Jazz

The Tulsa Symphony Orchestra will soon kick off its new season with an Opening Night Gala Concert at the Tulsa PAC. (It happens tomorrow night, Saturday the 6th, with more info posted here.) On the program, the lyrical and masterful cello concerto by Dvorák, which will feature a guest appearance by the world-renowned cellist, Lynn Harrell.

On this edition of ST, we learn about the first-annual Wine, Jazz & World Fete, which will happen soon in downtown Tulsa -- from Thursday the 4th through Saturday the 6th -- at both the Guthrie Green and Duet (i.e., Tulsa's brand-new jazz club). This festival, to be hosted by Public Radio Tulsa's Scott Gregory on both Friday and Saturday, will boast outstanding jazz and world-music artists, fine wines, delicious culinary offerings, performance art, kids' activities, and more.

(Note: This interview originally aired back in February.) The author and journalist Mark Whitaker is our guest on StudioTulsa. A former managing editor of CNN Worldwide, and a previous Washington bureau chief for NBC News, Whitaker has a new book out, which he tells us about.

On this edition of StudioTulsa, we speak with mezzo-soprano and vocal performance artist Alicia Hall-Moran, a versatile singer at home with opera, art, theatre, and jazz. Hall-Moran made her Broadway debut understudying as "Bess" in the revival of "The Gershwin's Porgy & Bess," but the main thrust of her work is in varied collaborations with a "who's who" of creative types -- from her husband, the celebrated jazz musician Jason Moran, to visual artists like Carrie Mae Weems and choreographers like Bill T. Jones. 

On this edition of StudioTulsa, we are pleased to chat with the world-renowned tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, who has performed or recorded over the years with everyone from George Harrison and Yo-Yo Ma to Van Morrison and Mickey Hart (to name but a few). On this coming Friday night, the 30th, the nonprofit South Asian Performing Arts Foundation will present a special concert featuring Mr. Hussain alongside Rakesh Chaurasia, an up-and-coming and well-respected flute virtuoso. The concert begins at 7:30pm in the John H. Williams Theatre at the Tulsa PAC.

On this edition of ST, we sit down with Todd Clouser and Chris Combs, two genre-busting guitarists and composers whose ever-creative music-making mixes jazz, rock, and funk styles -- as well as electronica, ambient grooves, and even tape-reversing experimentation. Clouser, originally from Minnesota and based in Mexico City, pretty much tours and performs worldwide -- and non-stop -- and has been occasionally playing shows in Tulsa for years now.

The author and journalist Mark Whitaker is our guest on StudioTulsa. A former managing editor of CNN Worldwide, and a previous Washington bureau chief for NBC News, Whitaker has a new book out, which he tells us about. It's an "expansive, prodigiously researched, and masterfully told history" (Kirkus Reviews) called "Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance." As was noted in an appreciation of this book in USA Today: "Pittsburgh was one of the country's citadels of black aspiration in music, sports, business, and culture.

On this edition of ST, we listen back to our conversation from September with Jared Johnson, who's a fine drummer on the Tulsa-area music circuit as well as a drumset instructor at Northeastern State University. Jared gigs widely on the local scene, playing in all sorts of bands and musical settings, and mainly works as a jazz drummer.

On this edition of StudioTulsa, we're talking about a large and impressive exhibit on view at Crystal Bridges Museum over in Bentonville, Arkansas, through January 1st. This far-reaching show -- entitled "Stuart Davis: In Full Swing," and offering, per The New York Times, "a universe of jazzy patterns and blazing colors" -- profiles the long career of an influential American artist who consistently and creatively made images from the early 1900s through the early 1960s.

Our guest on this edition of ST is the well-regarded jazz trumpeter and vocalist Byron Stripling. He'll be appearing tonight and tomorrow night (the 8th and 9th) with the Signature Symphony at Tulsa Community College in a special "pops" concert created by Stripling himself. The show is called "The Roaring '20s and All That Jazz," and it will feature the music of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and other American music masters (and will be staged at the TCC Van Trease PACE).

