Blue Note Records To Open First Ever UK Pop-Up Store
It will feature exclusive framed canvas artwork, Blue Note 80 prints, audio & visual installations, exclusive merchandise and much more.
To celebrate the 80th anniversary of the legendary jazz record label, Blue Note Records will open its first ever UK pop-up store at Coal Drops Yard, Kings Cross on Friday, 15 November until Saturday 23 November, for eight days only, to coincide with the opening night of the EFG London Jazz Festival 2019.
The Blue Note store will offer a one-stop shop for music fans to see and experience the iconic label. It will feature exclusive framed canvas artwork, Blue Note 80 prints, audio & visual installations, exclusive merchandise (T-shirts & Tote-bags), plus vinyl, CDs, DVD and Blu-Ray copies of the recent highly acclaimed film Blue Note Records Beyond The Notes (Director; Sophie Huber), and a special revised 80th anniversary edition of the celebrated book; Blue Note: Uncompromising Expression: The Finest in Jazz Since 1939 by the late Richard Havers (Thames & Hudson).
An array of additional events at the store will be announced across the week with special guest artists, music, cultural speakers and label representatives.
In 1939, two jazz artists, Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis entered a rented studio in New York to make a recording for a German Jewish immigrant; Alfred Lion. The recordings were funded by an American artist, music teacher and writer named Max Margulis, and with the help of Lion’s childhood friend Francis Wolff, the three of them established one of the most important record labels in jazz history – Blue Note Records.
Today, Blue Note is regarded as one of the most iconic jazz record labels in the world and its music legacy has paved the way not just in jazz, but for music and culture in general. The unique and striking album cover art that the LPs display is often imitated but never equalled.
The highly respected and much-loved artists that have recorded for Blue Note over the past eight decades includes John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Norah Jones, Art Blakey, Donald Byrd, Cannonball Adderley, Dexter Gordon, and hundreds of others. Today the label is still going strong under the watchful eyes and ears of its President Don Was, who still maintains the label’s 80-year-old philosophy of allowing artistic freedom for the musicians that record for the company.
Blue Note Records: Beyond The Notes, directed by Sophie Huber, will be broadcast on BBC Four and BBC iPlayer on Friday, 15 November at 9.30pm.
Listen to the Best of Blue Note Records on Apple Music and Spotify.
UK English
Dr. Kenneth M Wolfe
November 11, 2019 at 10:26 am
Dear Sophi Huber,
I look forward to the screening of your Blue note on Friday BBC4
Francis was my uncle; his brother Henry came to England as he was ‘engaged’ to a non-Jew and could not marry in ber,in. He ‘invented’ the self-seal envelope. But his older brother Francis slipped off to New Hork just in time before the war be*an.
Francis came to London often and brought me some records and was a.was very jolly. But like my father he was wracked by some guilt at losing his parents in1942. I was at t(e stolperstein when it was put into thenpavwment outside KPMG In Berlin last yea4.
Francis was always a welcom visitor to our home east of London.
My father joined the British army a;d was told the cage his name fro Wolff to Wolfe
I should have been in touch before you finished the Blue Note programme and might ha=e added some detail.
All the best. I would be pleased to meet. I shall be in Ber’in in December