by Andrew Frisicano

As announced a few months ago, the four-night Undead Jazz Fest kicks off tonight (6/23) with music at Le Poisson Rouge, Sullivan Hall and Kenny's Castaways. The format is similar to that of the Winter Jazz fest (and the inaugural Undead fest last year): one ticket that covers entry to a handful of neighboring venues. This year, each night offers something a little different.

Thursday night the venues are in Greenwich Village and music include Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog, Dave King Trucking Company, Gerald Clayton and Alan Licht & Brian Chase. Friday night features a "round robin of improvised duets" at the Bell House. Scheduled participants for that are: "David Torn, Elliot Sharp, Jim Black, Erik Friedlander, Dean Bowman, Chris Lightcap, Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs!), David King (Bad Plus!), Darius Jones, Chris Speed, Jamie Saft, Chris Dingman, Eivind Opsvik, Charlie Burnham, Marco Cappelli and Kirk Knuffke."

Saturday the music will be in the Gowanus/Park Slope area (at Littlefield and unconventional spots Homage Skateboard Training Facility and Cross Fit) where you'll be able to see Elliott Sharp (playing Thelonious Monk), David S. Ware, the Darius Jones Trio and more, all on the same Degraw Street block.

Sunday, the music (a super-varied lineup that includes The Claudia Quintet, Peter Brotzmann's FULL BLAST, Bobby Previte Quartet, Erik Friedlander and UB313 with Sun Ra Arkestra's Marshall Allen) is in Williamsburg, split between four stages at three venues: Public Assembly, Cubana Social and the Cameo.

Tickets for all days are still available, including four-day and two-day tix.

There are copies of the Undead Jazz Fest Review floating around town that come with an excellent sampler CD, which you can stream below.

We should note that last week, the New York Times published news about an online petition asking for an increase in musician pay for the Undead and Winter Jazz Fests. Initially, it was unclear whether that situation would affect this year's festival (some of the signees are scheduled to perform), but the organizers of the petition have since clarified some points, mainly that they support this year's fest and that they didn't mean for the press to find out about what they thought was a private email, but that they're hoping to negotiate for a pay raise at future fests. Some more info on that is below, if you're interested...

Now that that's out of the way... the fest recently put together a trailer containing one second of music from each artist on the bill. That and the full schedule are below...

Continue reading "Undead Jazz Fest begins (full schedule, an event trailer & a small controversy included)"

To Whom it May Concern

A petition was put together recently in order to persuade Canadian super group Swan Lake into touring. Most of you have posted on your sites about their forthcoming second record, Enemy Mine, which is due out March 24th on Jagjaguwar. In regards to touring, Jagjaguwar posted that "Swan Lake does not currently have any tour plans but is easily swayed by gold doubloons and/or enthusiastic mobs". Upon reading this, we the fans have come together to prove to the band that they definitely need to tour to support their new record.

We are urging all of you to help us in our quest. If you would post a link to this petition along with any upcoming posts about Swan Lake, we'd greatly appreciate it. Once we hit our target goal of 1000 signatures, we'll send the petition to Swan Lake's booking agent at Billions who will present the petition to the band. After being overwhelmed by the shear number of signatures, we're sure the band will want to hit the road.

http://www.petitiononline.com/swanlake/petition.html

Thanks for all your help.

Maria Carullo
http://wolfparade.nonstuff.com