2013/14

Tomorrow, I leave for India for three weeks on an English department fellowship to audit classes at Jadavpur University in Kolkata. I'll be taking a January hiatus from AHS on that account, but I wanted to take a moment to send off 2013 properly with the obligatory end-of-year, greatest-hits-collection-type post. As I had hoped, I did posted fewer transcriptions this year but had more to say about books I was reading, shows I'd seen, and records I'd been checking out. 

I've picked out some of my favorite posts from the past year, in case you'd missed them, and also highlighted my Crimson Arts column from the spring plus some interviews I've done for Jazz Speaks, the blog of The Jazz Gallery. Have a sweet new year—I'll be back in just a few weeks.

A Horizontal Search

• Musings on Mo-Jazz (October 15th)
• Solo Saxophone (June 28th)
• Joshua Redman at Harvard (April 16th)
• Ben Ratliff's "Coltrane" (February 28th)
• Early Getz and Bebop (January 24th)

Flirting with Coherence (The Harvard Crimson)

I. A Brief History of Trolling in the Arts (and Elsewhere)

II. Musical Gluttony and How to Suppress It

III. Play It Like You Mean It: On Joyce and Coltrane

IV. Swing Meanings: Jazz Puns and Miscellanea 

V. 100 Years of Jazz Saxophone

Jazz Speaks (The Jazz Gallery)

• Interview with Ben Wendel
• Interview with Dan Tepfer
• Interview with Steve Lehman 
• Interview with Ben van Gelder

* * * * *

Ethan Iverson has posted a list of obituaries and remembrances for many great artists who passed in 2013. NPR Music also has a similar collection available for 2013 as a slideshow. And among the various jazz blogs on the Internet, Peter Hum at the Ottawa Citizen has a great list of his 2013 jazz favorites.