Jazz Improv Magazine

[Ben Rose]

***WARNING: Unsolicited Gushing Follows****

I wish every magazine had this much content. Every time I read it, I leave wanting to run off and practice something instead of buy something. I don't even mind that JI only comes out quarterly, there's easily a year's worth of shedding material from each issue. On top of that, they have the free online gig guide for NYC.

Hats off to a great product.

jazzimprov

[Aaron Saunders]

FANTASTIC magazine.

[Bruce Lindfield]

That's great - looks very intersting - I just subscribed!!

[Ed Fuqua]

www.allaboutjazz.com also has guides to various cities. When the homepage opens, slide the cursor over the word GLOBAL in the top toolbar and you can get the publications for various US cities, London and other countries. These contain club and concert listings by month.

[Ben Rose]

Good site, Ed.

[Ben Rose]

Originally Posted by Bruce Lindfield

That's great - looks very intersting - I just subscribed!!

Cool. I wonder what takes longer, getting a copy of JazzImprov to the UK, or getting a copy of DoubleBassist to the US.

[Aaron Saunders]

Originally Posted by Ben Rose

Good site, Ed.

Yep. Good forums, too.

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by Ben Rose

Cool. I wonder what takes longer, getting a copy of JazzImprov to the UK, or getting a copy of DoubleBassist to the US.

When the first issue arrives, I'll come back here and post so we can judge the time lag!!

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by Ed Fuqua

www.allaboutjazz.com also has guides to various cities. When the homepage opens, slide the cursor over the word GLOBAL in the top toolbar and you can get the publications for various US cities, London and other countries. These contain club and concert listings by month.

I picked London and it only seems to go up to May 2005 ...not much use for planning what gigs to attend!!

[Ed Fuqua]

Why doncha write'm and tell'em you could provide updated material? They do seem to be open to a variety of sources for text.

[TroyK]

I've had a mixed experience with his magazine, actually. I picked my first copy up from a news stand a few years ago and loved it. Couldn't believe that I got all that stuff plus a CD. The next edition, didn't excite me as much. The first was dedicated to Clifford Brown, who I love and the second was someone who I wasn't as interested in. Lot's of ads, lots of reviews.

So, I decided to buy one more from the newstand before making a subscripton decision. I waited and waited and waited and finally sent the magazine an email to the effect of "hey I love your magazine and I'm jonesin' for the next edition, when is it coming out? I think that it's quarterly, but I bought the last one almost 6 months ago and I want to make sure that my local newstand didn't miss an issue or something."

The response I got back was a complete shock to me. It was something to the effect of "Thanks for telling me how to run my business. It's great that you know so much more about running a magazine than I do. For your information, I never said that it was quarterly, I said that it comes out 4 times a year. A lot of work goes into getting an issue ready and I have a very small staff. If you want to get it as soon as possible, you should subscribe. I don't really care about people who buy on the newstand and would rather just sell to subscribers."

I finally picked myself up off the floor and wrote something back like "hey, sorry to offend, I was just trying to say that I love your product and was anxious to see the next edition. Keep up the good work." Of course what I was thinking was "what a dick! how do you expect to keep customers like that?"

I didn't subscribe because a) it's about the rudest that any business has ever been to me. b) he basically said he doesn't guarentee even an approximate schedule on which they will come out c) I was a bit worried that he wouldn't be in business that long and thought that the $2-3 premium that I pay on the newstand is probably worth it, plus I can see if it looks like an edition that interests me or not. None of them really grabbed me like the first Brownie edition and I've felt that by the time it came out a lot of the info was dated. I bought one this year because a friend of mine made a track on the CD and got a good review and I pick one up at someone's house now and again, but my love affair with that particular mag faded.

I'm a long time Downbeat subscriber and while it doesn't have the charts, exercises and CD, I feel like it's more current and relevant, plus it comes like clockwork every month.

Not to rain on the parade, but I had to get that off my chest. I've been biting my toungue since I saw this post start.

-tk

[Ben Rose]

Well, that sounds like a crappy experience. I'd probably feel the same way. For me, quarterly is so long apart that I usually forget what month I got the last issue. Maybe that works in their favor.

IMO, it feels like most monthly magazines are just hurrying to fill enough pages and send the next issue to print. The cover feature will get a full page picture, half a page of graphics, a quarter page devoted to gear, and 2 pages worth of text split onto six by ads for the gear that that player endorses. Non-cover players are lucky to get a whole page.

