Night Lights Classic Jazz

Play Night Lights For Me: Now Airing on KRML-Carmel, CA

David Brent Johnson — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:22:09 +0000

Night Lights comes to a jazz station with a legendary cinematic connection.

The Wayne Shorter Songbook

David Brent Johnson — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:55:19 +0000

Wayne Shorter, one of the great tenor saxophonists and composers of the modern jazz era, is an enigmatic and searching musician and personality. He was once labeled by jazz critic Larry Kart as "one of the most dangerous players to ever pick up a horn." This program features the music he wrote for Miles Davis, Art Blakey, and for his own dates as a leader in the 1960s.

Portraits of Harlem

David Brent Johnson — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:30:43 +0000

For decades Harlem was the capital of African-American culture in the United States, and it inspired all sorts of musical tributes, from celebratory and sensationalistic swing songs to extended concert works by James P. Johnson, Benny Carter and Duke Ellington. "Portraits of Ellington" includes rare broadcast excerpts of Johnson's "Harlem Symphony," Ellington's 1963 recording of his "Harlem" suite with the Paris Symphony Orchestra, an interview with jazz scholar John Howland, and much more.

Thelonious Monk: From Myth to Man (Part 2)

David Brent Johnson — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:46:11 +0000

In the late 1950s Thelonious Monk’s star finally began to rise, eventually culminating in a recording contract with Columbia Records and a 1964 Time Magazine cover story. But even as the pianist hit artistic and commercial peaks, other problems began to set in. Monk biographer Robin D.G. Kelley joins us this week for Part 2 of a look at the life and music of Thelonious Monk.

Thelonious Monk: From Man to Myth (Part 1)

David Brent Johnson — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:42:58 +0000

Thelonious Monk was an innovator deeply rooted in tradition, a stride-influenced pianist marketed as “the high priest of bebop,” a family man who became a bohemian icon, and one of the most significant composers of modern jazz. Biographer and jazz scholar Robin D.G. Kelley joins Night Lights for the first of a two-part look at Monk's life and music.

Suite History: Four Jazz Composers and the African-American Odyssey

David Brent Johnson — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:29:58 +0000

Duke Ellington, Oliver Nelson, John Carter, and Wynton Marsalis all undertook a weighty artistic task--to represent the historical journey of African-Americans in music. Historian Michael McGerr joins the program as we play music from all four composers' extended works and talk about their place in jazz history.

Dedicated: an Interview With Grammy Winner Kurt Elling

David Brent Johnson — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:36:02 +0000

Kurt Elling won his first Grammy Sunday night, for his John Coltrane tribute CD "Dedicated to You." Listen to music from the CD and an interview with the singer from a recent Afterglow program.

2010 Jazz Grammy Winners

David Brent Johnson — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:25:40 +0000

Chick Corea, Kurt Elling, and Dan Morgenstern are a few of the jazz winners from last night's ceremony.

Chicago Calling: Unsung Heroes of the City’s Hardbop Scene

David Brent Johnson — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:07:46 +0000

Chicago is a historic capital of early jazz and post-World War II blues, but in the 1950s and early 60s it also had a thriving hardbop scene. Musicians such as Ira Sullivan, Wilbur Ware and Von Freeman played with a bluesy, brawny edge, suffused with what Chicago native and jazz critic Larry Kart calls "an air of downhome experimentation."

Cafe Society: the Wrong Place for the Right People

David Brent Johnson — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:00:14 +0000

At the end of 1938 a former shoe salesman named Barney Josephson opened what would become one of the most legendary nightspots in jazz history. Cafe Society was New York City's first integrated nightclub, and it quickly became a gathering place for artists, intellectuals, leftwing political figures, jazz lovers, and--perhaps inevitably--the very Manhattan sophisticates it meant to mock with its satirical murals and ill-dressed doormen. It was also the place where Billie Holiday debuted her version of the harrowing anti-lynching anthem Strange Fruit, which Time Magazine would declare 60 years later "the Song of the Century."