Roy DeCarava, Ambrose Akinmusire, Ramsey Lewis, Shipp On Monk: Elsewhere At NPR

by Patrick Jarenwattananon

1. The news of Roy DeCarava's death is old news in Internet years, but his photographs live on. NPR's The Picture Show blog put together a nice gallery of images; Fresh Air aired a 1996 interview; and a remembrance ran on Weekend Edition. Here's a man who this blog's readership may know primarily as a jazz photographer, and a black man who broke through in fine art. But his vision was much broader than shooting glossies of musicians. He shot his own, cherished community with the once-radical notion that it too could comprise the subject matter of art -- and that deserves to be remembered.

2. Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire was probably going to be discovered whether he had won the Thelonious Monk Competition in 2007 or not. But it certainly opened some doors for him -- including a quintet gig last year at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. JazzSet was there recording, and has highlights in last week's episode. There's a lot to like about the directness and focus of his tone -- when he doesn't admit all sorts of other interesting effects into it -- and it comes with a powerful imagination to match. Everyone in the band sounds equally hungry to find something unique to say -- sometimes all at once -- making for that rich flavor that emerges from the best modern post-bop.

3. Ramsey Lewis will forever be remembered here in Washington, D.C. for The In Crowd. That 1965 album was recorded live at a club called Bohemian Caverns -- it's still around and still booking jazz -- which happens to be less than two miles from NPR headquarters. So we're glad to see that Jazz24 brought Lewis into a studio for a solo performance and conversation. On the set list: a new song, a standard and a Beatles tune.

4. The WBUR-produced, NPR-acquired On Point doesn't live online at NPR.org, but it did book pianist Matthew Shipp and buzzed-about biographer Robin D.G. Kelley to talk about Thelonious Monk's legacy. Check it out here, with an accompanying blog post. I think Shipp puts it well in saying that "Monk offers an infinity of responses." And watch out for more on Kelley's new book in this space soon ...

2:30 PM ET | 11- 2-2009 | permalink

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