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Hello
and Welcome!
I would first like to give a giant
thanks to everyone who has helped support “Lansing Public Radio”,
89.7-FM, WLNZ throughout the past year. 2003 looks like it will also be
a good year for us at the station, and our listeners throughout the
Lansing Area.
I am really excited at the outlook
of jazz music in 2003, some very talented women hitting the scene, and
excellent albums have recently coming out. We at WLNZ, while continuing
to provide your daily jazz programming, are testing out a “Triple A”
(American Adult Alternative) from 2am to 6am. So far, listener response
has been great, and we hope that this continues, so we can better serve
our listeners and members in the Greater Lansing Community.
Be on the lookout also for our
periodical Internet Auctions, as many may have noticed, they have been
revived! The last one was a huge success for both the bidders and us.
The auctions provide a great opportunity to bid on items which are
useful to you, while supporting your favorite public radio station,
89.7-FM, WLNZ. We also hope you can join us this year for our Spring
Membership Drive. This year it will be held April 4th thru
11th, once again, we will be kicking off and wrapping up the
drive at The Creole Gallery on Turner St. in Old Town.
We at WLNZ are excited to get going
with the Program Guide once again, and as always, if you have any
comments, suggestions, or question, please feel free to give us a call,
drop us an email, or write us a letter; we always look forward to
hearing from our listeners. We are here not only as a jazz and blues
radio station, but as “Lansing Public Radio”; it is our members who help
to fund our programming and operating costs, and thereby allow is to
continue providing the Lansing Community will quality radio
programming. We would like to extend a giant thank you for your
support.
So go ahead, sit back in your
favorite chair, tune in to WLNZ, and enjoy knowing that you are helping
to bring quality Jazz, Blues and Community programming to the Greater
Lansing Neighborhood.
Michelle Johnson
Membership Coordinator
Women In Jazz
The year 2003 has already been a great year for “up
and coming” female jazz musicians. But by year’s end, every jazz
connoisseur will be well acquainted with Diana Krall, Norah Jones,
Natalie Cole and Mindi Abair. These women are defying the standard,
creating their own genres, and making 2003 a great year for Women in
Jazz.
As an acoustic-oriented artist, with a
straight-ahead jazz album, by all predictions, Diana Krall should not be
toping Billboard’s pop charts, be in the same category as TLC for a
Grammy® nomination, or be selling out auditoriums every night, but she
is. Diana Krall has been layering bop and swing on top of a solid jazz
foundation, for ten years now, but this year came out with her first
concert recording, “Live in Paris”, and it’s getting noticed. This
album is phenomenal in that it showcases Krall’s ability to span all
eras; she is just as fluent in songs from the 1920’s as those from the
1990’s. More than just a vocalist, however, she has established herself
as a pianist, doing all of the piano work for “Live in Paris”. With
this album, Krall is certainly helping make a name for women on the jazz
music scene.
The daughter of the legendary Beatles guru and
instrumentalist, Ravi Shankar, Norah Jones grew up in Texas with her
mother. Following in her father’s musical footsteps, Jones arrived on
the national music scene just this past year with her album, Come
Away With Me, considered utterly striking to listeners from many
genres. Her haunting vocals and depth of feeling are so strong, you
feel she might be in the room with you accompanied by her hypnotizing
piano pieces. At 22 years of age, she’s young, but not inexperienced;
she has been playing piano, and singing professionally since her teens.
Most of the songs on this album were written and arranged by Jones
herself, showing her skill as a musician in every right. Nora has truly
been noticed by many and has been nominated for several Grammy® awards
this year.
Natalie Cole has shaped a successful career in
R&B, urban contemporary and then jazz-based pop. She made her stage
debut at age 11 and sang in college. She had a string of hit albums and
singles from 1975 until 1983 that yielded five number one R&B hits. Her
popularity continued in 1987 and 1988, and then she made her stylistic
shift. Cole eased into the transition with "When I Fall in Love," a
number one song for her father, Nat King Cole that he recorded in 1957.
It was included on her 1987 LP, Everlasting. She fully embraced
the move with her 1991 LP, Unforgettable With Love, earning
Grammy awards and landing a number-one pop album that eventually sold
over five million copies. Natalie’s new release, Ask A Woman Who
Knows is currently climbing up the smooth jazz music charts.
Mindi Abair’s album, It Just Happens That Way,
is a skillful medley of contemporary jazz with overtones of R&B, soul
rhythms and pop melodies. It is no surprise then that her father who
was a professional jazz musician, and grandmother, an opera singer
exposed her early to a variety of music. She pours these influences
into her saxophone to create a voice, which is uniquely her own. Before
signing her album to a major label, she was playing in the shadows with
artists such as smooth jazz performer, Jonathan Butler, Adam Sandler,
and the Backstreet Boys. Now that she is under her own name and is
ready to roll.
Listen for New Features Coming to
WLNZ!!!
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LISTEN
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