News Capsules for the Acoustic Community
The Recording Academy announced nominees for the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards – including those in the recently renamed and expanded American Roots Music field. Winners will be named during ceremonies set for January 31, 2010, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, which will be broadcast live on the CBS television network. [To read the entire article, click on the headline.]
Bess Lomax Hawes, 88, a folklorist and documentary filmmaker, former member of the Almanac Singers, and National Medal of Arts recipient, died at her home in Oregon on Nov. 27. Lomax Hawes, the youngest child of renowned University of Texas folklorist John Lomax, frequently joined her father and older brother, Alan, as they ventured down south collecting seminal field recordings of traditional songs for the Library of Congress during the 1930s. [To read the entire article, click on the headline.]
Close to 2,000 performers, presenters, promoters and others engaged in the folk and acoustic music community are expected to converge on the Marriott in Memphis, Tennessee, February 17-21, 2010, for the 22nd International Folk Alliance Conference. To take advantage of the discounted early registration rate, individuals and groups must register by December 1. [To read the entire article, click on the headline.]
Joan Baez is the focus of an American Masters series documentary that begins airing on PBS television stations across the country on October 14 at 8 p.m. (ET). Entitled “Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound,” the documentary chronicles the private life and public career of the living folk legend who made her debut appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959 and returned to that stage this past August as part of her worldwide tour celebrating 50 years as a recording artist and performer. [To read the entire article, click on the headline.]
Liz Longley, Grace Pettis, BettySoo, David Via and Reed Waddle were named as winners of the 2009 Mountain Stage NewSong Contest, presented by Folk Alliance International. The contest’s international finals took place on Saturday, October 10, at the Cultural Center in Charleston, West Virginia -- home to the internationally broadcast “Mountain Stage” radio and TV show that has showcased more than 2000 artists since its inception in 1983. [To read the entire article, click on the headline.]
Marian Leighton Levy, a co-founder of Rounder Records, is among the 30 women who made the “Power Players” list in Billboard’s Women in Music 2009. Leighton Levy ranks #11 in the list of top female executives in the music industry that appears in the trade publication’s October 10 issue. The names were culled from nominations submitted by readers and selected by a team of Billboard editors. [To read the entire article, click on the headline.]
Buddy Miller was the big winner during last night’s Eighth Annual Americana Music Association Honors & Awards Show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The acclaimed singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer and much sought-after collaborator and sideman, was named Artist of the Year and also won Album of the Year (for Written In Chalk, with wife Julie Miller), Duo/Group of the Year (again with Julie), and Song of the Year (“Chalk,” written by Julie and performed by Buddy and Patty Griffin.) [To view the entire article and learn who the other winners were, click on the headline.]
Mary Travers, who rose to international stardom with the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, died tonight at 72 in Danbury, Connecticut. Loving tributes and remembrances from Peter and Paul appear at www.marytravers.com.
Rosanne Cash will be the 2009 keynote interview subject during the Americana Music Association’s Festival and Conference on Thursday morning, September 17, at the Nashville Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Author and journalist Michael Streissguth, whose latest book, Always Been There: Rosanne Cash, The List and the Spirit of Southern Music, chronicles the making of her forthcoming album, will pose questions to the Grammy Award-winning artist, who has had more than 20 top 40 country singles over the course of her 30-year career to date.
Photo by Deborah Feingold.
[To view the entire article, click on the headline.]
Mike Seeger, who, as a solo performer, collector of songs, and member of the New Lost City Ramblers, helped to revive and widen interest in southern traditional music, died at his Lexington, Virginia home on August 7, just a week shy of his 76th birthday. [To read the entire article, click on the headline.]
Sandy Paton, a traditional folksinger, folklorist and co-founder of Folk-Legacy, has died at the age of 80. Paton, who launched the independent label based in Sharon, Connecticut with his wife Caroline and the late Lee Haggerty in 1961, passed away on July 26.
This month marks the 10th anniversary of the official launch of Napster, the revolutionary file-sharing network application that led to millions of people downloading music files online and prompted many music industry observers to sound the death knell for record labels long before sales figures had shown any marked decline. In a June 15 report prepared for the Pew Internet & American Life Project and posted on its website (www.pewinternet.org), Mary Madden examines “The State of Music Online: Ten Years After Napster.” [To read the entire article, click on the headline.]
