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Here are your Grammy winners in the main jazz categories, as announced Sunday, January 31st:

Best Contemporary Jazz Album: Joe Zawinul & the Zawinul Syndicate – 75

Best Jazz Vocal Album: Kurt Elling – Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman

Best Improvised Jazz Solo: Terence Blanchard “Dancin’ 4 Chicken” from CD Watts (Jeff “Tain” Watts)

Best Jazz Instrumental Album: Chick Corea/John McLaughlin Five Peace Band – Five Peace Band – Live

Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album: New Orleans Jazz Orchestra (led by Irvin Mayfield) – Book One

Best Latin Jazz Album: Bebo Valdes/Chucho Valdes – Juntos Para Siempre

OTHER WINNERS:

Best Instrumental Arrangement: Bill Cunliffe – Resonance Big Band Plays Tribute to Oscar Peterson

Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocals: Claus Ogerman – Diana Krall – Quiet Nights

Best Album Notes: Dan Morgenstern – The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-1946)

Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album: Michael Buble – Michael Buble Meets Madison Square Garden

A few surprises here? I sure expected Allen Toussaint to win Instrumental Album, and underestimated Kurt Elling’s latest as well. Let us know what you think!

Congratulations to the week 2 winner, University Northern Colorado, who beat Willamette University with 64% of the vote.

Week 3 begins now, with the first round match up between the University of North Florida Jazz Ensemble versus the BYU Synthesis Big Band.

To see the bracket, click here.

Each week, two college or university big bands will “face off”. You, as the reader, will listen to a song from each band, and then vote for the one you like the best. After the week is over, one team will move on to the next round, and we will feature two new bands. The last band standing is the Clash of the College Bands winner.

Below are the next two school bands.

Click on the link for each school below. Audio will begin in a new page. After you have listened to each band, vote on the one you like the best.

University of North Florida Jazz Ensemble – Zach

BYU Synthesis Big Band – Begin the Beguine

Clash of the College Bands Tourney – Week 2: Willamette University Jazz Collective vs. University of Northern Colorado Jazz Lab Band 1

Clash of the College Bands Tourney Begins Now! Week 1: University of Miami Concert Jazz Band vs. Princeton University Big Band

Clash of the College Bands

Dave Brubeck was recently among the honorees at the Kennedy Center Honors – televised on December 29th – along with superstars of the American arts scene  Robert DeNiro, Mel Brooks, Bruce Springsteen and opera singer Grace Bumbry. Since I’m guessing few people caught the televised special – hello, it’s the holiday season, we’re with family at the movies! – I thought I’d share a video clip of the Brubeck portion of the program.

Dave is handsome in his tux, on the day of his 89th birthday, surrounded by fellow honorees and President & Mrs. Obama, watching an all-star band play some of his best known songs.

Pianist Bill Charlap leads the group as they begin with “Unsquare Dance”, bassist Christian McBride gets the intro as the quintet is introduced. As they start into the classic “Take Five”, the US Army Field Band is revealed – Brubeck formed the Army’s first integrated jazz band during World War II, where he also met his future collaborator, saxophonist Paul Desmond. Saxophonist Miguel Zinon & trumpeter Jon Faddis have nice solo moments.

The group then moves into Dave’s tune “Blue Rondo A La Turk” and a few bars in, his four musician sons are revealed to be playing the tune on the other side of the stage – Darius on piano, Dan on drums, Chris on trombone & Matthew playing cello – all the kids got solo time as Dave looked on from the balcony, obviously moved.

As the performance wraps up, the audience stood in appreciation and Herbie Hancock – arranger for the set? – stepped onto the stage to applaud as well. Hey, enough description, check it out yourself!

On quincyjones.com, Quincy has what he calls a Quictionary – described as “a glossary of people, places and things associated with Quincy.” We all know that Q has had a busy career, but there are a variety of things that you may have never known about him, or projects he was related to until you saw it on the Quictionary. Periodically I will pull a random entry from the Quictionary and post it. Here are a few randomly pulled entries:

C

Count Basie – One of Quincy’s idols and the best bandleader of the swing era. Quincy arranged his landmark collaboration with Ella Fitzgerald, Ella and Basie in 1963.

J

Joseph Powe – Quincy babysat his children when he was 11 so he could study his music books on scoring and arranging. Powe was a military officer and directed the vocal group Wings Over Jordan. He recruited young Quincy to join an a cappella group called the Challengers.

W

“We Are the World” – The landmark 1985 single produced and arranged by Quincy to aid famine-relief efforts in Ethiopia.  The song was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and performed by an all-star cast following the American Music Awards.

Random Flip Through the Quincy Jones “Quictionary” #2

Random Flip Through the Quincy Jones “Quictionary” #1