Zev Feldman has built upon rewarding opportunities throughout his career to become, within 15 years, the go-to archival jazz producer. Admiration for Feldman grows not only for uncovering high-value recordings thought to be nonexistent—until, thanks to his efforts, they weren’t. Also, Feldman strives for uncompromising quality to achieve advanced sound …
Drummer Brandon Sanders has followed his passion for jazz throughout his life. However, several detours diverted him from his growing recognition as a jazz drummer. Despite his initial indecisiveness, his friends—who recognized Sanders’s perseverance, dedication, generosity, and talent—encouraged him to record his first album, Compton’s Finest, at the age of …
Having established a reputation as an innovative jazz guitarist throughout his 30-year career, Rez Abbasi continues to polish his style as his music reflects his thoughts about changing life events. The event that led to the recording of his seventeenth album, Sound Remains, was the passing of his mother. Abbasi’s …
Perhaps because she hasn’t been a part of a single jazz community throughout her career of over fifty years, Sumi Tonooka hasn’t achieved due recognition for her significantly original contributions in advancing jazz. However, her recent projects should help expand the awareness that she deserves, particularly those with the Alchemy …
No doubt, the owners of the Blue Morocco in the Bronx, Sylvia and Joe Robinson, didn’t foresee the need to stock up on extra fire extinguishers before Freddie Hubbard played there on April, 10, 1967, just three days past his 29th birthday. Once Hubbard started playing, jets of fires immediately …
Miguel Zenón, one of this generation’s premier saxophonists, has been the leader on 18 albums since record producers recognized him as a unique talent deserving the jazz community’s attention. As a result, Zenón first recorded Looking Forward on the Fresh Sound New Talent label in 2002 and then Ceremonial on …
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And…don’t put all your eggs in one basket. As life’s challenges and opportunities arose, Pete McGuinness based life-changing decisions upon the well-meaning advice of those idioms. Metaphorically, of course. And now the results of his evolution have been packed up in an overflowing …
One would expect that the title of Lorraine Feather’s most recent album, The Green World, would refer literally to environmental urgency. Especially since the album’s cover features apparently calm, or no doubt confused, giraffes standing majestically but separately in a maze of hedgerows that appear to stretch to infinity, or …
Producer Jimmy Katz’s decades of experience with the art of jazz have culminated in the establishment of an innovative organization that has attained a unique standard of generosity for leading-edge musicians. Giant Step Arts, which Katz and his wife Dena established in 2018, assists its roster of jazz musicians with …
It’s not that regional big bands are making a comeback. Regional big bands—with top-notch musicians, imaginative compositions, and unique sounds—have never gone away. Many of them, like Count Basie’s Kansas City band or King Oliver’s New Orleans band, moved to bigger cities, where larger audiences and more lucrative opportunities existed. …
Chiaroscuro: illumination and darkness. Saxophonist Noah Preminger has always explored sonic contrasts of brightness and shadows to explore human emotions—not to the rigid extreme of tenebrism, but instead, through investigations of the shades in between. Ever since Preminger released his first album, Dry Bridge Road, soon after he graduated from …
In the booklet contained within Elemental Music’s package of Sun Ra’s recordings in Chicago, Marshall Allen, one of the musicians who succeeded Ra in leading his orchestra, states that “Rawas preparing the band for the 21st century.” Well, now is the 21st century. And a new generation of listeners is …
