Rodolfo Zuniga – Contemporary Jazz Musician
Jazz Interview of the Month / Sounds
This month we feature an interview with jazz drummer and composer Rodolfo Zuniga. Born in San Jose, Costa Rica and now residing in Miami Florida, Zuniga is the leader of The Rodolfo Zuniga Quintet, a young contemporary jazz group that is causing a stir in the Miami music scene. Zuniga released his debut album Premonition last November 2006, including compositions by himself (listen to tracks below), Fernando Ulibarri and Rob Smiley. In 2005, his band was featured in a one week residency with Dave Douglas that culminated in a concert at Carnegie Hall. Zuniga is also active as a sideman in the South Florida scene with jazz names like Gary Campbell, Michael Gerber, Alex Norris, Othello Molineaux and Ira Sullivan. In our recent interview with him, we had the opportunity to hear about the views and insight of a young jazz musician and composer of today. Read more
Music Composition for the Screen
Film Scoring Programs:
The Music Department at Columbia College Chicago offers the Master of Fine Arts degree in Music Composition for the Screen, one of the few advanced degrees in music scoring for film, television and other visual media in the United States. It is an interdisciplinary curriculum that draws upon five academic departments including: Music, Film/Video, Audio Arts & Acoustics, Theater and Television (Columbia’s film and video department is acknowledged as the largest in the world). The last semester is spent in Los Angeles, California and is the vital part of the program. Read more
Michael Brecker dies at age 57 (1949-2007)
Jazz News:
NEW YORK — Following a two and a half year battle with MDS and then leukemia, tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker passed away on January 13, 2007. During his lifetime Brecker won 11 Grammy Awards and was among the most influential musicians in jazz since the 1960s. His discography, containing more than 900 albums, started in 1969, playing on the record “Score,” with a band led by his brother, the trumpeter Randy Brecker. His technique on the saxophone was widely emulated, and his style was much-studied in music schools throughout the world. Jazziz magazine recently called him “the most influential tenor stylist of the last 25 years”.
Free Wolfgang!
Classical Music News:
Vienna (AFP) - The complete printed NMA (New Mozart Edition) is now available to download from The Mozart Institute website: “The purpose of this website is to make Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s musical compositions widely and conveniently accessible to the public, for personal study and for educational and classroom use,” the Mozarteum said in a statement. The website draws from the original Neue Mozart Ausgabe paper version developed since 1954 by internationally renowned musicologists and comprising over 125 booklets of sheet music, whose origin has been painstakingly authenticated, the Salzburg foundation said.
The “Digital Mozart Edition” (DME) website (http://dme.mozarteum.at) features over 600 works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, separated into ten categories, from concertos for orchestra to chamber music and pieces for piano.
