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☆ Nigerian artist Dotun Popoola’s stunning metal sculpture shows ‘the beauty of Black women all over the world’
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-06 | by ( Leah Collins | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

CNN —Celebrating the beauty of Blackness and protesting “environmental decadence” for a cleaner, waste-free future: that’s the vision of award-winning Nigerian metal sculptor and visual artist Dotun Popoola. Popoola’s most recent sculpture is a 12-foot-tall, 882-pound piece depicting the decorated head and neck of an African woman, inspired by his wife. “The work showcases the beauty of Black women all over the world,” Popoola said of the piece, which he began in 2022. “The amount of support shown by women all over the world made me shed tears of joy in my studio. If you keep doing what you do, one day you’ll be in the spotlight and the world will be watching.”

Persons: Dotun Popoola, ” Popoola, “, ” Dotun Popoola, ”, Adeola, Popoola, Naomi Campbell, I’d, Tera DuVernay, Ava DuVernay, “ Tera, “ I’ve, Wynton Marsalis, Bryan Stevenson, Irinkemi Asake, “ Mr, ” It’s, Popoola’s, I’m Organizations: CNN, Popoola Studios, Legacy Museum, Equal, Initiative, Obafemi Awolowo University, Art Locations: Nigeria, Lagos, Montgomery , Alabama, America, Alabama, Dubai, Qatar, India, Americas, South Dakota, Africa, Osun State, Southwest Nigeria

☆ A 20-Year-Old Transcriber Is Turning Sheet Music Into Hot Content
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-12 | by ( Tristan Geary | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

For some budding musicians (and even old pros), the very sight of sheet music can elicit a fight-or-flight response, bringing up painful memories of strict piano teachers and high-pressure recitals. George Collier, a 20-year-old music transcriber, is doing his part to change that. Another clip, titled “She Practiced 40 Hours a Day for This,” captures a virtuosic Mozart piano cadenza by Mitsuko Uchida. While Collier specializes in jazz, he also showcases performances from the classical world, as well as everyday people with impressive talents. A clip titled “When Your Family Is Musically Competent” features a version of “Happy Birthday” that turns into improvised gospel-laden riffing.

Persons: George Collier, Collier, Wynton Marsalis, Celine Dion, who’ve, what’s, ” Collier, ”, Frank Lacy, Art Blakey, Mitsuko Uchida, Joe Turner’s “ Organizations: Warwick University, YouTube, Art, London Locations: United Kingdom

☆ Winter Jazzfest Has Company: Unity Jazz Festival
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-15 | by ( Giovanni Russonello | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Back in 2005 — when the first NYC Winter Jazzfest was held at the Knitting Factory in Lower Manhattan, and Jazz at Lincoln Center’s multimillion-dollar facilities had recently opened on the Upper West Side — it was clear which represented the establishment, and which was proposing an alternative. Steered by its artistic director, the Pulitzer Prize-winning trumpeter and retro jazz philosopher Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center was cultivating an older and affluent audience, adjacent to the opera-going crowd. Marsalis’s bookings proudly held the line for what he considered jazz’s defining virtues. Winter Jazzfest was geared toward disruption. Brice Rosenbloom, Winter Jazzfest’s founder, positioned it as both an infusion of crucial life support and a challenge to some of jazz’s passively dominant trends.

Persons: Lincoln Center’s, it’s, Wynton Marsalis, Brice Rosenbloom, Winter Organizations: Knitting Factory, Jazz, Lincoln, Lincoln Center Locations: —, Lower Manhattan, New York City

☆ Analysis: Tony Bennett sang in a key that Jason Aldean’s song can’t reach
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-30 | by ( John Blake | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +13 min

White jazz artists were antiracists before the term was inventedMany of the tributes to Bennett mentioned his disdain for bigotry. Many White jazz artists were antiracists, long before the word was invented. Frank Sinatra, Bennett’s musical mentor, recorded with and relentlessly championed Black jazz artists like Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie. He hired a Black jazz bassist, Eugene Wright, and refused to play in segregated venues. There are countless photos of a beaming Bennett hanging out with Black jazz artists.

Persons: Tony Bennett, Ed Sullivan’s, Bennett, ”, Duke Ellington, “, ’ ” Bennett, there’s, Jason Aldean, Aldean, Dick Gregory, Coretta Scott King, Rick Diamond, Bennett —, ” Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Bennett’s, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Dave Brubeck, Eugene Wright, Benny Goodman, Jim Crow, Ellington, Louis Armstrong, don’t, It’s, that’s, Lionel Hampton, Goodman, Michael Ochs, Amy Winehouse, Winehouse, fidgety, “ We’ll, “ You’re, ” Winehouse, Lady Gaga, John Mayer, Elvis Costello, Bennett’s unflappability, Bennett wasn’t, Brubeck, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Bill Evans, Mark Allan, Greg Thomas, ” Thomas, Carrie Underwood, Faith Hill, Willie Nelson, Billy Ray Cyrus, Lil Nas, Wynton Marsalis, Bennett –, Anthony Dominick Benedetto, –, Thomas, John Blake Organizations: CNN, Toronto Star, MLK, Atlanta Civic Center, US Army, Carnegie Hall, Michael Ochs Archives, Jazz, Studios Locations: New York, Tennessee, America, Atlanta, Nazi, African, British, Turkey, Japan, London, Aldean, American, Europe, United States

☆ Vietnam Changed the Way This Jazz Man Heard the World
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Dwight Garner | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

EASILY SLIP INTO ANOTHER WORLD: A Life in Music, by Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes EdwardsIt’s rare to come across a new Vietnam War memoir from a major publisher in 2023. Henry Threadgill’s “Easily Slip Into Another World” is an unusual entrant in the genre. For one thing, this astringent book is only in part about his war experience. In fact, “Easily Slip Into Another World” is so good a music memoir, in the serious and obstinate manner of those by Miles Davis and Gil Scott-Heron, that it belongs on a high shelf alongside them. But this memoir rises toward, and then falls away from, Threadgill’s war experience.

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