Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes

*Wynton Marsalis will discuss Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rock Chalk Suite project with Derek Kwan of the Lied Center on Thursday, January 7.

*Beau Bledsoe and Joe Dimino chatted about Alaturka’s new live album.

*Tweet of the Week: American Jazz Museum- We’re honored to be closing out 2020 with some joyful news. Kansas City cover band Holes In Socks hosted a livestream benefit for us last night and raised almost $650 for the museum! Thanks to @jackhancock1776& the band for giving us hope and inspiration for 2021

Album Review: Alaturka- In Concert with KU Jazz Ensemble I

Alaturka was one of one of Kansas City’s most auspicious bands during the quartet’s most active period in the first half of the previous decade.  Beau Bledsoe (guitar, oud and primary musicologist), Rich Wheeler (saxophone), Jeff Harshbarger (bass) and Brandon Draper (percussion) combined the classical music of Turkey with American jazz.

Augmentation from a big band seemed like an unnecessary and excessive proposal.  Yet a surprise release reveals that Alaturka’s 2013 collaboration with Dan Gailey’s KU Jazz Ensemble 1 at the Lawrence Arts Center resulted in an entirely tasteful concert.

Each member of Alaturka is in peak form and almost all of the textures the big band adds to selections like “Leyla” on In Concert with KU Jazz Ensemble I are appealing evocations of Gil Evans’ arrangements for Miles Davis’ 1960 album Sketches of Spain. While a bit of momentum is lost on “Dar Hejîrokê/Fig Tree,” the superlative document inspires hope for a resumption of activity in the Alaturka camp.