them dedicated programming to hype their music. But they don't play recordings by most of the NYC based indie labels. Many of us thought that this violated the spirit of its not-for-profit mission. If large corporations are buying access to the FM Educational Band (88.1-91.9 MHz) to feature their products, that to me violates the original charter for the Public Broadcasting Act, of 1967.

"it is in the public interest to encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities"
Subpart D — Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Sec. 396. [47 U.S.C. 396] Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Luke

[Brian Olewnick]

In the little station promo that airs before the McNeil News Hour (and, presumably, other shows) there's a silhouette of a shaven-headed black guy playing a pocket trumpet who looks amazingly like Don Cherry, though he appears to be packing a few more pounds than Cherry usually did. Caused me quite a few doubletakes. I assume whoever's responsible had some intentionality, which is kinda cool.

[Mike Schwartz]

Perhaps those among who catch, or have seen these shows can comment...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

April 4, 2006
TV Review | 'Legends of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis'
'Legends of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis' Lets Musicians Do the Talking
By BEN RATLIFF/NY Times
The publicity for "Legends of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis," a new 13-part series of half-hour shows on public television, boasts that it is the first regular network jazz series of its kind in more than 40 years. That means a perform-a-song and talk-to-the-host kind of show, as opposed to a Ken Burns-like exposition of history. It refers specifically to "Jazz Scene, U.S.A.," a program produced by Steve Allen and broadcast in 1962.

"Legends of Jazz" could have learned from the visual effectiveness of that show, or from good recent examples of studio-filmed jazz like the film "Calle 54." Instead, it wastes a great opportunity with a rictus grin: it is cheerily glib, aggressively middle-of-the-road, deferential toward the past yet purposefully vague enough to be nearly ahistorical, as if this were a quality to be desired.

The host is the pianist Ramsey Lewis, and the format remains the same in each episode: each guest plays a song, the guests play together, and then Mr. Lewis joins them on a version of the show's theme. Whatever spontaneity may have been in the filmed conversations has been largely excised: the interviews are twitchy with edits. His questions, along the lines of "What made you want to pick up the trumpet?," are doggedly polite, basic and weirdly resistant to subtlety and insight.

The guitar episode features Jim Hall with Pat Metheny, and it's probably the series at its best. The idea, generally, is to pair an older master with a younger figure. (Mr. Hall is 75, Mr. Metheny 51.) The mild-looking Mr. Hall is brave enough to utter actual thoughts: first he claims to harbor no nostalgia for the past, then he casually mentions that Ben Webster taught him how to breathe through the guitar like a saxophonist. And bang! comes the edit. (Jazz is so cerebral, you know. It scares people.) But both musicians' performances are worth watching. There's a sense of digging in, and Mr. Metheny brings his regular trio, with the bassist Christian McBride and the drummer Antonio Sanchez.

"The Golden Horns," the trumpet episode that opens the series, represents the show at its worst. The lineage here is Clark Terry, Roy Hargrove and Chris Botti. Clark Terry is one of the best improvising musicians alive; he comes from the generation that grew up in big bands, and he possesses all the secrets about sound and tone and rhythm in jazz, not to mention balancing art and commerce. Mr. Hargrove came along almost 50 years later, in the early 1990's, dealing with post-bop and funk and Cuban music; he has a commitment to maintaining working bands and encouraging younger players.

On the other hand, Mr. Botti, a former sideman for Paul Simon and Sting and a trumpet player of middling talent, has been successfully marketed as a romantic player of standards. This show has no business insinuating that a line of artistic accomplishment connects these three players. Yet without context, you very well might believe that it does: Mr. Botti's performance of "My Funny Valentine" is markedly better filmed than the others, with a darker set and blue lighting from the bottom up.

Mr. Lewis is better when dealing with practiced pluralists: the it's-all-good wing of jazz musicians, like Mr. Botti, the singer Jane Monheit and the keyboardist George Duke. Accordingly, smooth jazz — here it's called "contemporary jazz" — gets an episode of its own. If "Legends of Jazz" were a series about the reality of the jazz business, or about the range of things perceived and marketed as jazz, this would seem like a good idea. But this is apparently a show about the greatest living jazz musicians.

