Blasts - 4/8 - RVANews

Less than a week till the needle drops…

If you’re planning on submitting something for round 2 of Drop the Needle (and why wouldn’t you be?), you have less than a week to get it in! The cut-off is 12am on June 11. That’s Thursday night at midnight.

If you’re interested in contributing but don’t think you have time to get a band together, record a solo piece. Improvise. Blow over a standard. Whatever it is, we’ll take it. Let’s give Bob Hallahan a proper send off before he leaves Richmond!

Any questions?

June 6, 2010 0

Modlin announces 2010-2011 season

Modlin Center for the Arts officially announced it yesterday. The full and varied schedule begins in September and ends in March 2011. Jazz-wise, we can look forward to the SFJazz Collective — the San Francisco-based super group whose organization recently announced its plans to construct a $60 million center (H/T A Blog Supreme) — and […]

June 2, 2010 0

Honoring Ellis

VCU is saluting esteemed jazz pianist and past VCU Jazz faculty Ellis Marsalis with an honorary doctorate at VCU’s Commencement this Saturday at 10 am. Marsalis worked at VCU from Fall of 1986 to Spring of 1989 as Commonwealth Professor and spent the last two years as Coordinator of Jazz Studies.

May 18, 2010 0

Big Bull, Rene Marie, Billy Taylor, and more this week

Remember back in March when Fight the Big Bull told us they would be playing three nights of live recording sessions at Balliceaux in celebration of their new album? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been waiting for these three days to get here for quite some time now. And it’s here! Monday, Tuesday, […]

May 9, 2010 3

Alan Parkertown Massacre

Tonight, there’ll be a rather interesting show at The Camel presented by Alan Parker: Trio of Justice and Brian Jones will be performing The Brian Jonestown Massacre tunes — as well as a few Brian Jones and ToJ originals. Regular ToJ drummer Devonne Harris will be playing vibraphone while Jones takes over the drums. Closing […]

May 4, 2010 0

Dave Douglas performs tonight

Judging by Dave Douglas’s rehearsal with VCU Jazz Orchestra I on Sunday evening, it should be a pretty great concert tonight. Most noticeable on Sunday was his hands-on approach with the group. He really cared about how the band was executing the tunes, more so than some past artists in residence. A couple tweeted observations […]

April 13, 2010 0

Rex Richardson recital tonight

On the heels of his awe-inspiring jazz recital in February, trumpeter and VCU Associate Professor Rex Richardson’s “classical” recital is tonight. When we spoke in February about his two upcoming recitals, he said about this one, …I’ll be focusing on the music of a great young composer and great friend, Jim Stephenson. Jim has agreed to […]

April 5, 2010 0

One week left for Drop the Needle submissions!

We’ve received some great submissions so far for our first round of Drop the Needle, and this is a friendly reminder that your time is running out to get those tracks into us! You have until 11:59:59 p.m. on Friday, April 9, to email the track to dean AT rvanews.com. Our judge, Daniel Clarke, will […]

April 2, 2010 0

Guitar summit (but everyone’s invited)

Looking into an audience of mostly musicians between tunes on a Monday night in December, guitarist Alan Parker quipped something to the effect of “Welcome to the RVA jazz musician’s summit.” It was a pretty accurate assessment: like that one, some shows just turn out to be musician hangs with nary a casual non-musician observer […]

March 29, 2010 0

Martucci to play with Redd, Konitz

Although he’s D.C.-based, drummer Tony Martucci plays a significant role for VCU Jazz as the Drum Set Professor. He plays in Richmond from time to time, but as you can see here, he plays some pretty serious gigs back home. Check out two of them that he has coming up in the next month. (1) […]

March 25, 2010 0

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