by Patrick Jarenwattananon

Where we are joining the Ed Thigpen memorial Facebook group.

—Winter Jazz Fest + NEA Jazz Masters Roundup: You may have read my embarrassingly feel-good take on both events, but they've also mobilized the rest of the New York musical community too. So here are some of those pieces:

Winter Jazz Fest
—Ben Ratliff
—Tad Hendrickson
—Hank Shteamer
—Jacob Teichroew
—Jim Macnie
—Nate Chinen
—Ben Allison's personal reflections
—Alex W. Rodriguez, Part 1, Part 2
—Matthew Young, Part 1, Part 2

NEA Jazz Masters Ceremony
—Nate Chinen (New York Times, personal blog)
—Howard Mandel
—Willard Jenkins

—On The Upcoming Mose Allison Record: How do you get an 82-year-old Mose Allison to make a new album? If you're producer Joe Henry, you bug him for a year with phone calls and e-mails until he relents. So says a new All About Jazz story about The Way Of The World, coming out on Anti- in March. (Yes, the same Anti- Records which works with Tom Waits, The Swell Season, The Weakerthans, Dr. Dog ... and also once-dormant veterans like Bettye LaVette, Booker T and Os Mutantes.) If Joe Henry's tactful work on Allen Toussaint's The Bright Mississippi is any indication, this could be worth paying attention to.

—The Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute: Columbia University's Center for Jazz Studies, with the American Composers Orchestra, has announced a new professional development program specifically for jazz composers. The Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute will select up to 35 composers to work with a chamber ensemble and folks like Jane Ira Bloom, Anthony Davis, Fabien Levy and George Lewis. More info in a JazzTimes article. One should be glad that folks who are interested can more easily realize their compositional visions; one should also ask, eventually, what the proliferation of summer clinics means for the future of this field.

—A Little Advice: At Jazz Backstory, Monk Rowe occasionally shares moments from his adventures in managing the Jazz Archives at Hamilton College. Here, he shares advice for aspiring musicians from Phil Woods, Dianne Reeves, Warren Vache, and more.