Jazz brings musical forces from around the world together, then feeds them back through the language of music in unexpected ways.
Friday, April 30 is the culmination of worldwide celebrations of jazz, including an international jazz concert at 5pm ET on International Jazz Day. Watch the live concert for free on jazzday.com, YouTube or Facebook. It’s also just the day after Duke Ellington’s Birthday on April 29!
Also - at 9pm, a special concert broadcast on PBS, combining highlights from around the world from the past decade of celebrations.
We celebrate those sounds with music from all over the world, including some our our first international jazz artists - Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli.
Willis Conover and Duke Ellington, Howard Theater, 1940’s
Plus, we celebrate the spread of jazz on the radio - including internationally with hosts like Willis Conover of Voice of America.
After World War II and into the start of the Cold War, jazz was a remarkably important American export, and Willis Conover was one of the key voices, sharing music and introducing the music and the stars of jazz, world wide.
As an example of this - we share the last interview by Conover with Duke Ellington from the University of North Texas archives from September 1973, just as Duke was finishing his autobiography, “Music is My Mistress.”
We also go around the globe for jazz sounds - with South African composer and pianist Abdullah Ibrahim; Composer and vocalist from Brazil Ivan Lins with trumpeter Terrence Blanchard; Tommy Smith with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra; jazz organist from Japan, Akiko Tsurug; the multinational all-female supergroup, Artemis; plus, the September 1973 version of Herbie Hancock’s jazz hit, Watermelon Man. That was recorded the same month as Duke Ellington’s interview with Willis Convover.
Thursday night at 6, repeated Saturday at noon and Sunday at 5 on “THE SCENE” on WZUM - All on the radio on WZUM!