We're happy to announce that jazz singer, Ron Mitchell has signed with Pacific Coast Jazz for the distribution of his new album, "Jazzy Me, Live in Japan." 

Jazzy Me will be in stores on September 8th and is playing on radio stations globally now.

San Diego, CA – March 17, 2009 - San Diego-based independent record label, That Other Label, a division of Pacific Coast Jazz, announces the signing of singer, Sara Wasserman.   The agreement anticipates the release of her new CD, Solid Ground, slated for a street date of June 16, 2009.

“Meeting Sara Wasserman put a new energy into our company; the forming of That Other Label, a division of Pacific Coast Jazz, was done specifically to house artists that are outside of the jazz realm, and Sara is our first artist to enter that side of the house,” says Donna Nichols, founder and president of That Other Label/Pacific Coast Jazz.  “What made it so perfect for Sara to be our first TOL artist is that her album reflects both jazz overtones and also shows that her pop sensibility is strong - and she also knows how to rock!”  Nichols’ label has teamed up with the publicity team headed by Bob Merlis at MFH Publicity in Los Angeles for access to international media. Bookings will be handled by Brandon Mann at Crescendo Artists, based in Boulder, CO. The radio promotion component of the Sara Wasserman Solid Ground team will be determined in the near future.

Sara’s debut album, Solid Ground, is a journey marked by both individual self-discovery and collaborative artistry.   As the daughter of Rob Wasserman, legendary Grammy® Award-winning bassist, she was literally born to sing.  Over the course of the past seven years, her family’s roots and shoots led her to musical collaborations with Lou Reed, Christian McBride, Aaron Neville, Vernon Reed, DJ Logic and Stephen Perkins.  The result is Solid Ground, an album of songs that is both the reflection of a beautiful creative soul and a brilliant showcase for a truly spectacular voice.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the album will be donated to the Chandler Sky Foundation in support of Casa de Milagros, a home for orphaned and abandoned children in Cusco, Peru.

Pacific Coast Jazz, founded in 2003, is a boutique jazz label that also offers music management services and international distribution through their partner MVD Audio.  For information on That Other Label or Pacific Coast Jazz visit: www.pacificcoastjazz.com or www.thatotherlabel.com.  For more information and interviews with Sara Wasserman, visit www.sarawasserman.com, or contact Bob Merlis at MFH, bobmerlis@merlisforhire.com or 323.962.6887.   For more information on Chandler Sky Foundation, visit www.chandlersky.org.

Al Williams III and his Heart Song CD Win 2008 Washington Area Music Award for Best Jazz Recording!

Congratulations to Pacific Coast Jazz recording artist Al Williams III and all of our friends who worked on the Heart Song CD.  Al found himself holding a WAMMIE trophy once again at the 23^rd Annual Washington Area Music Awards on Sunday, February 15.  Heart Song won for Best Jazz Recording of the year!  It was an exciting night at the jam-packed State Theatre, and it was a great honor to be chosen by industry executives and fellow musicians at this annual event sponsored by the Washington Area Music Association and BMI.  This is Al’s third WAMMIE award.  He is thankful for the honor and sends out congratulations to all of the winners and nominees!

Congratulations to Pacific Coast Jazz!  The deal has been inked with MVD Audio and Entertainment and our original distributor, Big Daddy Music, for the new deal with the new company (post-merger) "Big Daddy Music & MVD Audio" for world-wide distribution rights.  We are proud to tell you that all PCJ titles will now be submitted for not just US retail but world-wide.

PCJ will continue to distribute digitally through it's partner, IODA. 

For more information, email PCJ through the contacts page of this website.

