An Evening at The Stage:

An Open House Fundraiser

Saturday, October 22, 2016

4-7pm

As many of you already know, THE WORLD STAGE  has moved into a larger and renovated space (across the street from the original location) with a state of the art sound system.

Come out and get to know, or get reacquainted with, this cultural gem in Los Angeles. Your support will ensure it is enjoyed by generations to come. The Open House Host Committee planned this event with the goal of raising $5000 to pay for the design, materials and installation of an exterior lighted sign for the new location. Excess amount raised will go directly to TWS’ operation costs.

The suggested minimum donation is $30, which includes performances to showcase the talented artists at THE WORLD STAGE followed by a wine and cheese reception. Donations in excess of the suggested minimum are welcome and guests who donate an additional $100 or more will be invited to a private reception and performance at the sign unveiling celebration.

4-5pm: Get to Know The Stage: Meet its Board Members, Workshop Facilitators, Artists & Supporters

5-6pm: Experience the Talent: Performances by Dwight Trible, Jazz Vocalist and Executive Director of The World Stage; S.H.I.N.E. Muwasi’s Women’s African Drum Circle; The Billy McCoy Band; and other artists to be announced

6-7pm: Mingle: Wine & Cheese Reception

We are hoping to raise money ($5000) for a lighted sign to go above our storefront to showcase our new location. Any excess amount raised will go directly to TWS’ operating costs. 

Please make your online donation today. 

When and if you make your payment, please indicate that you were contacted by me for this event– since we are trying to keep track of our RSVPs. If you are unfortunately unable to make the event, we would still graciously accept a donation towards our goal. 

PS— if you feel so inclined, we would greatly appreciate you to circulate this invitation to those who you feel would like to support The Stage! 

Robert Glasper and Terrace Martin tear it up in the special 1hr episode of The Jazz Creative celebrating the legendary Miles Davis!

TONIGHT!!!

Friday June 24th

10pm PDT / 1am EDT

on the

Click here to find the Aspire channel in your area!

Aspire Television Network

You will see concert footage from the “Miles in May” performance at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza and inteviews with Terrace and Robert as well as dancers Debbie Allen and former wife Frances Taylor Davis!

             The Jazzcat is ON!

                Friday April 29th

From the West Coast to the East Coast!  

Radio from 8pm-10pm PSTon KPFK.ORG

Click and listen to the show!  Click and watch The Jazz Creative

The Jazz Creative Eps 003 – MASTER COPY ver 1.2 from All Music Television LLC on Vimeo.

and Television at 10pm PST on Aspire TV

The Jazz Creative 3rd Episode to Air on April 29th on the ASPiRE TV NETWORK

The Jazz Creative Episode 3

April 29, 2016

10PM PST and 1am EST

Click here to find the Aspire channel in your area!

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The Jazz Giants honoring and paying tribute to Jaco Pastorious!!!!

The 3rd episode of The Jazz creative features guests Peter Erskine, Ben Williams, Will Lee, John Beasley, Christian McBride, Brian Blade with performances by Danny Janklow  and Nicole Mitchell!!!

International Jazz Day is April 30th

and it is celebrated all over the World. This Year, President Barak and Michell Obama will host the event at The White House and it will be broadcast @ 8pm on ABC TV!!!

The California Jazz Foundation honors great bassist, educator and composer…

John Clayton!

Click above to watch the Episode 1 & 2 of The Jazz Creative!

The Jazz Creative, the only regularly scheduled music television series to feature both established and up and coming jazz artists, premieres its 2nd episode online at www.allmusictelevision.net and on the ASPIRE TV NETWORK on Friday, April 29th at 10pm (PST)/1am (EST). The ASPiRE Television Network was created by legendary athlete and entrepreneur Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson. The new music series is produced by All Music Television, LLC and features in depth interviews and new music from many of the biggest, brightest and popular artists and musicians in Jazz.

Hosted and curated by Los Angeles Radio and Television personality LeRoy Downs, the new music series premiers its 2nd episode on the Aspire Network April 29, 2016 at 10pm PST / 1am EST.  The show will feature today’s sung and unsung heroes of jazz whose music, creativity and originality continue to lay the foundation and create the landscape of today’s music. Jazz is a music that has its roots here in America and through the ages has branched out globally literally embracing and assimilating into all countries, cultures, genres of music, and demographics from the boomers to the millennials! All Music Television is taking the power of this music and cross pollinating it with the  television media platform to broaden awareness, expose it’s creativity and to share the wonders of the music visually with a larger audience!