On this episode of ST, we welcome Jared Johnson to the show. He's an active drummer on the Tulsa-area music scene as well as a drumset instructor at Northeastern State University. Jared gigs widely on the local scene, playing in all sorts of bands and musical settings, and mainly works as a jazz drummer.

On this edition of StudioTulsa, an interesting discussion with the diversely talented Tulsa-based composer, performer, conductor, and music educator Noam Faingold. He serves as director of the Barthelmes Conservatory, teaches in the Department of Music at TU, is on the board at Chamber Music Tulsa, and is also the curator for the OK Electric Music Festival, which will happen this weekend (April 8th and 9th) at Living Arts of Tulsa (at 307 East Brady in downtown Tulsa).

On this edition of ST, we speak with the highly regarded theatrical director David Schweizer, who's currently in town to direct Tulsa Opera's staging of Andre Previn's "A Streetcar Named Desire" (happening on Friday the 4th and Sunday the 6th).

On this edition of StudioTulsa, we chat with the saxophonist, composer, and music educator Clark Gibson, who took the helm as Director of Jazz Studies at NSU in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, last fall. Gibson relocated to our community from Illinois, and his new CD, just out, is a terrific recording that grew out of the work he did while completing his doctorate at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. That disc is "Bird with Strings: The Lost Arrangements," and it's on the Chicago-based Blujazz label.

On this edition of ST, we speak by phone with writer James Kaplan, whose essays and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and elsewhere. The first volume of Kaplan's definitive biography of Frank Sinatra, "Frank: The Voice," appeared in 2010. Now comes the second half of that life, the widely acclaimed "Sinatra: The Chairman," which the author discusses with us today. As per Publishers Weekly: "The great singer-actor contains multitudes in this vast, engrossing biography of Frank Sinatra's mature years....

The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet will perform this coming Monday evening (the 9th) in a concert featuring Spanish Renaissance music, Manuel De Falla's "El Amor Brujo," and a range of eclectic works ranging from English composer John Dowland to Chet Atkins and Dweezil Zappa. On this edition of StudioTulsa, we speak with one of this Grammy Award-winning ensemble's members, former Tulsan Matthew Greif.

On this edition of StudioTulsa, we are discussing a marvelous photography exhibit that goes on display tomorrow at the Gilcrease Museum here in Tulsa; "On 52nd Street: The Jazz Photography of William P. Gottlieb" will run from July 25th through October 11th. Our guest is Dr. Frank Goodyear, co-director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Maine, who's also the curator of this show.

On this penultimate day of Black History Month, we're talking about the life and work of one of our greatest African American writers, Langston Hughes (1902-1967), the prolific and influential poet, activist, novelist, memoirist, playwright, and newspaper columnist. Our guest on ST is David Roessel, one of the editors of the recently published "Selected Letters of Langston Hughes" (Knopf).

On this edition of ST, we welcome Jeffrey Zeigler, the gifted cello player and composer who's best known for his eight-year tenure with the internationally known Kronos Quartet. Since leaving that collective about two years ago, Zeigler has embarked on an interesting (and decidedly multi-genre) solo career that's found him collaborating with a host of fascinating musicians -- such as singer/songwriter Norah Jones, avant-jazz guru John Zorn, pianist Vijay Iyer, composer Philip Glass, Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche, and so forth.

The Signature Symphony at Tulsa Community College continues its search for a new artistic director and conductor, and the field has narrowed to three young finalists, each of whom is a promising talent amid the next generation of American conductors. As the Symphony begins its new season of concerts, each of these finalists will be given the chance to wave the baton, as it were, during an actual concert.

On this edition of ST, we're pleased to speak by phone with the terrific jazz singer Rebecca Kilgore, who'll be performing here in Tulsa tomorrow night (Saturday the 29th) in the Emerson Hall at All Souls Unitarian Church. The concert starts at 7pm; tickets (for $20 each) will be sold at the door.

