Search the Community

This week on Night Lights L.A. jazz historian Steve Isoardi joins us for "One More You Wrote Through Us: Horace Tapscott." In 1961 pianist Horace Tapscott turned down a chance to have a high-profile career with the Lionel Hampton band and spent the next several decades in Los Angeles, leading several community-jazz bands and doing his best to extend the mentoring and teaching tradition that he had experienced growing up during the glory days of L.A.'s Central Avenue era. The underground jazz scene that he helped to create and sustain--a vibrant, multi-arts mix of culture, politics, and African-American values--has now been documented in Isoardi's new book, The Dark Tree: Jazz & the Community Arts in Los Angeles. We'll hear some previously unissued music by Tapscott and UGMAA (Union of God's Musician and Artists Ascension) and the Pan-Afrikan People's Arkestra (from a CD included with the new book), along with solo and trio Tapscott piano recordings and a collaboration with Black Panther activist Elaine Brown. "One More You Wrote Through Us: Horace Tapscott" airs Saturday, February 24 at 11:05 p.m. EST on WFIU and at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville. It also airs Sunday evening at 10 p.m. EST on Michigan's Blue Lake Public Radio. The program will be posted, along with 12 extra interview clips not used in the show itself, Monday afternoon in the Night Lights archives. Next week: "Alice Coltrane, Ascending."