Blogs

Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) is Eno's second solo album, inspired by a series of postcards regarding a Chinese revolutionary opera of the same name.  Eno described his understanding of the title as referring to "the dichotomy between the archaic and the progressive...Half  Taking Tiger Mountain – that Middle Ages physical feel of storming a military position – and half (By Strategy) – that very, very 20th-century mental concept of a tactical interaction of systems."  Eno and artist Peter Schmidt developed instruction cards called Oblique Strategies to use throughout the creative process of the album.  The content of the lyrics seems to range from espionage to the Chinese Communist Revolution.  Forty plus years later, this album is still mindblowing. Listen in for yourself starting at 5p PT on KDRT.

Happy Birthday to Ella!

April 25 2017 is the 100th anniversary of Ella Fitzgerald’s birth. The First Lady of Song, as she was called, had a career that spanned five decades. Jazz After Dark will honor our favorite vocalist with a retrospective of her career.

Her first big hit was the nursery rhyme A Tisket, A Tasket. After fronting Chick Webb’s band, and then her own, she then gracefully moved through the bebop era as perhaps the best jazz scatting vocalist of all time. Her Songbook series, studio albums that were comprehensive and definitive presentations of the works of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Rodgers and Hart, Duke Ellington, and others, left a legacy that is unrivalled: an essential compilation of what has become known as the Great American Songbook.

Ella was in many ways a pop singer at a time when jazz was America’s pop music. She was always willing to add new numbers to her repertoire (“the now sound,” she would call it during her live concerts), so she did Jobim, and Bacharach, and even the Beatles. She could make any song swing.

Well, the good news is that Vinyl Vespers looks like it won't have a religious flavor -- and we all may be able to glean some beauty tips from what looks to be a god-awful boy band! The bad news is... hmm... don't think there actually is any bad news on the KDRT front... So tune in tonight, 7-9p PT, for another edition of Divine Intervention. 

Coming up on Jazz After Dark!

8 pm Tuesday

• Abbey Lincoln
• Count Basie
• Count Basie Big Band with Ella Fitzgerald
• Dizzy Gillespie & His Orchestra
• Pete Jolly
• Peggy Lee
• Buddy DeFranco Quintet
• Benny Goodman & Quartet
• Claude Bolling
• Claude Bolling
• Claude Bolling
• Benny Carter
• Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin & Paco de Lucía

This week on "That's Life" Lois Richter will be talking with The California Raptor Center staff, who will talk with us about hawks such as the one pictured here as well as other birds of prey recovering and living at their facility just south of Davis. The CRC is an educational and research organization dedicated to the rehabilitation of injured and orphaned birds of prey. Their museum and their permanent collection of living, nonreleasable raptors are open to public view on weekdays and Saturdays. CRC is affiliated with UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. You can check out their website here: http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/calraptor/. The group will also be at Picnic Day this weekend, April 22nd, and also have an Open House on May 5th, 2017.

No holiday for the wicked -- we'll be live as usual with another edition of Divine Intervention, starring the typical mix of rock, punk, pop, funk, junk...and, of course, Vinyl Vespers, our record-store bargain-bin feature -- if you can identify the image attached to this post, you can extrapolate to determine the artist (no, not a reasonable task). OK, enough of the heavily punctuated claptrap. Just tune in Monday, April 17, 7-9p PT for all the fun your ears can hold.

Coming up at 8 pm!

• Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Dianne Reeves
• Les Paul
• Art Tatum
• Coleman Hawkins
• King Cole Trio
• Lucy Ann Polk
• Duke Ellington/Johnny Hodges
• Frank Sinatra
• Sidney Bechet
• Wes Montgomery/Billy Taylor
• Count Basie
• Bill Evans Trio featuring Stan Getz
• Dianne Reeves
• Junior Mance
• Pat Metheny

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