Author Archive for: Norman

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.

´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.´

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.

´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