[brianrost]

I'm with keykendrick. I dropped my subscription after two years.

Issues ALWAYS ran very late. To this day I don't know if I ever really got all the ones I paid for.

Very little bass content, the cover feature in two years was NEVER a bassist so all the transcriptions, exercises, in-depth analyses etc. were of little interest to me. Strictly for horn, keys and guitar players in my opinion.

The record reviews were dated for major label releases (I found I had owned a CD for months before it got reviewed) but a lot of indie stuff got reviewed...oddly enough almost all were by folks who advertised their CDs in the magazine!

Anyway, after the subscription ran out I didn't miss it at all. Overall, a big disappointment.

[hdiddy]

Actually, there was a Buster Williams interview recently. You can find part of it on their website. I read it somewhere on a newstand. But looking for others, seems like he's the only bassist interviewed in recent history.

I'm not surprised that there aren't many bassists featured in it. I'm probably stating the obvious here but guitar, horns, piano - that's the demographic that probably sells more because there are so many more people who want to play lead instruments. I can't see the typical lead player digging into a Ray Brown transcription when all they want to learn is Bird, Coltrane, Wes, or Bill Evans. Guitarists are probably the biggest selling demographic of buyers.

Come to think of it, I have yet to see a magazine dedicated to non-classical Double Bass playing. I think we get lumped into Bass Player or a classical mag like the one ISB puts out. Am I wrong about that?

[TroyK]

[quote=brianrost]... but a lot of indie stuff got reviewed...oddly enough almost all were by folks who advertised their CDs in the magazine![quote]

Yeah. I won't say who my friend is, but there was some strange trading of reviews and ad purchases. I'm not quite sure how it all transpired, but it worked out well for both of them, I'm sure.

He mailed his CD, they wrote him and said they loved it and were going to review it. He bought a 1/4 page ad and got a full paged ad. They clammered for his next release. He bought more ads, sent it to them, they reviewed it posatively and put one of his songs on their CD.

He sold a lot of CD's via CD Baby as a result and another magazine reviewed it as well. He's a hard working guy and put a lot of love into his CDs. It all worked out very well for him, but it made me wonder when I read the other reviews.

I can't say that anything wrong happenned and I'm happy for my buddy, but my wife is a journalist, so I'm a little sensitive about such things.

Troy

[Leco reis]

wow Keykendrick that was a bad costumer service experience.

I find Improv a good magazine for "improvisation material" regardless of the instrument you play.

I think Downbeat,jazz player and jazziz are just about record business if you got a record out and you have a label paying, you are there. The proove is that sometimes the same musician is in the cover of all of them.
They do not care about ART anymore.

For Bass I like "Double Bassist"
From UK

What do you guys think about Double Bassist?

see ya

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by Leco reis

wow Keykendrick that was a bad costumer service experience.

I find Improv a good magazine for "improvisation material" regardless of the instrument you play.

I think Downbeat,jazz player and jazziz are just about record business if you got a record out and you have a label paying, you are there. The proove is that sometimes the same musician is in the cover of all of them.
They do not care about ART anymore.

For Bass I like "Double Bassist"
From UK

What do you guys think about Double Bassist?

see ya

I subscribe to that - it's really good and does have a fair amount of Jazz coverage and music to play - I'm interested in all of it though - I think this my favourite magazine!

I'll be interested in seeing an issue or two of Jazz Improv, but I probably won't subscribe for more than the initial period

[djcruse]

Originally Posted by Leco reis

What do you guys think about Double Bassist?

I read that and enjoy it.

[Ben Rose]

I like Double Bassist. I would like to see more non-UK European schools in their yearly graduate school listing. Still, I subscribe and am always happy to see it in my mailbox.

In the same way that JazzImprov has a Philly and New York bias, DoubleBassist seems to feature a larger selection of UK bassists, but that's just geography I guess. OTOH, both magazine have introduced me to bassists I might not have heard otherwise, like Terry Plumeri and Renauld Garcia-Fons.

Also, there seem to be about 4 new Joelle Leandre discs reviewed in every issue. I haven't heard her, but dang that's alot of releases.

[Craig Garfinkel]

I love Jazz Improv. Their reviewers are obviously of impeccable taste and recognize great jazz when they hear it.

http://www.mysteryfeet.com/_media/_p...provreview.pdf