Today marks the kickoff for the EMP Pop Conference, held this year in and around NYU instead of its usual environs at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. You may have seen it in "the news" recently:
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Who's Not Honoring Me Now? - Seattle's Pop Conference | ||||
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(Incidentally, that's me in the red shirt when Colbert flashes a photo of an empty-looking panel from 2010. The perils of a 9 a.m. slot!)
I've gone on record before as a fan of the conference and what it stands for — and how the jazz community should by all menas be more involved with it. So I am thrilled that this New York edition will feature a great deal of jazz: Esperanza Spalding in the keynote tonight; Butch Morris, Vijay Iyer and José James on Greg Tate's roundtable tomorrow; George Wein and Seth Abramson with Ashley Kahn.
I'll be on a "Jazz Alleys" panel with David Adler, Phil Freeman and Alex Rodriguez, Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m. (Those links go to each presenter's abstract.) Not a complaint exactly, but we're up against two of the conference's marquee panels: one with Greil Marcus, Ann Powers, Jody Rosen and Rob Sheffield; and another about mixtape culture, moderated by Sean Fennessy and featuring the likes of Zach Baron, Ryan Dombal and Tom Breihan. If you're reading this and just decided to skip my panel in favor of either of those, no hard feelings. It's killing me to miss 'em.
More later; I've got a paper to write. (Cough, cough.)
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