You may be familiar with Jason Crane through his stint as a on-air host on WGMC Jazz Radio 90.1, his Jason Crane Show weekly podcast about the arts and activism, his blog (which recently also went through a transformation), his activism and his Green Party run against longtime incumbent Lois Geiss’s seat on the Rochester City Council. What I didn’t know until recently was that Jason Crane has been writing reviews for the jazz webzine All About Jazz. I recently ran across Crane’s review of the 2006 Rochester International Jazz Festival, which I thought had a great approach—make a mixtape. As Jason writes in the review:
In fact, [the RIJF] had so much music that it created a bit of a problem for
this review. How do you fit 9 days, 600 artists and more than 100 shows
into 1,000 words? For the answer, we turn to the world of hip hop: You
make a mixtape. If you could get bootlegs of the performances
from the festival, the following tracks would be the standouts. So put
on the headphones of your mind and check out these new classics on your
very own Rochester Improv Mixtape.
Although the choices still must have been difficult, Crane lists 17 "tracks" of the standout performances of a broad range of performers at the 2006 RIJF. It’s a great way to present the diversity of the festival. I have no quarrel with any of his choices and heard almost all of them during the festival.
Now if I can get all of these on MusicMatch….
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