PCJ wants to welcome Horace Alexander Young to the family; his album "Acoustic Contemporary Jazz" will be introduced to the public on a world-wide basis on June 10, 2008.  Horace has distinguished himself as a freelance musician, arranger and composer. He has experiences in all three disciplines and been on international tours, recordings and performed with Sam "Lightnin" Hopkins, BB King, Bill Withers, Abdullah Ibrahim (aka Dollar Brand), Freddy Fender, Toots Thielemans, Regina Belle, Arnett Cobb, Jonathan Butler, Youssou N' Dour, The Manhattans, McCoy Tyner, Kenny Barron, The Chi-Lites, Dwight Sills, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Nancy Wilson, Marvin Stamm, Norman Brown, Mark Ledford and countless others. Having performed in nineteen countries across five continents his sax and flute have thrilled audiences at major jazz festivals in Montreaux, Hamburg, Leipzig, London, Paris, The Hague, Berlin, New York, New Orleans, Tokyo, Houston, Seattle, Laverkusen and Glasgow.

tracks on this recording were written by either Young or by Co-Producer Travis Milner. Pacific Coast Jazz is proud to re-introduce this 2006 release, to be followed in 2009 with a new release currently in the works. We're proud to have Horace as part of the PCJ family. Read more about Horace at his website. www.horacealexanderyoung.com

Things are progressing well with Bradley Leighton's newest release "Soul Collective."  Please log on to www.myspace.com/bradleyleightonsoulcollective to get a real taste for yourself.  The add date is March 17th and it's already most added on the R&R indicator chart.  Not bad...

Bruce Eskovitz remains on the JazzWeek chart and Roberta Donnay is still getting good play too.  If you're an independent artist looking for national retail distribution and you want to be in charge of your destiny, give us a look.  Go to the contact page and send us an email.

If you're a company or entity that would like to sponsor an artist, we have an artist who is looking for an a backer for a very special project.  Please be in touch.

We just returned from The Smooth Jazz Cruise with Wayman Tisdale.  Tom Braxton, on the PCJ label is Wayman's sax man and he was a featured artist on the cruise.  Bradley Leighton, also on the PCJ label, sat in with Tom on several occasions, as well as John Stoddart, Brian Simpson and Philippe Saise Trio.  We had the wonderful opportunity to say hello again to Gerald Albright - who we met last summer when Bradley Leighton opened for him in Hartford - and George Duke - right - and many, many other wonderful musicians.  The Smooth Jazz Cruise is not as smooth as it used to be; it's turning very funky and somewhat R&B.  We really enjoyed it and so appreciated the warm welcome to another PCJ artist to their stages.

Please welcome Roberta Donnay, jazz vocalist to the label.  Roberta can be found at www.robertadonnay.com.

Also welcome Bruce Eskovitz and the Bruce Eskovitz Jazz Orchestra.  Dr. Bruce can be found at www.bruceeskovitz.com. 

We're very proud to have both of these new artists with us and know that good things are about to happen for them!

Pop Talk: World of jazz is thinking small these days
by George Varga

"Let's get small" was the name of a popular Steve Martin comedy routine in the late 1970s, but it's also an apt description of how the jazz community reacted to the sometimes dramatic changes in the music industry over the past year.

Accordingly, the benefits of thinking small echoed throughout the 34th annual International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE) conference. It was held Jan. 10-13 at the Hilton New York and Sheraton New York and included approximately 8,000 attendees from 45 countries.

IN THE MOODY - James Moody brought down the house at the recent International Association of Jazz Educators conference with his ebullient vocal duet with Roberta Gambarini, left. Moody is featured on two Grammy-nominated albums, including Gambarini's 'Easy to Love.' CNS Photo courtesy of R. Andrew Lepley. With more major record labels cutting back, consolidating or eliminating their jazz divisions, the necessity of thinking small is greater than ever.

That reality was reinforced by last month's near-implosion of Verve Records, one of the oldest, largest and once most respected jazz labels in the country. The home to such top artists as Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Diana Krall, Verve will now be operated under the Universal Music Enterprises umbrella.

Verve's downsizing came the same month that the Tower Records chain, which offered the country's most comprehensive selection of jazz albums, closed its doors forever.

While these developments are a major blow for pop music, which is reeling in this age of digital music and legal (and illegal) file-sharing and downloading, jazz as a niche music has been hit even harder. "It's a major paradigm shift," said Bill McFarlin, IAJE's executive director.

