The Denton Arts and Jazz Festival started last Friday and runs through today, Sunday, April 27th. The annual festival is expected to draw over 200,000 music fans to Quakertown Park in Denton, Texas, this year.
You don’t want to miss a single performance from the award-winning jazz ensembles from the University of North Texas, like the Two or Three O’Clock Lab Band. There’s plenty of young talent from the middle schools as well.
The Neville Brothers played Friday night, and Delbert McClinton on Saturday, and Brave Combo performs on the Jazz Stage at 7:00 pm Sunday night. Check the website for details.
Official Website www.dentonjazzfest.com
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Ella Fitzgerald (April 25, 1918 – June 15, 1996) from Newport News, Virginia, was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for more than half a century. In her lifetime, she won 13 Grammy awards and sold over 40 million albums.
Her three octave vocal range was widely celebrated, and is well known for developing a “scat” style of singing. She was also known as the “First Lady of Song” and is considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th Century.
Sources:
The Library of Congress - Today in History
memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html
Official Website of Ella Fitzgerald ellafitzgerald.com

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The album Floratone is a very cool atmospheric album that resulted from a rare free-form jam between guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Matt Chamberlain. Producers Tucker Martine and Lee Townsend took the raw tracks and applied their creative license to create an album of spacey instrumental grooves. Floratone’s 11 tracks also feature bassist Viktor Krauss, cornetist Ron Miles and violin/viola player Eyvind Kang.
The album is very interesting because it was built layer by layer, first from the basic jams between Frisell and Chamberlain; then the producers Martine and Townsend added loops and rearranged bits and pieces; bass, horns and strings were multi-tracked by Krauss, Miles and Kang; and finally Bill Frisell and Matt Chamberlain dubbed in another layer of guitars, drums and percussion. I’m not a big jazz fan, but this album offers so many various sounds, that it really takes the listener on a voyage far and away from the commonplace.
Bill Frisell on electric & acoustic guitars, loops
Matt Chamberlain on drums, percussion, loops
Viktor Krauss on bass
Ron Miles on cornet
Eyvind Kang on violin & viola
Produced by Tucker Martine & Lee Townsend
The Floratone sound is, in the words of Townsend, “futuristic roots music,” at turns jazz-vibed, swamp-funky, …