Multimedia Jazz and Thomas Marriott

As my multimedia ideas and capabilities have evolved, it has been nice to intersect them with the evolution of jazz trumpeter Thomas Marriott, one of my favorite musicians and friend. Marriott on Sunday headlined a concert for the Earshot Jazz Festival, considered by Downbeat to be “Seattle’s most important annual jazz event.” The concert, at Tula’s in Seattle, highlighted Marriott’s own works, which are formidable, and Marriott had a great supporting cast, which included local sax player Mark Taylor and pianist Travis Shook, an electric performer who was in from New York City for the show.

I’m a big fan of jazz and a big fan of trumpet players, dating back to Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan and Miles Davis and stretching to Wynton Marsalis, whom I started following when he was just a young lion in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Marriott is moving into the realm of the former because he’s more of an artist than musician, with inventive and emotive approaches to his tunes. I never get tired of his music.

This is my third post about Marriott, and each has discussed a shooting (still and video) environment with its own unique challenges. The first shoot took place at Ama Ama, a restaurant and bar with no stage and little ambient lighting; the second shoot was at The Triple Door, with its big stage and good stage lighting. Tula’s, which has been the local showcase for jazz, is more typical of jazz clubs you’ll find in other parts of the country, with a small stage engulfed by tables and a bar, with stage lighting that is a bit more localized.
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The Media’s Blurred Line Between Leading and Cheerleading

When critics accuse journalists of “being in bed” with some of their sources, I don’t think they mean it literally. But occasionally it happens. And in the “real world,” it can be the stuff of major scandal.

mirthala_salinas_tells_almost_all.jpegJust two years ago, Mirthala Salinas, an anchor for the Spanish-language network Telemundo, became the source of national headlines when her affair with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa became public. Salinas was suspended without pay and subsequently reassigned (banished, really) by Telemundo and her once-rising star has been shot down. Her crime — covering the mayor while she was romantically involved with him — is considered a clear conflict of interest by the news industry and the public at large.

Which begs the question: Is sports no longer part of the real world? Where I live, in Seattle, Wash., sports reporter Lisa Gangel of KING-TV is engaged to Patrick Kerney, a defensive end for the NFL’s Seahawks. I’d really not thought a lot about that until, channel surfing last Sunday, I happened across a Seahawks post-game show on KING and there was Gangel on the broadcast. Interesting — Salinas covers her love interest and gets drummed into obscurity; Gangel covers hers and is named recently by SeattlePI.com sports columnist Jim Moore, (in the interest of full disclosure, a friend of mine), the sexiest female sports personality in Seattle.
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