"It may not be as huge as the shift from silent movies to talkies, but it's a big turning point. What you're seeing is the result of a shift in the way music is produced and consumed, and in the way people pay for it. One thing IAJE is trying to do is create a dialogue about where we're going. The survival of the recording industry will be very important for jazz."

Such adversity is nothing new for a music that has long been embraced around the world, but is still striving for more respect and recognition here in the land of its birth. To help achieve that goal, the National Endowment for the Arts this year will dramatically boost the size of its "NEA Jazz in the Schools" program. By the end of 2007, it will be available to 8 million high school students, up from 4 million last year.

"I think jazz has been so under-recognized and underappreciated in its home country, but it is alive and healthy," said Dana Gioia, the NEA's music-savvy chairman.

Gioia was at IAJE for the 25th anniversary of the endowment's Jazz Masters awards, which this year honored seven veteran artists, including pianist-composer Toshiko Akiyoshi and saxophonists Frank Wess and Phil Woods.

But at least two of this year's Jazz Masters, Woods and pianist Ramsey Lewis, are frustrated with the state of the music to which they have devoted their lives.

"Jazz is an all-encompassing art form that changed the planet. But without being able to regularly tour in Europe and Japan, I wouldn't have been able to keep my band together for the past 30 years," said Woods, who with San Diego sax great James Moody will receive the Grammy Awards' President's Merit Award Feb. 6 in Los Angeles.

Lewis, conversely, has a sizable audience in this country. The veteran pianist is heard and seen by millions each week as the host of the PBS TV series "Legends of Jazz" and the "Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis" radio show (which now airs in 175 cities nationally). His high profile notwithstanding, Lewis pointed his finger directly at musicians and the American jazz audience.

"Jazz people are passive people," he charged. "They don't spread the word. We don't go to non-jazz people, and say: 'Have you heard this?' We need to help ourselves, because Madison Avenue sees us, they watch us, and they watch all these students gather at IAJE. And then they watch us go back into the world and just talk to each other. "So we have to ask: What can we do to further the music? We musicians talk the talk, but how many of us walk the walk?"

For a younger generation of jazz artists and entrepreneurs, one increasingly popular solution is to do it themselves. "We're boning up on digital distribution," said Donna Nichols, who with pop-jazz flutist Bradley Leighton co-owns and operates Pacific Coast Jazz, a four-year-old record label based in San Diego. "The big goal is to keep our presence known after losing our presence at Tower and other retail outlets."

Trumpeter Dave Douglas and saxophonists Branford Marsalis and Sonny Rollins are among the prominent musicians who once recorded for major labels but left to launch their own independent record companies. Others, including former San Diego trumpeter Brian Lynch, have opted to record for ArtistShare, a jazz-friendly label whose albums are available only online, not at any retail outlets.

Like a growing number of jazz artists, Lynch also uses his Web site to market his music directly to fans. "Making money is not my direct goal," said Lynch, a member of Woods' band and a current Grammy Award nominee for "Simpatico," his superb ArtistShare album with Latin-jazz great Eddie Palimeri. "But you can make more money per unit by going directly to the consumer online, which is the same as selling your CDs at gigs." Lynch was one of several former or current San Diegans who performed at this year's IAJE. Others include pianist (and SDSU jazz professor) Rick Helzer and sax legend Moody, whose Jan. 12 performance with the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band included a crowd-pleasing vocal duet with Italian singer Roberta Gambarini on the Gillespie favorite "Blue 'n' Boogie." Moody was also featured at a Jan. 10 ceremony at Jazz at Lincoln Center in Manhattan, where he joined Nancy Wilson and other luminaries for the unveiling of a commemorative stamp honoring jazz vocal icon Ella Fitzgerald, with whom he toured extensively in 1946.

"I would like to congratulate the U.S. Postal Service for being hip enough to issue an Ella Fitzgerald stamp," Moody told the capacity audience, which included former New York Mayor David Dinkins and big band leader Gerald Wilson. Significantly, Moody was the only speaker whose salute to Fitzgerald also touched on the segregation and rampant racism of the era in which he and she achieved stardom.

