By NATE CHINEN, New York Times

Sam Rivers, an inexhaustibly creative saxophonist, flutist, bandleader and composer who cut his own decisive path through the jazz world, spearheading the 1970s loft scene in New York and later establishing a rugged outpost in Florida, died on Monday in Orlando, Fla. He was 88.

The cause was pneumonia, his daughter Monique Rivers Williams said.

With an approach to improvisation that was garrulous and uninhibited but firmly grounded in intellect and technique, Mr. Rivers was among the leading figures in the postwar jazz avant-garde. His sound on the tenor saxophone, his primary instrument, was distinctive: taut and throaty, slightly burred, dark-hued. He also had a recognizable voice on the soprano saxophone, flute and piano, and as a composer and arranger.

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By KEITH SPERA, The Times-Picayune

Most days, an American flag and a modest “Who Dat” yard sign decorate the tidy red-brick ranch house in Metairie. On game days, the Stars and Stripes are swapped out for a Saints flag: black and gold stripes, fleurs-de-lis instead of stars.

For 25 seasons, Hirstius and the Storyville Jazz Band have entertained Saints fans in the stands at home games. They bisect the social strata of the Superdome, moving from terrace seats to private suites, dispensing Dixieland jazz and demonstrating for friend and foe alike that the Saints reside in New Orleans, and this is how we roll.

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By BEN RATLIFF, New York Times

Paul Motian, a drummer, bandleader, composer and one of the most influential jazz musicians of the last 50 years, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 80 and lived in Manhattan.

The cause was complications of myelodysplastic syndrome, a blood and bone-marrow disorder, said his niece, Cindy McGuirl.

Mr. Motian was a link to groups of the past that informed what jazz sounds like today. He had been in the pianist Bill Evans’s great trio of the late 1950s and early 1960s and in Keith Jarrett’s so-called American quartet during the 1970s. But it was in the second half of his life that Mr. Motian found himself as a composer and bandleader, with work that could be counterintuitive or straightforward, runic or crowd-pleasing.

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Salon Magazine’s Martin Johnson wonders aloud if jazz musicians could provide the musical expression of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

BY MARTIN JOHNSON, Salon.com

In the late ’50s and ’60s, during the peak of the civil rights movement, marches and meetings had a jazz soundtrack. Masterworks like Max Roach’s “Freedom Now Suite,” Charles Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus” and Sonny Rollins’ “Freedom Suite” were equal parts incendiary and innovative — brilliant music that reflected their times with precision and passion. As that era gave way to the heyday of Black Nationalism, political themes continued in the vibrant jazz of musicians like Archie Shepp, Sunny Murray and Julius Hemphill, among others.

Yet by the ’80s, fight-the-power odes died down in jazz, especially as rap and hip-hop emerged to carry the flag. Jazz veered toward easy listening instead. “I think jazz went through a period in the 1980s and 1990s where it was trying very hard to be ‘America’s Classical Music,’” says composer and bandleader Darcy James Argue. “The intentions behind this were laudable. The movement clearly succeeded in increasing respect for jazz in elite circles — but it also defanged the music by stripping away the social and political context, or by trying to frame it in broadly inoffensive terms.”

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NEWPORT, Ore. – A special music foundation has been created for underprivileged children, in the memory of slain Oregon teen Cody Myers.

Myers was involved with several bands and loved music – especially jazz. He was murdered after a trip to the Newport Jazz Festival.

Before his death, Myers, 19, told his family that he had a passion to help lower income and underprivileged children who can’t afford musical instruments, music supplies or lessons.

Percussionist and composer Dafnis Prieto was recently named a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship Grant, also known as  MacArthur Genius Award. Congratulations are in order for Mr. Prieto in receiving this prestigious recognition.

Here’s more about Dafnis Prieto and the award.

By Rick Jervis, USA TODAY

Trumpeter Lionel Ferbos arrives 30 minutes early each Saturday night for his gig at the Palm Court Jazz Cafe.

He reads over that night’s music, handwritten with extra large clefs so his ailing eyes can follow them in the club’s dim light. The bartenders fix him a mug of hot water with lemon, to soothe and strengthen vocal cords. An oxygen canister hides behind his chair on the grandstand, in case his lungs falter, which they rarely do. When the lights go low, Ferbos blows into his trumpet and sings not like a man closing in on a century of life but like a young musician making a buck in the city… Read The Full Story