If you haven't been to AccuJazz.com in a while, you'll notice a handful of recently-added channels now being offered for your listening pleasure. In the past month or so, we've added five channels to the already possibly overwhelming array of AccuJazz listening options. Read about each of them below, and then get to listening!
AACM
The AACM is the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and if you don't know what that is, there's an award-winning, 690-page book that can fill you in. If you don't have the time for that, however, let me give you the short version: in 1965 a group of experimentally-inclined, Chicago-based jazz musicians founded the organization to promote and present their distinctly un-commercial music to the Chicago and the world. Founders and early members included such avant-garde jazz legends as Muhal Richard Abrams, {{Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, Jack DeJohnette, Wadada Leo Smith and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago (pictured).
Over the decades, the influence of the AACM has grown far beyond what the founders likely imagined and dozens more musicians have been admitted as official members. Our channel is playing hundreds of tracks by AACM-affiliated musicians, ranging from classic Art Ensemble recordings to brand new music by AACM Vice Chairperson Mike Reed. If your ears are in need of a trip away from the ordinary, hop on this channel.
Montreal Jazz Festival 2011
MJF 2011 is the newest member of our festival channel category, and the one that probably should have been created first; MJF is the world's biggest jazz festival. It attracts millions (yup, you read that right) of fans every summer to see concerts by the biggest names in jazz as well as plenty of rock, pop and R&B acts. With so many artists performing at the fest, it wasn't hard for me to hand-pick a pretty great mix of music for the channel, from cutting-edge young musicians like Darcy James Argue to Gen-X stars like Brian Blade to all-time legends like Dave Brubeck.
Unfortunately, the fest already happened, so you're out of luck if the great mix on our channel triggers an impulse to hop on a plane to Montreal for this year's fest. But you'll be able to keep listening to the channel, which is almost as good... right?
World Fusion
Mixing jazz with music from around the world is nothing new, but in the last few decades, there has been an increasingly greater output of music that references different “world" music and jazz at the same time. Foreign elements in the music might be as small as adding an unusual ethnic instrument like an Oud to an otherwise conventional improv setting or as considerable as basing the whole piece on ancient Indian beat cycles.
I found a great deal of music in the AccuJazz collection that fit squarely into the “world fusion" category: not mainstream jazz, not jazz-rock fusion, but definitely jazz of some sort. You'll hear examples of this beautifully unique music by artists like Vijay Iyer, Fareed Haque, Miguel Zenon and many others.
AACM
The AACM is the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and if you don't know what that is, there's an award-winning, 690-page book that can fill you in. If you don't have the time for that, however, let me give you the short version: in 1965 a group of experimentally-inclined, Chicago-based jazz musicians founded the organization to promote and present their distinctly un-commercial music to the Chicago and the world. Founders and early members included such avant-garde jazz legends as Muhal Richard Abrams, {{Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, Jack DeJohnette, Wadada Leo Smith and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago (pictured).
Over the decades, the influence of the AACM has grown far beyond what the founders likely imagined and dozens more musicians have been admitted as official members. Our channel is playing hundreds of tracks by AACM-affiliated musicians, ranging from classic Art Ensemble recordings to brand new music by AACM Vice Chairperson Mike Reed. If your ears are in need of a trip away from the ordinary, hop on this channel.
Montreal Jazz Festival 2011
MJF 2011 is the newest member of our festival channel category, and the one that probably should have been created first; MJF is the world's biggest jazz festival. It attracts millions (yup, you read that right) of fans every summer to see concerts by the biggest names in jazz as well as plenty of rock, pop and R&B acts. With so many artists performing at the fest, it wasn't hard for me to hand-pick a pretty great mix of music for the channel, from cutting-edge young musicians like Darcy James Argue to Gen-X stars like Brian Blade to all-time legends like Dave Brubeck.
Unfortunately, the fest already happened, so you're out of luck if the great mix on our channel triggers an impulse to hop on a plane to Montreal for this year's fest. But you'll be able to keep listening to the channel, which is almost as good... right?
World Fusion
Mixing jazz with music from around the world is nothing new, but in the last few decades, there has been an increasingly greater output of music that references different “world" music and jazz at the same time. Foreign elements in the music might be as small as adding an unusual ethnic instrument like an Oud to an otherwise conventional improv setting or as considerable as basing the whole piece on ancient Indian beat cycles.
I found a great deal of music in the AccuJazz collection that fit squarely into the “world fusion" category: not mainstream jazz, not jazz-rock fusion, but definitely jazz of some sort. You'll hear examples of this beautifully unique music by artists like Vijay Iyer, Fareed Haque, Miguel Zenon and many others.
