Odds and Ends

While you're reading, here's the title song.

The SFJazz Center

Last Wednesday night was the grand opening of the SFJazz Center in San Francisco, a $64 million facility said to be the first stand-alone building specifically designed for jazz in the U. S. The opening concert, hosted by Bill Cosby, featured many notables, including Joe Lovano, McCoy Tyner, Joshua Redman, Chick Corea and Esperanza Spalding. The 700 seat auditorium was financed by SFJazz, a Bay area nonprofit organization.

 © Matthew Millman for The New York Times

Now would be a great time to be living in San Francisco. Check out this neat picture.

Jimmy Adler

The Pittsburgh East section of the Post-Gazette had an article this week about Pittsburgh bluesman Jimmy Adler. Jimmy and his band won the group competition of the Pittsburgh Blues Challenge, sponsored by the Blues Society of Western Pennsylvania. They will travel to Memphis to participate in the International Blues Challenge beginning Tuesday night. This is an extremely competitive event. You can't just be a cover artist. You must perform six original songs. Here they are doing one of those originals, “Midnight Rooster.” Good luck to Jimmy and the band.

Tina Turner

Tina Turner has come a long way. She has applied for citizenship in Switzerland, where she has been living since 1995 on the shore of Lake Zurich with her partner, record executive Erwin Bach. She is giving up her American passport.

This is a reminder of the fact that, during the latter half of the 20^th century, many jazz and blues artists emigrated to Europe. First of all, they found more work there. Europeans like our music better than we do. Secondly, black artists say they experience less discrimination in Europe than in this country.

It's also a good excuse to play this cool 1969 video.