Saturday, February 8, 2020

A Publication For Jazz Lovers

One jazz publication I make it a point to get each month at the Mist Harlem entertainment venue on 116th Street is the New York City Jazz Record. It's a free tabloid-size magazine published on newsprint and contains CD reviews, musician interviews,a calendar of events, a birthday column commemorating day by day musicians (living and dead) born in that particular month, as well as a jazz-related crossword puzzle. The latter is so esoteric and daunting it requires a near encyclopedic knowledge of jazz and its history. For example, the June 2019 issue had the following clues: "'50s Canadian RCA Victor catalogue prefixes";"'70s jazz critic for CODA magazine"; "What Lester did in Britain"; "Gerry Mulligan nickname." If nothing else, it'll encourage me to bone up on jazz history. (Disc jockey Phil Schaap of Columbia University's radio station WKCR could probably complete the puzzle within thirty minutes or less.)

As a longtime jazz lover and CD and record collector, the New York City Jazz Record is an important part of my jazz education and I recommend it to anyone interested in jazz and its practitioners.

I look forward to reading it each month and hope it'll be around for a long time.


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