Blog Posts by Subject: Jazz

Beginning in late September 2008, The Performing Arts Library (LPA) hosted two Duke Jazz Series concerts with Dafnis Prieto Sextet and Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto. The members of those groups were wonderful individuals with extraordinary talent. Every musician expressed their love for the music; we witnessed that excitement and burst of energy when they performed. My favorite musician was Jeff Busch from Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto who is the percussionist for that group. The piece that he stood out the most was “Feira Livre,” 

The Duke Project team -- consisting of Sarah Ziebell (middle), Flordalisa "Lisa" Lopez (right), and myself (left) -- are gearing up for the second concert in the Duke Jazz Series.

For those of you who missed September's show, the wonderfully talented Dafnis Prieto Sextet were featured, filling the Bruno Auditorium with Cuban-infused jazz. We had an excellent turn out for the event -- despite having to compete with presidential debates and pouring rain -- and hope to match the turn out next week with the sounds of Brazilian 

Through the exceptional generosity of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Library for the Performing Arts’ Music and Dance Divisions and the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive have been awarded two years of funding to present, document, and preserve jazz, contemporary dance, and theater performances and related oral histories. Those of us on the Doris Duke 

In the exhibition, “A Rakish History of Men’s Wear,” I tackled the issue of music as a key factor in the development of street fashion. Twentieth century casual sportswear took many cues from hip hop. If you walk the short round through “Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve,” you’ll find you don’t want to escape from the twelve-minute tape loop of music in the gallery.

Therein lies a genuine clue. The toe-tapping quality of 1920s syncopation filtered right into the realm of fashion. Jazz