About All Music Television, LLC All Music Television produced ‘Live From The Blue Whale’ featuring Matthew Stevens and Gerald Clayton and Christmas Jazz with LeRoy Downs with Danny Janklow, Jazzmeia Horn, Dontae Winslow, Nicole Mitchell Theo Croker and more!  The show reached 40 million+ viewers in 22 of the top 25 US TV markets.

About ASPiRE TV NETWORK

ASPiRE celebrates the African American experience, offering inspirational and motivational programming. It is available to over 37 million television homes on Comcast, Verizon Fios, DirecTV, DISH and AT&T U-VERSE in 22 of the top 25 US television markets. Click here to find the Aspire channel in your area!

Watch the Cats on Jazz in the Modern Era!!

JAZZ IN THE MODERN ERA Ep 336 JAZZ NIGHTS: A CONFIDENTIAL JOURNEY from Hal Masonberg on Vimeo.

The Jazz Creative 2nd Episode to Aired on March 25th on the ASPiRE TV NETWORK

Click and Enjoy

The Jazz Creative Eps #002 from All Music Television LLC on Vimeo.

The Jazz Creative Episode 2

March 25, 2016

10PM PST and 1am EST

Click here to find the Aspire channel in your area!

We’ll Take A Sneak Peak of the New Film, “Miles Ahead” starring Don Cheadle!!!!

The 2nd episode of The Jazz creative features guests include bassist Joe Sanders who tours and plays with everyone in the business including Gerald Clayton, Charles Lloyd, Ambrose Akinmusire and a TON of this music’s beautiful players. Grammy Award winning Jazz historian Ashley Khan talks about Miles, Coltrane and Kamasi Washington!

Performances by Cameron Graves introducing his new album, “The Planetary Prince” and Dontae Winslow and the Winslow Dynasty.

Click above to watch the Premier Episode of The Jazz Creative!

The Jazz Creative, the only regularly scheduled music television series to feature both established and up and coming jazz artists, premieres its 2nd episode online at www.allmusictelevision.net and on the ASPIRE TV NETWORK on Friday, March 25th at 10pm (PST)/1am (EST). The ASPiRE Television Network was created by legendary athlete and entrepreneur Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson. The new music series is produced by All Music Television, LLC and features in depth interviews and new music from many of the biggest, brightest and popular artists and musicians in Jazz.

Hosted and curated by Los Angeles Radio and Television personality LeRoy Downs, the new music series premiers its 2nd episode on the Aspire Network March 25, 2016 at 10pm PST / 1am EST.  The show will feature today’s sung and unsung heroes of jazz whose music, creativity and originality continue to lay the foundation and create the landscape of today’s music. Jazz is a music that has its roots here in America and through the ages has branched out globally literally embracing and assimilating into all countries, cultures, genres of music, and demographics from the boomers to the millennials! All Music Television is taking the power of this music and cross pollinating it with the  television media platform to broaden awareness, expose it’s creativity and to share the wonders of the music visually with a larger audience!

Sneak Peak of Saxophonist Kamasi Washington!

About All Music Television, LLC All Music Television produced ‘Live From The Blue Whale’ featuring Matthew Stevens and Gerald Clayton and Christmas Jazz with LeRoy Downs with Danny Janklow, Jazzmeia Horn, Dontae Winslow, Nicole Mitchell Theo Croker and more!  The show reached 40 million+ viewers in 22 of the top 25 US TV markets.

About ASPiRE TV NETWORK

ASPiRE celebrates the African American experience, offering inspirational and motivational programming. It is available to over 37 million television homes on Comcast, Verizon Fios, DirecTV, DISH and AT&T U-VERSE in 22 of the top 25 US television markets. Click here to find the Aspire channel in your area!

The Jazz Creative to Air on ASPiRE TV NETWORK

Hosted by Los Angeles Radio and Television personality LeRoy Downs, the new music series premiers on the Aspire Network February 26, 2016 at 10pm PST / 1am EST.  The show will feature today’s sung and unsung heroes of jazz whose music, creativity and originality continue to lay the foundation and create the landscape of today’s music. Jazz is a music that has its roots here in America and through the ages has branched out globally literally embracing and assimilating into all countries, cultures, genres of music, and demographics from the boomers to the millennials! All Music Television is taking the power of this music and cross pollinating it with the  television media platform to broaden awareness, expose it’s creativity and to share the wonders of the music visually with a larger audience! Watch the premiere episode of The Jazz Creative here:

The Jazz Creative Eps #001 (AIR MASTER) from All Music Television LLC on Vimeo.

