Point of Departure was the Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Award Nominee for Best Website Concentrating on Jazz for 2006 and 2007. There are great articles, photo essays, round table discussions, and CD reviews in this online Jazz journal published by Bill Shoemaker.

The design is clean and the writing is intelligent. The emphasis is on Free Jazz and the Avant-Garde, rather than mainstream popular jazz. Actually, I think that anyone who is interested in Jazz as high-art rather than just cocktail enhancement will find Point of Departure interesting.

Issue 23 (June 9th, 2009) features excerpts from:

(1) Workout: The Music of Hank Mobley by Derek Ansell (Northway Publications; London)
and The Jazz Composer: Moving music off the paper by Graham Collier (Northway Publications; London).

(2) A new column: Kevin Patton’s Future Shock

(3) Photographs by Gérard Rouy, Laurence Svirchev and Michael Wilderman.

(4) Recently reviewed albums

No registration or subscription necessary. Just log on to www.pointofdeparture.org and enjoy. Interested to hear people’s thoughts about this journal.

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