With the 13th Annual Essentially Ellington Competition and Festival in full swing, all eyes turn to the genius of Edward Kennedy Ellington and the high schoolers who celebrate his music with more skill, soul and sophistication than one can reasonably expect from folks not quite old enough to vote.
Get a peek into Essentially Ellington life with CHOPS: A Documentary.
When the Texas-born 23-year-old Charlie Christian joined the Benny Goodman Sextet in 1939 on electric guitar, he caused a sensation and launched a guitar revolution. He wasn’t the first guitarist to amplify his sound, but he was the first to turn the guitar into a solo instrument whose fleet, single-note lines were rhythmically and harmonically daring—and easily heard. “I don’t look at it as playing a guitar,” he said. “I try to make my guitar sound like I think a saxophone should.”
“Django,” guitarist Jean Reinhardt’s nickname, means “I awake” in Romany, and no one did more to awaken Old World musicians to the possibilities of developing their own version of America’s music. A Belgian-born gypsy virtuoso who had to teach himself to play all over again after a fire paralyzed two fingers on his left hand, he abandoned the Parisian dance-hall music after hearing recordings by Louis Armstrong and developed his own distinctive synthesis of gypsy music and jazz. The result was simultaneously tender, driving and impossible to resist.
Visit the Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame Online to listen, learn and discover more about these two seminal musicians and how they changed the course of jazz guitar in anticipation of Django Reinhardt & Charlie Christian: Celebration of the Jazz Guitar featuring three of the finest names in jazz guitar, Russell Malone, Bobby Broom and Biréli Lagréne. It’s going to be a pickin’ party of epic proportions!
Hall of Fame
Django Reinhardt & Charlie Christian: Celebration of the Jazz Guitar
Fri-Sat, May 2-3, 8pm
Rose Theater
TICKETS WHILE THEY LAST!
The gospel hit “Oh Happy Day” marked a seismic shift in the sound of the music, and the birth of a new tradition. Pianist and music director Eric Reed takes on tells us a little about the history of the song and the man—Mr. Edwin Hawkins, featured vocalist on Oh Happy Day, Fri-Sat, Apr 11-12, 7:30pm & 9:30pm in The Allen Room—who made it an instant classic.
1. Tell us about yourself, and how you came to gospel and jazz.
2. When did you first hear Edwin Hawkins and how did it impact your gospel conception?
3. Can you take us musically through the history of this song?
  |
|
 |