The series was produced by WTTW in Chicago and LRSmedia, a company including Mr. Lewis and Larry Rosen, who used to run the profitable pop-jazz label GRP Records. After GRP, for a few years in the mid-90's, Mr. Rosen ran a multimedia company called N2K. Nearly every time there's a questionable inclusion on the show, it's a former GRP or N2K artist: Mr. Botti, David Sanborn, Lee Ritenour, Ms. Monheit, Marcus Miller, Al Jarreau.

But parsing the show's conversations and second-guessing its list of performers may be the wrong approach. It does put a decent number of excellent musicians on national television. (Others include Eddie Palmieri, Dave Brubeck, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Benny Golson, Chris Potter and Marcus Strickland.) Still, that isn't enough. The ultimate test of jazz on television is whether the music comes across in a hostile medium — how well it suggests the excitement of performance.

What made "Jazz Scene U.S.A." so powerful definitely was not the musicians' short interactions with the host, Oscar Brown Jr. It was the direction and the lighting. You saw amazing camera angles, sustained long enough to allow concentration: a view from under Jimmy Smith's forearm, or from the polish on a snare drum, or an aerial shot showing a pianist's chord voicings. The cameramen got you inside the music and rendered the musicians' faces sympathetic and fascinating.

Here, the camerawork involves constant, thoughtless slow swirls around the musicians, a lot of dull full-figure head-on shots from 10 feet away, and ugly baths of mixed, colored lights. The walls of the set bring to mind a hotel lobby, busy with wood and textile patterns. The graphics — in an Art Deco typeface that suggests something like the Cotton Club in the 1920's — are corny and badly handled.

In all its mainstreaming and common-denominator sense, the show seems to want to deny that jazz is something people care deeply about. But jazz is deep. It is about sound and resonance and great passion. There is a reason people become nearly religious about it. You'd hardly know from watching this.

Legends of Jazz

With Ramsey Lewis

PBS, beginning this month; check local listings

Larry Rosen and Ramsey Lewis, creators and executive producers; Nicolette Ferri, producer; produced by LRSmedia and WTTW.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/04/ar...KNub2gwHTr9gFg

[Sergio Zamora]

Sounds boring.

[Jon Abbey]

hehe, "a younger figure".

[Rob C]

There was an article about this in the Sun-Times last weekend. The part that caught my eye:


Lewis, 70, is particular about mixing old and young players -- and not just on the new TV series. He's been known to nudge corporate music folks about opening more jazz venues where young people can perform. He's an occasional visitor to jazz lectures and master classes, showing the up-and-comers how it's done and encouraging them to hold to their course.

"There's a dilemma here," he said. "We're encouraging kids to go to school to learn jazz, and the country is full of fine, respected jazz programs at high schools and colleges. But when they have a degree, what do they do? Where can they play?"

So he's booked a few young players on the TV show. But their details escape even him. "We've got this young player on one of the episodes -- I forget his name. Last year, for the one-hour special, we had a teenager [Renee Olstead]. And we've got a young guitar player -- I forget his name, too. They're all worth hearing. No one knows who they are, but they will know after they do their thing on our show."


http://www.suntimes.com/output/music...ay-jazz02.html

[mke]

Originally Posted by Rob C

No one knows who they are

Not even him.

[Valerie]

Originally Posted by John P. Cooper

Father Norman J. O'Connor aka "The Jazz Priest" had a live jazz show on either WNET or WCBS in NYC back in the 60s. I remember seeing Charles Lloyd on the show and was baffled.

i haven't heard anyone mention father o'connor is eons and i just mentioned him to someone the other day!

[Rob C]

Originally Posted by mke

Not even him.

I think the lineup is: Whatsis Face, Thatone Guy, and [Renee Olstead].

[Valerie]

i, for just one, cannot believe that our local pbs station is not even carrying this show!! it's absolutely embarrassing!

[Sergio Zamora]

Originally Posted by Rob C

I think the lineup is: Whatsis Face, Thatone Guy, and [Renee Olstead].

'That one skinny kid with the glasses who talks like a girl'

[Steve Reynolds]

Miles to Hargrove to Botti



what a lineage!!



lordy lordy