On this edition of our show, we speak by phone with the pianist, composer, and bandleader Amina Figarova, who was born in Azerbaijan in 1966 and is now based in New York City. She began to study music as a child, eventually attending the Baku Conservatory, and became a classical concert pianist while still a young girl. Later she was drawn to jazz at the Rotterdam Conservatory --- and later still at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston.

On this edition of StudioTulsa, Rich Fisher speaks with local saxophonist and composer Denny Morouse. The Pittsburgh native was a fixture in New York City music circles from the 1970s through the 1990s, working with pop superstars like Stevie Wonder, with various studio/commercial outfits, and with jazz legends like the drummer Art Blakey and the organist Larry Young. Morouse moved to Tulsa a few years ago, during the terminal illness of a close family member, and he's been based here since.

On this edition of ST, we present an equal-parts tuneful and thoughtful conversation with Noam Pikelny, the Grammy-nominated banjoist who's probably best known as a founding member of the progressive bluegrass group known as the Punch Brothers. Pikelny will be performing at the OK Mozart Festival in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, tonight, Monday the 10th; he'll take the stage --- for a concert entitled "An Evening of Bluegrass" --- alongside Bryan Sutton, Ronnie McCoury, Luke Bulla, and Barry Bales.

On today's ST, we're spinning a seriously tasty variety --- a gumbo, in fact --- of great Mardi Gras music with Denis McGilvray, a local music blogger and longtime New Orleans music enthusiast.

On this edition of our program, we're joined by Timothy Myers, an up-and-coming American classical-music conductor with an impressive resume and a thoughtful, articulate appreciation for music of all sorts. Myers will be the guest conductor for the next concert in the Tulsa Symphony's current --- and color-themed --- season of performances. "Red," a concert of music notable for its energy, heat, passion, and jazzy intensity, gets underway tomorrow night, Saturday the 9th, at 7:30pm at the Tulsa PAC. On the program will be works by Michael Daugherty, Mark O'Connor, and Charles Ives.

On this edition of StudioTulsa, we remember the great jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck, who died yesterday at 91. (He would have turned 92 today, the 6th.) Rich Fisher spoke with Brubeck back in the fall of 1996, prior to a Tulsa concert appearance. Brubeck's quartet with saxophonist Paul Desmond and drummer Joe Morello was among the most popular bands (of any sort) of the 1950s and '60s, and even today, their 1959 album, "Time Out," remains one of the most popular jazz recordings of all time.

We are pleased to welcome to StudioTulsa the inimitable Rebecca Ungerman, the great Tulsa-based jazz and cabaret singer and performer who's been a beloved diva / chanteuse / force of nature on our local music scene for the past twenty years or so. Ungerman is taking her newest show --- an original musical, called "The Unwitting Wife," which includes new as well as older songs (some of which date back to her first recordings or earliest efforts at songwriting) --- to Israel, of all places, for a series of performances.

On this edition of ST, we chat with our friend and colleague, John Wooley, who's been hosting his popular "Swing on This" western swing program on Public Radio Tulsa KWGS 89.5-1 for the past nine years or so. This show is heard every Saturday night at 7pm, and this coming Saturday, the 13th, John host a special, two-hour broadcast of his program, LIVE from the historic Cain's Ballroom in downtown Tulsa.

On this installment of StudioTulsa, we welcome back Scott Perkins, a curator at the Price Tower Arts Center in Bartlesville, who tells us about a fine exhibit currently on view at the Price Tower called "From Process to Print: Graphic Works by Romare Bearden." Bearden (1911-1988) is widely regarded as one of the most important African-American artists this country has produced; he made art works in a range of media and was also a gifted writer, a cherished mentor to younger generations of artists, a tireless arts advocate, and a prominent intellectual and collaborator within the artistic/cu