The Jazz Creative Premiers 

February 26, 2016

10PM PST and 1am EST

on the Aspire TV Network

The first episode of The Jazz creative features guests include famed jazz trumpeter, film scorer Terence Blanchard, Kennedy Center Artistic Director and accomplished composer, arranger and pianist Jason Moran, the one and only four time Grammy Winning, super bass player Christian McBride, Cameron Graves and Theo Croker Los Angeles, California

The Jazz Creative, the only regularly scheduled music television series to feature both established and up and coming jazz artists, is set to premiere online at www.allmusictelevision.net and on the ASPIRE TV NETWORK on Friday, February 26th at 10pm (PST)/1am (EST). The ASPiRE Television Network was created by legendary athlete and entrepreneur Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson. The new music series is produced by All Music Television, LLC and features in depth interviews and new music from many of the biggest, brightest and popular artists and musicians in Jazz.

Hosted and curated by popular Los Angeles Jazz Radio Personality LeRoy Downs, the premiere episode of The Jazz Creative celebrates African American History Month, the GRAMMY’s and the Academy Awards as we peek inside the creative process of composing Music for Film with multiple GRAMMY winning artists Terence Blanchard (CHI-RAQ) and Jason Moran (SELMA), a visit with Philadelphia born bassist Christian McBride, who talks Gamble & Huff, the Sound Of Philadelphia, Grover Washington Jr. and the 76er’s and two sets of great new music from The Planetary Prince, pianist Cameron Graves and the Afrophysicist, trumpeter Theo Croker.

About All Music Television, LLC All Music Television produced ‘Live From The Blue Whale’ featuring Matthew Stevens and Gerald Clayton and Christmas Jazz with LeRoy Downs with Danny Janklow, Jazzmeia Horn, Dontae Winslow and more. Airing Christmas week on ASPIRE and on several local TV stations, the show reached 40 million+ viewers in 22 of the top 25 US TV markets.

About ASPiRE TV NETWORK

ASPiRE celebrates the African American experience, offering inspirational and motivational programming. It is available to over 37 million television homes on Comcast, Verizon Fios, DirecTV, DISH and AT&T U-VERSE in 22 of the top 25 US television markets. Click here to find the Aspire channel in your area!

Enjoy 40 minutes of Jazz for 2016! Our gift to you!!!

Featuring Performances by….

2015 Thelonious Monk Vocal Competition Winner

Jazzmeia Horn

Theo Crocker

Dontae Winslow and the Winslow Dynasty

Nicole Mitchell

Cameron Graves

Danny Janklow

AllMusicTelevision.Net

Merry Christmas to you all; All lovers of music, all lovers of JAZZ!!!

LeRoy Downs “The Jazzcat” in association with All Music Television has produced a special holiday gift for you, Jazz on TELEVISION!!! Airing in several cities across the country this holiday season, we present to you “Christmas Jazz with LeRoy Downs”. Christmas Jazz is JAZZ for Christmas, original music by some extraordinary musicians who have come together to share their talents with you!
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Photographs on set by Bob Barry Photography

Airing Christmas Day Here in Los Angeles at 7am on…

and across the country West Coast 10pm & East Coast 1am on…

Click the picture of Magic to find the channel in your area!

The show will feature performances by …

Theo Croker, Nicole Mitchell, Danny Janklow, Dontae Winslow and the Winslow Dynasty, The Cameron Graves Trio

and Introducing 2015 Thelonious Monk Vocal Competition Winner Jazzmeia Horn …

Appearances by Terence Blanchard, Jason Moran, Don Was, Christian McBride and Peter Erskine
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Take a look at any list of the world’s greatest drummers, and Peter Erskine’s name will invariably be near the top.

For more than four decades, Erskine has proven among the most consistently innovative and reliable masters of his instrument. He’s appeared on over 600 albums and film scores, more than 50 of those albums as leader or co-leader. He’s collaborated with an astonishing list of giants including the Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson big bands,

Weather Report, Steps Ahead, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, Diana Krall, Kenny Wheeler, the Brecker Brothers, Yellowjackets, Pat Metheny and Gary Burton, and John Scofield. He has won two Grammy Awards, plus an Honorary Doctorate from the Berklee School of Music.

As if that’s not enough, he’s also a producer, author—his latest book, No Beethoven, is an autobiography and chronicle of Weather Report—as well as educator, presently serving as Professor of Practice and Director of Drumset Studies at the Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California.

