Cynthia Newton

11/05/2023

31/12/2022

10/10/2022

NBC Sports and U.S. Figure Skating announced today the schedule for the 2022-23 figure skating season. From October to April, NBC Sports and Peacock will provide more than 200 hours of coverage.

28/09/2022

Rubi let's go shopping! She can't hang with the big dawgs❤️

21/09/2022

17/09/2022

17/09/2022

Happy birthday, Sonny Rollins! One of the most influential and brilliant figures in the art form, Rollins rapidly emerged as a leader on the tenor in the 1950s through now-classic albums like Saxophone Colossus. Developing an instantly recognizable improvisational style and tone, Rollins would quickly set new standards for experimentation in Jazz, utilizing a piano-less trio on works like the Freedom Suite and Way Out West and harnessing the format's more harmonically open setting to stretch his soloing even further. Rollins' artistic growth and innovations were only getting started; stepping away from public performance for several years to further hone his craft, Rollins would return in the 1960s with works that represented new artistic heights for him, with masterpieces like The Bridge and East Broadway Rundown showing scintillating creativity. Subsequent decades saw further changes in style and development, as in the 1970s Rollins increasingly embraced elements of fusion in his albums, bringing in electric instrumentation and embracing Afro-Caribbean influences in more of his works. Happy birthday!

(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia)

17/09/2022

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On this day in 1937, legendary vocalist Billie Holiday continued her successful recording run for Vocalion Records as she entered the studio to record "Getting Some Fun Out of Life," "Who Wants Love?," Travellin' All Alone," and "He's Funny That Way." Backed by fellow legends like Lester Young, Buck Clayton, Freddie Green, and Jo Jones, Holilday delivered some of her finest performances on record this day, and some of these works would remain in her repertoire for the rest of her life. In particular, "He's Funny That Way" would get re-recorded by her in the 1940s for Commodore Records and again in the 1950s for Clef Records, and would even be one of her signature pieces at her very first Carnegie Hal appearances in 1946!

(Photo courtesy of William P. Gottlieb)

04/09/2022

🎶🎵🎶🎵🎶👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

01/09/2022

😂

01/09/2022

August 29 marks the birthday of one of music's most towering geniuses: Charlie Parker! One of the founding figures of BeBop, Bird forged a style that is one of the most readily identifiable and imitated sounds of all time: effortlessly virtuosic, rhythmically bursting with energy, melodically rich, and fully drenched in the Blues. From his earliest recordings with the Jay McShann Orchestra, Parker revealed himself to be almost without peer, and his recordings throughout the explosion of BeBop in 1945 stand as virtuosic statements on the art form that the world is still learning from! Parker's genius continued and expanded as his career progressed: while 1947-48 marked some of his greatest BeBop masterpieces, the late 1940s found him exploring a range of new settings, from the Afro-Cuban fusions of "Mango Mangue" with Machito and His Orchestra, to the lushly romantic sessions that make up the "Charlie Parker with Strings" canon. In everything he did, Bird showed that his vision knew no boundaries. Passing painfully young in 1955, Charlie Parker left behind a world completely and permanently transformed by his music.

(Photo of Charlie Parker in the Three Deuces of New York in August 1947, by William P. Gottlieb)

01/09/2022

Today marks the birthday of one of jazz's most transformative masters! Count Basie, born on this day in 1904, would quickly emerge as one of the Swing Era's greatest figures. Born in New Jersey, Basie would ultimately make his name in Kansas City, where he gained notoriety working with (and ultimately leading) the Bennie Moten Orchestra, before forming his own big band in the mid-1930s. The resulting Count Basie Orchestra was and remains one of the greatest big bands in history. Powered by the singular swing of the "All-American Rhythm Section" of Count Basie, guitarist Freddie Green, bassist Walter Page, and drummer Jo Jones, the band utilized loose and Bluesy arrangements (frequently created by arranging genius Eddie Durham) that would become favorites among listeners and dancers alike. Basie also introduced the notion of two-tenor saxophone duels, initially pairing the burly tone of Herschel Evans against the light lyrical mastery of Lester Young in a series of now-legendary recordings. For this band alone, Basie would go down in the Jazz history books, but he also managed a brilliant second act in his career. Reforming a big band in the 1950s (sometimes called the "New Testament" band), Basie brought in a new generation of masterful musicians and arrangers, from Thad Jones to Frank Foster to Frank Wess, establishing a band that embraced some of Jazz's more contemporary innovations in playing and writing. His six-decade career is marked by triumph after triumph, with music sounding as fresh, exciting, and danceable today as it did when first recorded.

(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia)

01/09/2022

Inexpressible grief over the passing of our brother in trumpet Dan Miller.
Dan was the essence of our music: soulful, original, virtuosic and consistent. He was an insightful musician, a committed educator and an even better lifelong student. He was deeply engaged with our humanity and always in search of how it could best be expressed poetically through our interactions with each other and through the trumpet.

Big sound-Big spirit! His sudden transition is shocking and a wake up call to us all: savor every moment with each other as we travel this unmappable road.
Rest In Peace good brother… Rest In Peace.

- Wynton

14/08/2022

❤️

03/08/2022

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02/08/2022

Often, I reminisce on what it was like to feel mentally “healthy” -- the way I was during my childhood.