Top 10 Favorite Billy Taylor Tracks

If the great pianist/composer/educator Dr. Billy Taylor had only one of those “angles” to lean on, he’d still be a “hall of fame” level force in jazz, and the sum of the three (and the fascinating ways they’re interwoven) make him an extraordinary figure in the music’s history, something that itself belies the delightfully positive energy that radiated through any space he entered. He championed jazz on network television, he was a committed educator and wrote a book on the history of jazz piano that hasn’t aged, and he generally worked to help the music reach wider audiences without diluting any of the substance. His determination to help jazz earn the respect it deserves is consistent with this being the guy who wrote “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” (perhaps best known via Nina Simone’s interpretation), just one of his many noteworthy compositions. And yet when I was first exposed to his music I literally didn’t know any of this, I just knew he was charming and played the bejeezus out of the piano.

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Some Music to Support on Bandcamp: March 2020

I threw together this list upon a) hearing of the announcement that Bandcamp (already the most musician-friendly online sales platform) would be waiving its fees for 24 hours on Friday 3/20 (so artists get 100% of the proceeds), and b) getting a request from a friend, independent of this announcement, looking to support some independent musicians in this time.

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Do You Realize?

“do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?” – Flaming Lips This weekend I heard the final mix of the now-released Trot Fox cover recording of “Do You Realize.” This coincided with my Uncle Tom’s 80th birthday celebration in Baltimore. All of this would sound both innocuous and tangential without some context. But…

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Joy Will Find a Way (and the Myth of Lukewarm Water)

I believe that joy will find a way in 2017. I really do. I also think there will be pain, some of it residual and bleeding into the New Year and some of it relating to new hurts that still lie before us. So much of the richness of life involves embracing the full scope of experience. Sometimes that means holding joy and suffering in tandem. This, of course, becomes harder to swallow as the suffering reaches the depths of despair, but in a sense that is when it becomes most important to remember. As much as Western binary thinking might challenge this, the existence of one does not negate the other.

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