But in recent years, Erskine feels, he’s strayed from his true love, fusion and R&B drumming. Dr. Um (Fuzzy Music, release date January 22, 2016), which Erskine self-produced, marks the world-class musician and composer’s return to “the kind of drumming I was best-known for in my youth and during my years with Weather Report and Steps Ahead.” He elaborates: “I’d traveled my ‘anti-drumming’ path of recent years about as far as I could take it—exquisite music where ‘less’ was so much ‘more’—the minimalism of my ECM and Fuzzy Music trio recording years had become my calling card. So the chance to play this way again feels very fresh and new to me. It’s being able to live the ‘if I knew then what I know now’ dream and make some really cool music at the same time. I feel inspired, like a kid, only one who’s got something to say.” Indeed, Dr. Um—the title a very cool play on words—feels like a return, yet at the same time there’s nothing retro about it. Recorded and mixed by Talley Sherwood at Tritone Recording Glendale, California, the collection—10 songs and two spoken-word pieces—finds Erskine, along with keyboardist John Beasley (who co-produced the album) and electric bassist Janek Gwizdala, plus several special guests, taking the classic fusion sound into the 21st century.

The original concept for the album, however, stretches further back. “Jack Fletcher is my oldest and closest friend,” says Erskine. Fletcher, a theater director who does voice directing for animation and film, wrote the liner notes for Dr. Um. “Jack envisioned an evening of music and lights and sets with a musical host, an alter ego who might allow me to discover my true musical and theatrical roots. I had no aim to take such a production on the road as it seemed so ambitious, and besides, I was learning how to play less and less, so did I really want to put a spotlight on all of that? ‘Dr. Um’ began to stand for the ephemeral ‘me’ that was out of reach. Would I ever step into that outfit? 2015 became the year in which to do it. I knew that I finally wanted to give voice to Dr. Um.” Erskine “felt the ‘doctor’ rising within me” and began to envision a new recording featuring “the kind of record that I’ve wanted to make for years, the kind of album Weather Report might have made were the band still around (and I was still in it).”

When it came time to choose his collaborators, Erskine “knew John Beasley was great, but I didn’t really know how great he was until he sat down at the piano in my studio. And Janek Gwizdala is, in my opinion, the most talented bass player to have come along since Jaco. It’s not just the chops. It’s the sound and the ideas and the bass discipline that only the best bassists know.” Dr. Um begins with “You’re next,” a brief sonic montage that segues seamlessly into “Lost Page,” composed by Beasley.
Erskine calls it “the kind of sophisti-funk tune I loved to listen to in the 1970s.” It’s followed by “Hawaii Bathing Suit,” a tune that Erskine had twice tried to bring to life earlier and which finally finds its way to an album here. “Borges Buenos Aires” has its roots in Erskine’s Weather Report days, and precedes “Little Fun K,” which Erskine compares to the classic fusion band Stuff; it features guitar from Jeff Parker. “Mahler” is a tribute to great Austrian classical composer, based on music that goes all the way back to 1901. “Recording jazz versions of classical music has long been a fancy of mine, and it’s almost become a conceit,” says Erskine. “But such gorgeous music! It takes a lot of heart as well as nerve to lay one’s playing so open to such long melodic lines.

Beasley and Gwizdala are the perfect foils for this, and I only need to sit back and play some brushes. The short opening speech, spoken by Jack Fletcher, is from Hamlet. The song is from heaven.” “Sage Hands” is borrowed from the late, under-appreciated jazz composer and vibraphonist Gary McFarland, and “Okraphilia,” which, say Erskine, “owes its Crusaders vibe and sound to John Beasley’s Wurlitzer electric piano and his own Texas roots,” follows. “Speechless” is reprised from the final Weather Report album Erskine made with Pastorius. “The original is terrific, but I’m pretty proud and knocked out by this passionate version,” he says. Vince Mendoza sent “Sprite” for the band to play; it was originally performed by several soprano saxes playing the melody at a faster tempo. “We take the cool approach because, after all, we are a West Coast band,” says Erskine. The album’s final tune, “Northern Cross,” was actually the first recorded for the set but fit better at the end. Finally, there’s “You awake,” another brief spoken word piece that brings the Dr. Um saga full circle.

“Dr. Um is an album that was fun to make, and I hope that it’s fun for people to listen to,” says Erskine. “I think that it represents my best work in ages. Much of it has to do with my instrument—my drums and cymbals and percussions all feel like me. This music feels like me. I’m playing on a new Tama STAR kit, and this drumset has freed me from any technical limitations or sound constraints I might have felt in the past. Between the tunes and the other musicians and the sound we were getting, it was the most enjoyable two days in a recording studio that I can remember. As new as each tune sounded upon its first playing, everything felt so much at home. It’s the album that my father, Frederick Adams Erskine —who was a real doctor—always wanted me to make. And it turns out to be the album that I’ve always wanted to make, too.”