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Wallace Baine on February 12, 2020
San Jose Jazz Winter Fest returns to downtown Feb. 14. This year, as always, the festival features a lineup of traditionalists and forward-thinking rule-benders. Here are just a few of this year’s acts. For more info on tickets and the performers, go to sanjosejazz.org.
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Mike Huguenor on December 4, 2019
From the 17th floor of the KQED building downtown, San Jose is an impressive sight. The city of more than a million sprawls, unfurling against mountain ranges to the east and south and against an equally sublime range of suburbs to the north.
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Bill Kopp on August 8, 2018
IT’S ONLY A slight overstatement to call trumpeter Herb Alpert the king of 1960s easy listening music. Alpert, of course, led the staggeringly successful Tijuana Brass; if you’ve ever been in a thrift shop, you’ve seen Whipped Cream and Other Delights, the record with that famously racy cover photo. Alpert is the…
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Gary Singh on August 8, 2018
Hanging with trumpeter Eddie Gale tends to unearth a different version of San Jose history than what you’ll hear from anyone else bouncing around the periphery of the San Jose Jazz Summer Fest. First of all, he is the only person alive in San Jose to have recorded with John Coltrane. He…
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André Jaquez on October 18, 2017
Walking a tightrope between chaos and cool, Chicago-based indie trio OHMME is like Kate Bush meets PJ Harvey. The avant-garde trio’s new eponymous EP drives femme rock into the 21st century. They play discordant harmonies and their voices compliment each other very well. Their songs range from serious themes like compassion to…
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Years ago, vibraphonist Jason Marsalis flew up to Seattle to play a studio session with Christian Fabian and Ed Littlefield. Months later, while on an Alaskan radio show, he learned from Littlefield’s answer to the host that they had recorded modernized versions of folk songs by the Tlingit Native American tribe.
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Traditionally speaking, mariachi as a musical form comes from a specific place. It is played on specific instruments, and its practitioners often limit performances to specific spaces within a specific region. However, while the New York-based Mariachi Flor de Toloache certainly respect the traditions of their art, they are far from a traditional…
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Nick Veronin, John Flynn, Mike Huguenor, Stacy Torres on August 25, 2016
In decades past, five big arts groups dominated the Silicon Valley culture scene, slurping up the majority of public support and private donations, while dozens of much smaller organizations fought over the table scraps. With annual budgets that in better times passed the $5 million mark, Ballet San Jose, San Jose Rep,…
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It’s buried deep in the heart of every boom-bap beat; it’s churning hot at the center of every rip-roaring rock & roll riff; and it’s slyly creeping in the smoky shadows of every soulful R&B jam. As we argued last week, jazz, and the music from which it sprang—the blues—are the purest…
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Mike Huguenor on March 30, 2016
Let’s get the word out of the way. Because in many ways, the word itself has become the problem. I’m talking of course about the J word. The big J. Jazz. Arturo Riera has been curating Latin jazz at SJ Jazz for over 10 years, but has only recently been given a formal…
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