Hall of Fame 2012

by Lauren Vogel Weiss Last June’s Santa Fe Marimba Festival had been planned long before Gordon Stout was selected to be in the PAS Hall of Fame, but it became a celebration of one of the marimba’s most well-known and influential artists. Among the performers at the New Mexico event were Kevin Bobo, Valerie Naranjo,…

by Mark Griffith Very few drummers throughout history have a signature timekeeping approach associated with their name. I am not referring to licks or a singular beat they played. I am referring to an instantly identifiable concept to playing a time feel. Elvin Jones’s wide and loping swing, Art Blakey’s insistent shuffle infused swing, and…

The average music fan may not know his name, but it’s safe to assume that anyone who has listened to popular music over the past 50 years has heard Hal Blaine play drums. Even though the bulk of his studio work was done in the 1960s and ’70s, many of those recordings have become timeless…

by B. Michael Williams Renaissance man n: a person who has wide interests and is expert in several areas. Nowadays, terms can be so overused as to be rendered totally useless in describing aspects of quality in a person or work. Think of awesome. A perfectly good term that once meant “inspiring of fearful reverence,”…