For seven years, the Philippines International Jazz Festival has gathered some of the finest musicians on the planet for an annual fortnight celebrating soul, swing, and multi-cultural bridge-building. This year’s edition, February 15-29, features Acoustic Alchemy, Gretchen Parlato, and the Queen of Jazzipino (jazz + Filipino) Charmaine Clamor, as well as dozens of Filipino, Indonesian, and...
The easy default reactions of an American who encounters unspeakable poverty and squalor when visiting a country like the Philippines are pity, scorn, and outrage. How monstrous, it seems, to call places like these “developing countries” when the extent of their development is obvious: great bastions of wealth and property concentrated in the hands of...
Hope RekindledThis past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has…
Clarinetist Glenn Dickson, master of klezmer, has made a solo recording, “Wider Than the Sky,” that’s been on perpetual repeat at our home office. Using over-dubs and electronic digital effects, Dickson fills the aural soundscape with a rich melange of chordal textures supporting the melody. His celebrated virtuosity is subsumed here to long, elegiac musical...
