The future of jazz composition, arranging, improvisation, and performance is in good hands. A recurrent event in the jazz community is the preparation of eager young new talent to build upon the innovations of past generations. Yet another young jazz musician, Eunmi Lee, has arrived with intricate shaded colors, advanced …
Most often, Ivan Lins’s heart speaks through the voices of others. Lins considers himself, first and foremost, to be a song writer who creates melodies originating from the quiet music within his heart. Indeed, he reports that he has written hundreds of songs. Only a fraction of those songs has …
Pianist David Ian has become a specialist in jazz interpretations of Christmas music. As well he should. After performing as the lead guitarist in several groups, one of which received a Grammy nomination, Ian adopted an entirely different approach to jazz piano. Bill Evans’s influence led Ian to investigate more …
Much remains to be written about the resultant health care, cultural, economic, political, and social challenges wreaked by the COVID pandemic. And much remains to be written about the experiences during the first viral pandemic to occur in a hundred years. The documentation to be written about the pandemic hasn’t …
The Buselli/Wallarab Jazz Orchestra’s recording of The Gennett Suite is a remarkable event. Not only because of co-founder Brent Wallarab’s imaginative interpretations of influential early jazz recordings at Gennett’s studios. But also because of his vision for developing an eleven-part suite of four movements, lavishly produced, that honors the importance …
Trombonist Eric Goletz’s sextet may be playing standards on his newest album. But it’s anything but standard. On Standard-ized! all six musicians vivify standards with unremitting energy. Even the album’s title contains an exclamation mark. ! More importantly, they perform with unmistakable joy. Their joy is apparent even as the …
John Bailey is one of those superb jazz musicians known by other jazz musicians but not so much by the listening public. That is, not until 2018, when Bailey released his first album, In Real Time. The listening public then became aware of him, for real. It was like, “Where …
Jazz is alive again at the Café Bohemia! And it has been. Since 2019. Yes. The Café Bohemia. The one that Oscar Pettiford, especially, immortalized with his composition, “Bohemia after Dark.” The one that was the venue for some of the landmark recordings of the 1950’s, including The Charles Mingus …
Currently studying for her doctorate in clarinet performance at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Ana Nelson found the time to expand upon her earlier EP—with which she tested the reception of her music—with her first full-length album of original compositions: Bridges. Based upon the absolute professionalism and musical distinctiveness …
Zev Feldman, who goes by the sobriquet of the Jazz Detective, has moved on to apply his investigatory expertise, in a category of its own, to a new label. That label is named, appropriately enough, Jazz Detective. Jazz Detective is a division of yet another new music entity of Feldman’s, …
Calvin Keys celebrated his eightieth birthday in San Francisco’s Ruth Williams Memorial Theater in the Bayview Opera House on March 6, 2022. Due to concerns about the Omicron variant of COVID, the date of the concert was postponed for a month after Keys’s birthday on February 6, 1942. Thankfully, occur …
Significantly, the title of Miguel Zenón’s most recent album refers to more than one America. The multiplicity of Americas summarizes the point that he wants to make through his music: There was, and still is, more than one America. Zenón’s album includes a track, “América, el Continente,” that describes the …
The outpouring of tributes, the results of surprise, disbelief, and grief, occurred soon after Frank Kimbrough’s unexpected passing at the age of 64 in December, 2020. Kimbrough’s unique combination of personal and musical characteristics endeared him not only within the New York jazz community, but also with his listeners and …
Undaunted by the COVID quarantines, legendary jazz photographer/producer/audio engineer/promoter Jimmy Katz found the pandemic’s impediments instead to be challenges that led to memorable solutions. Due to COVID’s terrors, the live jazz venues shut down, and jazz musicians encountered reduced or no performance opportunities. As the owner, along with his wife …
A thought from Brian Landrus about his new album seems to be the point of conservation, humanitarianism, and/or altruism…and possibly, of human existence: “I need to be more aware of our world and the reason to be here—leaving something more than just taking.” A politician’s more-profound-than-intended vituperative criticism of another …
About Bob Bowman… Pianist Paul Smith had graciously agreed to form a band to perform at some corporate entertainment events that I had organized. Smith’s very brief solo on “It Could Happen to You” and Bowman’s on “Robert Frost,” both of which were recorded on Karrin Allyson’s Collage album, are …