For other IAJE attendees, the conference offered valuable insight about what it takes to achieve a career in jazz, if not fame. "This is great," said guitarist Nathan Jarrell, a senior in SDSU's jazz studies department. "It's not often you get so many incredible players all in one place at one time." San Diego vocalist Tokeli was even more effusive. "For a first-timer at IAJE, I ate it up," she said. "I sang, I listened, I networked. And I kept listening and listening - and learning. It was wonderful and inspiring and it will take me another week to soak it all up."

© Copley News Service

ANDREW GILBERT: JAZZ TALK

Sincerest form of flattery helps vocalist refine style
By Andrew Gilbert

TIMES CORRESPONDENT

Imitation can be a creative cul-de-sac for musicians, a dead end in the essential search for a personal sound. But it can also unlock new avenues, enabling a performer to expand and refine his or her own vision.

For the suave baritone vocalist Jonathan Poretz, the opportunity to step into the larger-than-life shoes of Frank Sinatra has proved liberating rather than confining. Long an admirer of pioneering jazz singer Mel Torme, Poretz has spent much of the past 18 months starring in various productions of "The Tribute to Frank, Sammy, Joey & Dean," a role he recently reprised at the Marines Memorial Theatre in a show rechristened "The Rat Pack Is Back."

The singer has discovered that becoming a student of Sinatra's technique has deepened his own approach, which was already built upon a jaunty sense of swing.

"I never tried to sing like Frank before, and then I had to emulate his phrasing and breath control," Poretz said from his home in San Rafael. "I went to Sinatra school for a year and a half, and I feel I'm a much more effortless singer."

Poretz celebrates the release of his debut album "A Lot of Livin' to Do" (Pacific Coast Jazz) tonight at Jazz at Pearl's in North Beach, where he's joined by the same top-shelf cast that accompanies him on the CD, including pianist/arranger Lee Bloom, bassist Jeff Neighbor, ace drummer Vince Lateano and reed master Noel Jewkes.

Born and raised in Bayside, Queens, Poretz gravitated toward music as a child. By 16, he was performing in a wedding band stocked with underemployed jazz greats such as trumpeters Charlie Shavers and Snooky Young and guitarists Barney Kessel, Chuck Wayne and Joe Puma.

While he was singing pop tunes, he was listening to the jazz veterans and soaking up the music's harmonic language and rhythmic pulse. "Hearing those changes and improvisations, getting swing inside my system, that was an education," Poretz said.

But as he became an adult, he moved away from music. By the time Poretz relocated to the Bay Area in 1995, his passion for performing had lain dormant for two decades. Two life-changing events, the birth of his daughter and death of his mother, jolted him into a creative crisis.

"I realized that I'm wasting my life not doing what I have a passion for," Poretz said.

At first he channeled his energy into musical theater, but before long he realized that singing was his true love. He started sitting in where he could and working local gigs around Marin County. He scored one breakthrough when drummer Harold Jones, a master who put in long stints with Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, encouraged him to bring in charts to perform with his big band (Jones also plays on four tracks of "A Lot of Livin' to Do").

Looking to break into the San Francisco scene, he approached pianist Lee Bloom one night at Jazz Club Nouveau, a short-lived jazz spot near Fisherman's Wharf. Impressed by Bloom's touch and lyricism, Poretz hired him for a gig, and once they started working together, Bloom quickly came to appreciate the singer's sense of purpose. The pianist has included him regularly on his gigs at the Orinda House, and they perform there next on Feb. 15.

"I started to realize he's a serious guy," Bloom said. "He had a maturity and commitment that I picked up right away. He's somebody who has a genuine love of theater. He knows all the shows, and that passion informs his performance. He's got a real natural sense of rhythm in his phrasing, a real feel for bebop syncopation."

In developing arrangements for the album, Bloom used Fred Astaire's classic 1952 Verve album "Steppin' Out" as a model, drawing on its lithe, uncluttered feel (in a coincidence, the Astaire session features trumpeter Shavers and guitarist Kessel, two of Poretz's associates from his teenage years as a wedding singer). While Poretz rarely ventures into unexpected territory in his repertoire, his taste in songs is impeccable.

