NIKKEI VIEW: The Asian American Blog

It took the urging of Cirque du Soleil, the acrobatic dance performance group, to bring the music of the Beatles – the most iconic of 1960s baby boomer musical catalogs — into the 21st century.
The bulk of the project is a mashup, the digital-era, technology-enabled ability of taking two different kinds of data and “mashing” [...]

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The title of Amos Lee’s second album, “Supply and Demand,” might be a jab at the commercial realities of the music biz… or it might be an embrace of them. The Philly-born singer-songwriter found a folk-pop groove on his self-titled debut that hit the sweet spot and reached #2 on the Billboard “Heatseekers” chart and [...]

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It’s a somewhat goulish idea: take a recording of a late, great artist, and shore it up with new backing tracks. It’s been done before, with Natalie Cole’s “duet” with her father, and the remaining Beatles backing a newly-discovered John Lennon solo track. And if you wanna look at it from a contemporary perspective, digital [...]

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Jazz as a genre can span the range from big-band swing, melodic pop standards and mainstream funk-rock , to cool, bop, and way the hell out there.
Branford Marsalis is one musician who not only understands, but also appreciates, the big ol’ umbrella that the word represents. The oldest son in a jazz history-making family, the [...]

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