Shelly Berg's new CD Blackbird hit the streets on January 25th; LA area jazz got a tasty preview of the Concord release a week early at a special show by the Shelly Berg Trio at Catalina Bar & Grill. The show naturally drew heavily from the disc, which the pianist and USC professor plugged relentlessly (and amusingly) during the evening. Rounding out Berg's trio were the well-traveled bassist Chuck Berghofer and drummer Gregg Field. Blackbird takes its title from the Lennon McCa

The words "Education," "Association," and "Conference" seem unlikely to figure prominently in a sentence ending with the phrase "Fun and exciting," so I suppose it's a testament to the power of Jazz that I am able to write with conviction that, in addition to being very informative, the 32nd Annual Conference of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) was fun and exciting. As a resident of Long Beach, CA, the city which hosted the conference, it was tremendously gratifying to be

The Ornette Coleman Quartet's one-night engagement at Disney Hall was one of the most eagerly anticipated events here in Los Angeles in recent memory; tickets were all but impossible to find. L.A. doesn't get enough of Ornette Coleman. Most towns could probably lay a similar claim, given the fact that Ornette scatters only a handful of dates in American cities every year; but given the important role this city has played in his career, it still seems rather shocking that this was the legendary j

Marian McPartland closed out another successful run of shows at the Jazz Bakery on Halloween night with a delightful bag of tricks and treats. Her set was adventurous and wide-ranging, including luminous originals, warhorses from the great American songbook and a handful of compositions by several of the most distinctive composers in jazz history: Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans and even Ornette Coleman. Nearly as important was the graciousness, charm and wit with wh

It's hard to write about Santana without venturing into hyperbole. There's Carlos Santana himself, a singular guitarist equally adept at playing with tender lyricism and dealing in raw power; the rest of the band is hardly less accomplished with such long-term members as the versatile keyboardist Chester Thompson and potent drummer Dennis Chambers in tow. Though the line-up has shifted several times over the years, Santana is one of a very small handful of bands from the Woodstock Nation to not