Pianist David Budway and his wife Brianne Higgins, co-owners of Maureen’s Jazz Cellar in Nyack, NY, had been planning to fill the jazz club’s itinerary with vocalists for the entire month of January. In normal times, the five-year-old venue hosts an eclectic mix of music and entertainment: nowhere else will you find jazz headliners on the same venue listing as Dead Heads and drag queens. But last month Budway wanted to honor the memory of his sister Maureen, a jazz vocalist and educator who passed away in January 2015, by booking the likes of Sheila Jordan, Jay Clayton, Janis Siegel, and Paul Jost throughout the month. New shut-down orders for clubs in New York State scuttled these shows, however.
Bandleader Arturo O'Farrill translates the essential inquiry at the heart of W.E.B DuBois' tract, The Souls of Black Folks, into an epic symphonic exploration.
Out of the misery that was 2020, inspired ways of reaching jazz audiences have emerged. When the pandemic struck last March, Soapbox Gallery—the arty, minimalist concert space in downtown Brooklyn—responded swiftly to artists’ need for high-quality live-streaming performance options.
On This Land, The Westerlies’ fourth self-produced album, the impeccably calibrated brass quartet continues to stretch our understanding of musical inventiveness. This time, the four instrumentalists join forces with vocalist Theo Bleckmann on a program that alternates between stirring protest songs and their soothing palliatives.
Thanks to an anonymous custodian with a tape recorder, today we have Palo Alto (Impulse!), the live recording of an unscheduled, off-tour concert that Thelonious Monk and his road band played in the fall of 1968.
The first animated short with sound, Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie (1928), is synced to a ragtime melody, and the vocal mannerisms of Max Fleischer’s cartoon character Betty Boop, popular a decade later, derive from the work of Harlem jazz singer Baby Esther Jones.
In curating the Jazzfest Berlin, which ran Nov. 5-8, Artistic Director Nadin Deventer always looks for a unifying narrative. This year, the Festival’s narrative wrote itself. But the plot twists had kept Deventer hustling for months.
Diana Krall’s new release, This Dream of You (Verve), marks a turning point in the singer-pianist’s remarkable career: her first full-length, self-produced album. These 12 tracks, taken from earlier sessions with Tommy LiPuma (1936-2017), Krall’s dedicated producer since 1995, not only channel the collaborators’ past creative relationship, but further Krall’s move in other musical directions. (Read more…)
Almost 40 years and 25 albums in, the Yellowjackets continue to till new soil. For their latest release, Jackets XL (Mack Avenue), the ambidextrous fusion quartet has partnered with the WDR Big Band, one of Germany’s more illustrious jazz organizations. (Read more…)
Over the course of pianist Edward Simon’s lengthy career, his profile as a go-to sideman rose with gigs for heavy-hitters like trumpeter Terrance Blanchard and saxophonist Greg Osby. His own catalogue as a leader—13 albums over almost a quarter of a century—has received less attention. But the coming release, 25 Years (Ridgeway Records), will go a long way to correct this lapse. (Read more…)
The John Santos Quartet: The Art of Descarga digs deep into Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latin beat traditions, centering on the music of descargas—Cuban jam sessions full of exhilarating rhythmic possibilities. (Read more…)
In late June 1964, in between Impulse! Records studio dates for Crescent and A Love Supreme, saxophonist John Coltrane brought his classic quartet—pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones—to Rudy Van Gelder’s New Jersey studio to lay down a handful of abbreviated tracks. Recorded outside of the label’s purview, these off-trail tapes remained shrouded in near obscurity until September 2019, when Impulse! released Blue World, the output from that day’s session. (Read more…)
Singer Veronica Swift returned home from a gig in Italy just in time to celebrate the birthday of her mother, acclaimed jazz singer and educator Stephanie Nakasian. “I’m having an emotional crash after one of the most amazing weeks of my life,” Swift saidtold Downbeat by phone the day of the birthday party. (Read more…)
Bassist/composer Michael Feinberg tackles the concept of place on From Where We Came, his Steeplechase Records debut.
Tenorist JD Allen crafted the title of his new trio album, Toys (Die Dreaming), by mashing up the names of two of his most individualistic tunes on the recording. (Read more…)
For the fourth release on their newly established Jazz Is Dead label, Azymuth, composer-producers Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad pair up with the long-standing Brazilian fusion trio by that name. It’s a partnership forged in mutual dance-groove enthusiasm, where the starting point for collaboration is the relentless momentum of the trio’s samba-driven sound. (Read more…)
MIriam Makeba is probably the most influential jazz singer you’ve never heard of. according to composer/singer Somi, Makeba was the first African performing artist ever to achieve huge global commercial success. So why isn’t she a household name like Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan? (Read more…)
Fort Adams State Park— the Newport Jazz Festival’s traditional home—was uncharacteristically quiet the first week of August this year. (Read more…)
Last fall, Blue Note Records signed pianist Renee Rosnes‘ recently hatched septet, Artemis, to its roster, with a plan to release their eponymous debut album in September. This deal stands out for its departure from the norm. (Read more…)
Over the 80+ years of her career, Annie Ross succeeded in changing the course of vocal jazz history. Ross died in July, less than a week shy of her 90th birthday. (Read more…)
