MRF - Trying

Lovely soulful jazz. With musclebears. The bear keyboardist is Mike "MRF" Flanagan, the title artist. His current release, Mob Music, recently topped the iTunes jazz chart and is streaming in full on Spotify. Flanagan is quoted in the press materials:

"This is the most personal song (and favorite) I've ever written, so I wanted the video to be the same. It was also really important to me to give visibility to the bear community in a jazz/urban/mainstream song and in a light that captures the love and relationship side as well as the heartbreak/breakup side. I've never seen a video that depicts a breakup with bears in the narrative. My goal was to embody the beauty of the normal parts of a relationship; intimacy and day-to-day and what "trying" to grieve that feels like visually and musically. My mission is for this story to reach as many people as possible and hopefully open the eyes of many who have never seen or thought about this kind of narrative."

Kevin Spacey - That's All

Via PBS News Hour: "While rehearsing for his one night only benefit concert to support arts education, Kevin Spacey performs That's All, first sung by Nat King Cole in 1957."

UPDATE: PBS has pulled the clip.

Postmodern Jukebox - All About That Bass

Postmodern Jukebox: Game Of Thrones

Featuring gay jazz star Dave Koz.

Special Swag

Courtesy of the Karpel Group, tonight we've got three copies of Summer Horns,  the new album by openly gay jazz superstar Dave Koz. Summer Horns is now on sale nationwide.

Enter to win Summer Horns from Dave Koz! Concord Records presents SUMMER HORNS, the brand-new album from Grammy-nominated saxophonist DAVE KOZ with a little help from his friends: Gerald Albright, Mindi Abair and Richard Elliot. Featuring sax-driven classics made famous by Tower Of Power, Chicago, EW&F, James Brown, Sly & The Family Stone and others! Go to SummerHorns.com and use Code HORNS23 for 20% discount on the new Dave Koz And Friends Summer Horns CD…plus INSTANT download of “Got To Get You Into My Life” with purchase! Available now!

Enter to win by commenting on this post. Please remember to leave an email address in your comment. Entries close at midnight on Friday, west coast time.

Dave Koz - This Guy's In Love With You

JMG reader Gary points out this Jazz Times article about openly gay jazz artists, where I found mention of Dave Koz' new cover of Burt Bacharach's 1968 classic, This Guy's In Love With You.

“I’ve refashioned that as a wedding song in support of gay marriage,” Koz says. “It’s an interesting way to re-listen to a classic. That’s one of the reasons why I choose to sing it as opposed to playing it. It was important that I sing because of what I was trying to get across. When people listen to it, I hope they listen to it in that framework.”

Koz' single is below left and a rather lovely remix is on the right.

Henry Hey - Bushsong

Here's another brilliant jazz piano composition from Henry Hey, this time set to a speech by Dubya. I posted Hey's take on Sarah Palin's speech patterns back in October. The artist says he listens to a speech a few times, then improvises his accompaniment. Is there a fancy musical term for this kind of composition?

(Via - Someone In A Tree)