Whether crooning the perfect Rodgers & Hart ballad "It Never Entered My Mind" or swinging ebulliently on the Harold Alren/Johnny Mercer chestnut "Come Rain or Come Shine," Poretz projects a forthright masculinity, vulnerable but virile, that often seems to have disappeared with the lost art of male jazz singing (Kurt Elling is the only male vocalist under 40 I can think of with a similar swagger).

While Poretz made sure to avoid slipping into his Sinatra persona for the recording session, he does share Ol' Blue Eyes' appreciation of jazz accompanists.

"At Pearl's, I want to leave room for lots of improvisation," Poretz said. "I want the guys to have fun. I mean, Noel Jewkes is an amazing player. He's so lyrical, he's really a singer, too."

Reach Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.

PREVIEW

• WHO: Jonathan Poretz

• WHEN: 8 and 10 tonight

• WHERE: Jazz at Pearl's, 256 Columbus Ave., S.F.

• HOW MUCH: $15

• CONTACT: 415-291-8255, www.jazzatpearls.com

• UPCOMING GIG: Poretz and pianist Lee Bloom perform Feb. 15 at the Orinda House, 65 Moraga Way, Orinda. Contact 925-258-4445 or www.orindahouse.com.

Pacific Coast Jazz has cut a deal for overseas distribution with UK-based The Woods. The Woods began exclusively distributing the label's catalogue in the United Kingdom as of October 1, 2005. They are the first European distributor to sign with the label, and are distributing in the UK our titles Just Doin' Our Thang (May 2005), Groove Yard (August 2005), and Bradley Leighton's third recording effort, Back to the Funk (also distributed in the US). "We wanted to get involved because we really like the music," says Trevor Flack of The Woods. "Leighton's recordings are rooted in the jazz tradition, but have a contemporary sound that we believe will appeal to a broader spectrum of radio stations."

Download this press release in PDF or Word format.

Pacific Coast Jazz announced the national release of jazz flutist and recording artist Bradley Leighton's disc, Groove Yard. The label is signed to an exclusive distribution deal with east coast firm, Big Daddy Music, and this marks the second national release with the distributor. Preceded by the release of Leighton's CD, Just Doin' Our Thang (May 10, 2005), Groove Yard has a street date of August 23, 2005. A follow-on CD by Leighton is also planned for release and national distribution early in 2006.

Artists please note: Pacific Coast Jazz is looking for additional artists for the label. Please contact Pacific Coast Jazz.

Download this press release in PDF or Word format.

Pacific Coast Jazz, a San Diego-based independent record label, has signed a national distribution deal with New York-based distributor Big Daddy Music. Big Daddy will be responsible for national distribution of Just Doin' Our Thang, the label's newest recording by jazz artist Bradley Leighton.

Pacific Coast Jazz, founded in 2003, is a small boutique label that also offers artist management services. "I was formerly an executive in the biotech industry and decided to combine my marketing and management talents with my real passion — music," says Donna Nichols, founder and president of the label. Though Leighton is currently the only artist signed, Nichols states that Pacific Coast Jazz is actively pursuing the acquisition of new artists. "We want to grow slowly so that we can continue to give a lot of individual attention to each of our artists, but this year, we definitely are looking at signing new talent that fits the label's quality and genre."

Nichols has assembled a national radio retail and marketing/PR team to support Just Doin' Our Thang's release and coincide with Big Daddy's distribution efforts. Thomas Sapper, of SOS Retail Promotions in San Franciso, will be responsible for retail sales and marketing; Jim Eigo of New York-based Jazz Promo Services will manage national publicity and tour support; Neal Sapper of New World'n Jazz will be responsible for radio promotion, and Marti Amado of Media Arts will handle San Diego PR and West Coast tour support. The marketing and radio retail campaign will be in full swing this summer and will include a national tour of concerts and jazz education clinics by Leighton.

Download this press release in PDF or Word format.