James Carter – Present Tense [Nu Jazz]

Tags

African American, Classic Jazz, Jazz, Saxophone

James Carter, "Present Tense"

James Carter is back in town. One of the most admired saxophonists of his generation makes his Emarcy debut with Present Tense, an album of uncompromising, swinging jazz. While it’s music that has its roots in the jazz tradition, it’s also forward looking, “How else could it be, with players like Victor Lewis on drums, D. D. Jackson on piano and Dwight Adams on trumpet?” asks Carter. The all-star cast, which also has James Genus on bass, includes guest appearances by Rodney Jones on guitar and Eli Fountain on percussion. The album is produced by Michael Cuscuna, who sensed a challenge to capture the sheer range of Carter’s enormous talent and his mastery of jazz idiom, which he felt had not really been adequately represented on earlier albums. “On going through James’s entire output prior to recording Present Tense it struck me that many of his albums were ingenious concepts,” he reflected. – Amazon.com

Actor and comedian Bernie Mac dies at age 50

Tags

African American, Bernie Mac, Comedian

CHICAGO – Bernie Mac, the actor and comedian who teamed up in the casino heist caper “Ocean’s Eleven”

Bernie Mac

and gained a prestigious Peabody Award for his sitcom “The Bernie Mac Show,” died Saturday at age 50.

“Actor/comedian Bernie Mac passed away this morning from complications due to pneumonia in a Chicago area hospital,” his publicist, Danica Smith, said in a statement from Los Angeles.

She said no other details were available and asked that his family’s privacy be respected.

The comedian suffered from sarcoidosis, an inflammatory lung disease that produces tiny lumps of cells in the body’s organs, but had said the condition went into remission in 2005. He recently was hospitalized and treated for pneumonia, which his publicist said was not related to the disease. – Yahoo.com

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