I can't give you gifts for the holidays, so I'll share some links. I've looked in the pile of links I've gathered over the past months and came up with a few for you.
- I'd love to get down to NYC for the 2011 Winter Jazz Fest, which happens in five West Village venues on January 7-8 (until 4am each night). Last year's sounded like a lot of fun and a chance to see some of the newest sounds in jazz in a way that only the Big Apple can present it. It is co-sponsored by Search & Restore, my main source to find out what's happening in the jazz scene in NYC when I'm in town (which is way to seldom an occurrence).
- Just pledged a few ducats to Jason Parker's Nick Drake Tribute CD project on Kickstarter, a great site for bands to raise money to record (or others to raise money to do many kinds of creative projects). I've always loved the beautiful songwriting of Drake and think that Kickstarter and sites like it are a path for musicians and other creative people to do their thing without having to work with the "industry"). Parker is a trumpet player who works out of the Seattle area. Kickstarter works like ArtistShare and Jason (who is on Twitter as @1workinmusician) needs to raise just $400 (now $380) before Christmas Eve, so check it out. Even a small "contribution" like mine yields a download of the tracks and access to the recording process.
- In case you haven't seen the Jazz Robots yet, here's the one that started it all (or at least it's the first one I saw): These jazz robots are so killing…. They're starting to proliferate (here's another two here and here). WARNING! There is some language, so those with more sensitive ears should not click on any of these links.
- Jazz musicians don't need to go to a room, they can go to the shed online at the Jazz Web Shed.
If you have a jazz link to share with the Rochester jazz community and beyond, send me an email by clicking on the Send an email to Jazz@Rochester link in the left panel. I'll post them in the next Riffing the Links.
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