Jazz Articles
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Clint Maedgen: Life Before & With Preservation Hall
by Thomas Cole
My first memories of listening to music as a kid? I was probably listening to Fats Domino and rock 'n' roll on the radio. The power of AM radio at that time in the '70s was a huge foundational influence on me, as it has been for a lot of people in those days. And sittin' in the car with my father, as he played cassettes with Hank Williams and Bob Wills, among others, I remember filing all that away ...
read moreCannonball Adderly: Burnin’ in Bordeaux: Live in France 1969
by Mike Jurkovic
Intent on burning down the house, Burnin' in Bordeaux: Live in France 1969 finds Cannonball Adderley gleefully passing out the matches. Captured very, very, very live at the Bordeaux Jazz Festival in March 1969, Adderley and his fired up co-arsonists--pianist Joe Zawinul, cornetist Nat Adderley, Jr., bassist Victor Gaskin, and drummer Roy McCurdy--go scorched earth from the flare-up with Zawinul's spiky ember, the uber-toned “The Scavenger." It rips, it roars. It runs wild the rapids and holds strong the ramparts. It ...
read moreGeorge Coleman at the 25th anniversary of Smoke Jazz Club
by Paul Reynolds
George Coleman Smoke Jazz Club 25th Anniversary Concert New York, NY April 12, 2024 Jazz thrives in places that rarely endure for very long. Sure, there are the longtime jazz temples--the Village Vanguard in New York, Ronnie Scott's in jny: London, Preservation Hall in jny: New Orleans--but most premier clubs are lucky to last into adulthood, at least as jazz-only venues. The rent's too damn high, the music too commercially marginal. Smoke ...
read moreWadada Leo Smith / Amina Claudine Myers: Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens
by Karl Ackermann
Since the beginning of the 2000s, Wadada Leo Smith has produced a number of small masterpieces in the form of themed box sets. The prolific composer/trumpeter has aged into a creative period analogous to few of his contemporaries. His monumental Ten Freedom Summers (TUM, 2013)--a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize--America's National Parks (Cuneiform Records, 2016), and Trumpet (TUM, 2021), have each taken disparate roads in redefining creative music. The relative brevity and contemplative atmosphere of Central Park's Mosaics of Reservoir, ...
read moreJazz for Hollywood: Branford Marsalis and Laura Karpman
by Ludovico Granvassu
This time we are focusing on jazz-infused soundtracks that received Academy Awards nominations for Best Original Score in a Feature Film, because jazz does a great job a propelling a movie story forward. Kudos to Laura Karpman, the composer of the soundtrack for American Fiction and Branford Marsalis for the soundtrack of Rustin, two scores that have a life of their own even without the images they were was meant to accompany.Happy listening!Playlist Ben Allison “Mondo ...
read moreOmawi: Marta Warelis / Onno Govaert / Wilbert De Joode: Waive
by John Sharpe
The familiar made remarkable by unfamiliar surroundings. That is the gist of Andy Moor's cover photo for Waive which shows a sun lounging woman apparently about to be engulfed by an enormous wave. It is also a suitable summary of what Omawi, the combined talents of Amsterdam- based Polish pianist Marta Warelis, and the Dutch pairing of drummer Onno Govaert and bassist Wilbert De Joode, deliver on Waive, the third album from a unit which cultivates a collective ethos.
read moreKevin Sun: Emotion, Technique, and the Language of Jazz
by Lawrence Peryer
Today, the Spotlight shines On saxophonist/composer Kevin Sun. Kevin joined us to discuss, among other things, his dramatic double album from 2023, The Depths of Memory ((Endectomorph), which was released in two halves: From All This Stillness in July The Depths in Slow Motion in October. Kevin's an intense yet accessible player and composer--and a true working musician. He leads an ensemble most Tuesday nights at Lowlands Bar and appears regularly at Bar Bayeux and Ornithology, all three in Brooklyn, ...
read moreBecoming Ella Fitzgerald
by Katchie Cartwright
Becoming Ella Fitzgerald Judith Tick 560 Pages ISBN: 978-0-393-24105-1 W.W. Norton & Company 2024 In his 859-page monograph The Swing Era (1989), composer and historian Gunther Schuller skipped past Ella Fitzgerald. In 2011, when Judith Tick asked him about the omission, he responded that “there wasn't room to cover two singers, and he had chosen Billie Holiday" (Becoming Ella Fitzgerald, p. 429). Tick's meticulously researched and insightful Becoming Ella Fitzgerald fills that hole ...
read moreLizz Wright: Shadow
by Chris May
The singer Lizz Wright made a brief stopover in London in March 2024, on a tour previewing Shadow. She appeared for one night only at Cadogan Hall, a 900-seat auditorium big enough when full to feel buzzy but small enough still to remain close to intimate. It was a perfect setting for Wright and her characteristically à la carte programme of jazz, gospel, blues and folk music from multiple traditions. Shadow is an exquisitely crafted, low-key production ...
read moreWonderful now
by Scott Lichtman
What do you get when you combine the high-velocity beats of electronica with the virtuosic proficiency of fusion, the pristine sound quality of an ECM label record and the “goes down easy" catchiness of smooth jazz? When composed and performed at the highest level, it sounds like Anatole Muster's album, Wonderful now. This album gets better with repeated listening. Muster, who is 22 years old, creates nearly every sound on his orchestrations (except for several cameos), composes, writes ...
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