Jazz at Lincoln Center’s virtual Rooted in The Blues Festival, featuring blues, jazz and gospel musicians, streams live from Dizzy’s Club through Thursday, January 28. Additionally, A Closer Listen online discussions offers an investigation of the form, feeling and function of the blues and its integral role in jazz.
Live From Dizzy’s Concerts:
Thursday, January 21, 2021 at 7:30 pm EST
Jerron Paxton transforms traditional jazz, blues, folk, and country into the here and now. His sound is influenced by the likes of Fats Waller and “Blind” Lemon Jefferson. According to The Wall Street Journal, Paxton is “virtually the only music-maker of his generation—playing guitar, banjo, piano and violin, among other implements—to fully assimilate the blues idiom of the 1920s and ‘30s.” Tonight, in addition to singing and playing banjo, guitar and piano, Paxton will entertain audiences with his humor and storytelling.
Thursday, January 28, 2021, at 7:30pm EST
Damien Sneed is a pianist, vocalist, organist, composer, conductor, arranger, producer, and arts educator whose work spans multiple genres. He has worked with jazz, classical, gospel, pop and R&B legends including the late Aretha Franklin, Jessye Norman, Wynton Marsalis, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Marvin Sapp, Richard Smallwood and J-Nai Bridges. The program explores the intersections between blues and gospel.
March 4, 11, and 18, 2021
With the recording of “Crazy Blues” by Mamie Smith, America entered a blues craze in the 1920s. In this decade an explosion of Blues recordings and the “Blues Queens”—singers like Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters or Mamie Smith—emerged. Their music is reviewed, ultimately settling on the Empress of the Blues: Bessie Smith.
More information and tickets to Jazz at Lincoln Center’s virtual Rooted in The Blues Festival events are available on jazz.org.
The Swing University course, Bessie Smith and Blues Queens of the 1920s, taught by Camille Thurman, will take place in March. Registration is open via jazz.org/swingu.
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