JAZZ NEWS — Cleo’s new building tops out, Owl building “historic”, jazz events rebound nationwide, New Mastersounds from Cervantes, Cyrille Aimee’s amazing life
The construction at Cleo Parker Robinson Dance reaches a milestone this coming Wednesday, January 8, 2025, the topping out of their new cultural center, which will include a new theater space, and a state-of-the-art facility for dance, including classrooms. Completion is set for November of 2025. (SOURCE: Cleo Parker Robinson Dance)
History Colorado can claim another piece of Black Denver saved. The Owl Club Building has been added to the National Register of Historic Places, as part of the Colorado Heritage for All Initiative. The Owl Club of Denver was founded in 1941 by railroad Pullman car porters, waiters, and businessmen as an all-Black philanthropic social club. Located near 28th and Madison Street in Denver, the Owl Club Building is a 1951 single-story rectangular structure of modernist design, and it still sports its original red Roman brick façade.
Famous Owls and Owlettes include groundbreaking DPS school board member Rachel Noel, Tuskegee Airman Omar Blair, first Black city councilman west of the Mississippi Elvin Caldwell, and the first Black board-certified surgeon in Colorado Dr. Bernard Gipson.
A few famous Owl debutantes: Condoleezza Rice, “Happy” Haynes, Cleo Parker Robinson, Charleszine “Terry” Nelson, and Elbra M. Wedgeworth.
The History Colorado Center at 12th and Broadway has an exhibit on the Owls through May. (SOURCE: History Colorado/Owl Club of Denver )
With all of the marketplace stressors on the live music industry, All About Jazz.com reports from their event database that we’re steadily working our way back to pre-Covid level, and they expect the number of jazz-labeled events will continue to grow to pre-COVID 2019 numbers by later this year. (SOURCE: All About Jazz)
The latest release from The New Mastersounds is a live set recorded in Five Points, “Live at Cervantes Volume 1” on Denver’s Color Red Records. The only digital single is a blues-funk track “Gonna Get in My Way,” featuring vocalist Shelby Kemp. The New Mastersounds and Color Red founder Eddie Roberts is partial to Cervantes, having performed several sell-out shows since the pandemic ended. And this release is for Color Red’s vinyl club only.
Fun fact: this is the first recording from that building since James Van Buren’s record “Hurry Up and Slow Down!” from 1990. The building was called the Casino-Cabaret back then. (SOURCE: Color Red Records – New Mastersounds)
Congratulations to Cyrille Aimee, who is great with child, in her second trimester. Aimee announced details of her amazing last few months, including a panic attack at the Denver airport, and the building of her treehouse home and recording studio in Costa Rica. Her latest release, “Á Fleur de Peau,” which translates “sensitive, like flowers on the skin,” is Grammy-nominated in the Traditional Pop Vocal category. (SOURCE: Facebook/Cyrille Aimee)
