New York-based vocalist Somi thought that her May 2019 date with the Frankfurt Radio Big Band in Germany was just a gig—an exciting one. (Read more…)

With touring on hold, Joey DeFancesco has been staying put in his Arizona home. This pandemic-induced break from the road is, so far, a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence for the top-ranked organist; in his 33 years as a professional musician, he hasn’t been home for more than two to three weeks at a time. He’s been anything but idle during the hiatus, however. (Read more…)

Heading into his 80th birthday, trumpeter Eddie Henderson issues his third release for Smoke Sessions Records, Shuffle and Deal—a material addition to his vast oeuvre of bandleader releases. The aesthetic pull of the album derives from Henderson’s deep musical affinity with the freakishly empathic pianist Kenny Barron. (Read more…)

Jimmy Heath’s final release, Love Letter (Verve Records), caps seven decades of the bop saxophonist’s sterling career. The album, completed just weeks before he passed away in January, represents an exciting first: Of Heath’s more than 20 albums as a leader, Love Letter is his only recording of all ballads. What a poignant farewell these ballads are. (Read more…)

In April 2009, bassist-composer Gregg August premiered his suite, Dialogues on Race, a multi-movement composition based on race-themed poetry. This month, he releases Dialogues on Race, Vol. I , a work that has only grown in significance in the years since its inception. (Read more…)

On Lennie Tristano: The Duo Sessions, the pianist wends his way through the liminal spaces bridging bebop, cool jazz, and free improvisation. This historic album’s 16 tracks, recorded after Tristano’s final public appearance in 1968 but never released, reveal not only how intuitively he parsed these musical languages but how skillfully he crafted improvisational relationships with like-minded musicians. (Read more…)

Alto player Rudresh Mahanthappa continues to dig into the Charlie Parker anthology on Hero Trio (Whirlwind), a smart sequent to his praised 2015 album, Bird Calls (ACT). This time, instead of using Parker’s material as the jumping off point for his own compositions, he strips the album’s three Bird tunes down to their most essential, the better to see how they work, perhaps. (Read more…)

Singer/composer/director Sara Serpa’s silken voice stands in contrast to the theme of her June release Recognition: Music for a Silent Film . The album, the soundtrack from Serpa’s affecting 2017 multi-media project, Recognition, takes to task 500 years of colonial abuses that her native Portugal perpetrated against the black citizens of Angola. (Read more…)

With Four Questions , Arturo O’Farrill proves prescient. On this release, his first album of all self-composed pieces, the Grammy-winning pianist shoulders what he calls his “sacred obligation” to counter social injustices. The exhilarating Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, O’Farrill’s big band vehicle for the last 13 years, delivers both the pith and the punch of his message. (Read more…)

When the progressive jazz trio Medeski Martin & Wood first got together, they all agreed to keep the ensemble going only as long as it felt good. Keyboardist Medeski thought that maybe the group would last five years tops. That was 25 years ago. (Read more…)

Pianist Andy Milne uses building metaphors to talk about music. Construction is “about how you bind two things together—and that’s how I think about composition,” he explained during a March interview in the Harlem apartment that he shares with his wife, singer La Tanya Hall. Mere feet away sat the glossy Juno Award that he’d won in 2019. (Read more…)

NEA Jazz Master Sheila Jordan, now 91, always has a smile at the ready. Since the beginning of the New York City lockdown, her Facebook newsfeed has been active with posts to and fro as friends, instrumentalists, and other singers check in, and she’s been quick to respond with cheery messages of hope. (Read more…)

Alto saxophonist Bobby Selvaggio writes inviting, cool bop heads that lend themselves readily to improvisation. Jazz soloing tends to feed on the energy of a live audience, which is why albums like Selvaggio’s new Live From The Bop Stop are so exciting. (Read more…)

Ricardo Grilli’s fascination with movement through time and space inspires 1962, the guitarist’s second album for the Brooklyn label, Tone Rogue Records. (Read more…)

Tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffery’s music education didn’t begin on the instrument that would earn him a Grammy as part of the Mingus Big Band. It began with the historic Trinity Choir of Men and Boys in New Haven, Connecticut, a stone’s throw from Yale University, where his mother worked. (Read more…)

On his first two albums as a leader— Waking Dreams (self-produced) and The Subliminal and the Sublime (Inner Arts Initiative)—vibraphonist Chris Dingman worked within ambient, classical, and jazz idioms to turn out meditative, inner-directed soundscapes for sextet. (Read more…)

Twenty-five years ago, vocalist Kurt Elling released a debut album that immediately begged comparisons between the newcomer and jazz luminary Mark Murphy. That album, Close Your Eyes, on Blue Note Records, earned Elling his first of 14 Grammy nomination to date. (Read more…)

Pianist Aruán Ortiz recalls the cacaphony of ritmas that pervaded his everyday life growing up in Santiago de Cuba on Inside the Rhythmic Falls. Joining with master drummer Andrew Cyrille and percussionist Mauricio Herrera, Ortiz descends into a deeply feeling state on these 10 tracks, each one the personalization of some aspect of his musical life. (Read more…)

When it comes to vocal albums, Blue Note Records doesn’t always color within the lines. The label, with its relatively undiluted roster of jazz instrumentalists, will otherwise often promote singer-songwriters from the pop, soul, and country arenas. This year, two new Blue Note releases enhance the label’s eclectic vocal palette even further. (Read more…)

Saxophonist Dayna Stephens dubbed his latest album Liberty for several reasons. He wanted to play around with implied harmonies, but he also wanted to make a broad statement about the inter-relatedness of humanity. Most personally, though, he wanted to celebrate his personal delivery from the burdens of thrice-weekly dialysis. (Read more…)