Sunday, December 31 6pm
Toast of the Nation 2006 (8 hours live until 2am)
Live New Yea's jazz revelry from Boston, New York, Kansas City, and the Bay Area. Headliners include Kendrick Oliver & The New Life Orchestra in Boston, Steven Bernstein's Millenial Territory Orchestra in New York, Karrin Allyson in Kansas City, and the McCoy Tyner Trio from Oakland. Rhonda Hamilton, hosts.
6:00 p.m. - Sing! Stomp! Shout! with tuba player Kendrick Oliver and the New Life Jazz Orchestra at Berklee College of Music in Boston -- they swing like a young Count Basie Band gone to church. Vocals by Monica Lynk. Produced by WGBH Radio, Boston, and hosted by WGBH's Eric Jackson. - 7:00 p.m. - Songs from Kansas City vocalist Lisa Henry’s December 30 set in the Blue Room at the American Jazz Museum. The hour will also include a never-aired show from alto saxophonist Bobby Watson's Kansas City Jump Band at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, and a tribute to pianist Jay "Hootie" McShann (1916-2006), the last of the great Kansas City players.
- 8:00 p.m. - The Big River Concert for New Orleans, at the Chicago Symphony Center with guest host Branford Marsalis. Nicholas Payton, Jeremy Davenport, Victor Goines, Ellis Marsalis, Peter Martin, Don Vappie, Reginald Veal, and Herlin Riley conjure Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton and Sidney Bechet in this musical mix, described by the Chicago Tribune as "exuberant parade music and raunchy blues tunes, rowdy street marches and sweet jazz nocturnes."
- 9:00 p.m. - Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra rings in midnight on the East Coast at Tonic in New York, The MTO re-imagines 1920s Midwestern-style territory charts and giddily wails into 2007. Their roots are in the movie Kansas City, directed by the late Robert Altman, for which Steven was a consultant. A recent profile of Bernstein on Morning Edition sums it up: "There's magic in mixing the strange and the familiar!" Produced by Jazz 88 WBGO.
- 10:15 a.m. - The Karrin Allyson Quintet at the Kansas City Repertory Theater shines her down-to-earth Midwesternness on a pocketful of riches. Her CD Footprints -- with new lyrics fit to her favorite melodies -- topped the jazz radio charts at number one for seven weeks this past summer. It's a command performance from this KC daughter and her band, with champagne at midnight thanks to KCUR.
- 11:15 a.m. - A Fall 2006 Derek Trucks Band show at the Keswick Theatre near Philadelphia. At 29, Trucks is the youngest person to be named to the Rolling Stone list of All Time Great Guitar Players. The Mountain Time countdown to midnight will also include a December 31, 2005, party with The Big Bad Voodoo Daddy at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
- 12:15 a.m. - The McCoy Tyner Trio with Joe Lovano (sax) plays at Yoshi's in Oakland, CA. The power trio includes Christian McBride on bass and Jeff "Tain" Watts on drums. After just a few measures of McCoy, your heart will dance all the way to midnight Pacific Time, thanks to KCSM and host Bud Spangler.
- 1:30 p.m. - Reprise of Kendrick Oliver's New Life Jazz Orchestra in Boston.
