Jonathan Batiste on The Definition of Jazz
What is Jazz? You can go out and ask 100 people, musicians or not, and you may very well get 100 different answers. It is a term that is divisive, but a music that is concentrated and complex. Jonathan Batiste recently wrote a piece for CNN about this very subject and it makes for an interesting read. He brings his experience as a musician, composer, educator, and most of all, thinker to a subject that has everyone from Nicholas Payton to the New York Times arguing about it.
Cameron Carpenter: Taking Classical Organ Out of the Church
Cameron Carpenter is a bit of an anomaly. As he puts it, “I play the classical organ, but I don’t play church music or even in the church at all.” With a deep relationship to the church as well as gospel music, Carpenter wants to reinvigorate what he sees as a dying instrument. Church dwellers tend to see the pipe organ as the “Jesus Christ” of the organs while the organ synth sits in the “Lucifer” position. This is a ideology Carpenter explains he wants nothing of. He feels a disconnect with the lumbering pipe organ because as a musician you can not typically own one, so there isn’t the same inert ownership of the instrument. “We we need to do is get behind the digital organ,” Carpenter exclaims.
