Billy Taylor, Jazz Pianist, Dies at 89
from The New York Times:
Billy Taylor, a pianist and composer who was also an eloquent spokesman and advocate for jazz as well as a familiar presence for many years on television and radio, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 89 and lived in the Riverdale area of the Bronx.
The cause was heart failure, said his daughter, Kim Taylor-Thompson.
Dr. Taylor, as he preferred to be called (he earned a doctorate in music education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1975), was a living refutation of the stereotype of jazz musicians as unschooled, unsophisticated and inarticulate, an image that was prevalent when he began his career in the 1940s, and that he did as much as any other musician to erase.
Dr. Taylor probably had a higher profile on television than any other jazz musician of his generation. He had a long stint as a cultural correspondent on the CBS News program “Sunday Morning” and was the musical director of David Frost’s syndicated nighttime talk show from 1969 to 1972.
Continue reading at The New York Times.
KWJZ 98.9fm, Seattle’s smooth jazz station for the past 17 years, abruptly changed format yesterday becoming Click 98.9, another station that plays Adult-Contemporary/Classic Alternative music (think Coldplay and Red Hot Chili Peppers).
The holiday concert of “Sacred Music by Duke Ellington,” will be presented at 7:30pm on Sunday, December 26th, 2010 at Town Hall Seattle (1119 Eighth Avenue, Seattle). This very special event, now celebrating its 22nd anniversary, features the all-star Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra with guest vocalists Everett Greene and Nichol Venee Eskridge, the 30-voice Northwest Chamber Chorus, and tap dancer Alex Dugdale.
Tuesday, December 28
Trumpeter Thomas Marriott keeps growing as an artist. He has released CDs at a healthy pace since 2005: an introduction for many perhaps unwary jazz fans to some warped country western flavor on Crazy: The Music of Willie Nelson (Origin Records, 2008); cranking an all-star quintet up in a modern mainstream mode on Flexicon (Origin Records, 2009); and letting it rip on a two-trumpet blow fest with fellow brass man Ray Vega on East-West Trumpet Summit (Origin Records, 2010). Constraints and Liberations ups his output to two releases in 2010.