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ALBUM APPRECIATION

Streaming technology has made it possible to narrow that gap between the recording and the release of an album.´
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TAPESTRY – a stitch in (fifty years of) time

´One of the best albums, ever, by one of the best songwriters, ever. Period.´
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CATCH A FALLING (MICHELIN) STAR

The world being such a global village these days means that hard work and qualifications are now a passport to international travel and success.
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JOINED UP FOR JAZZ PART 10, conclusion of inaugural S & D Joined Up Jazz Festival presented in association with Hot Biscuits

No doubt the four of us, the newly dubbed Joined Up Jazz Journalists, will find new music, emerging artists and yet unidentified audiences, even as we protect the legacy of music we have each loved throughout our lives.
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COLOURS OF JAZZ IN SPRING penultimate part (9) of the inaugural S&D Joined Up Jazz Festival presented in association with Hot Biscuits

after Pablo and Humberto, had responded to a loud and lengthy standing ovation by returning to play solo pieces that finally fused into a wonderful closing riff, we took the opportunity to revert to our investigative journalistic ways and have a chat with the players.
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part 8 of our inaugural S &D Joined Up Jazz Festival presented in association with Hot Biscuits. SWING TIME IN EUROPE by Steve Bewick

´Every artist, everyone who considers himself an artist, has the right to create freely according to his ideal, independently of everything. However, we are Communists and we must not stand with folded hands and let chaos develop as it pleases. We must systemically guide this process and form its result.´
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Part 7 of inaugural annual S & D Joined Up Jazz Festival in association with Hot Biscuits, ELLA FITZGERALD: First Lady Of Song by Norman Warwick

Throughout her career, Ella would master scat singing, turning it into a form of art.
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ISRAEL: a New Orleans jazz experience? part 6 of the inaugural annual S & D Joined Up Jazz Festival in association with Hot Biscuits

Increasingly, for the last decade and a half or so, jazz artists from Israel have culled items from the Great Israeli Songbook, feeding off Israeli folk and pop as well as from more traditional and even liturgical songs.
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JAZZ SCENE SEEN: part 5 of inaugural S & D Joined Up Jazz Festival presented by Sidetracks & Detours in association with Hot Biscuits

The 21 Club is the sole surviving club on 52nd Street that also existed during the 1940’s. The venue for the original Birdland at 1674 Broadway (between 52nd & 53rd), which came into existence in 1949, is now a “gentlemen’s club.” The current Birdland is on 44th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues´.
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BILLIE HOLIDAY: A POET´S MUSE part 4 of the inaugural S & D Joined Up Jazz Festival in association with Hot Biscuits

´With few exceptions, every major pop singer in the US during her generation has been touched in some way by her genius. It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me. Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years.´ FRANK SINATRA