Highlights
The Lasting Legacy of the Art Ensemble of Chicago - Bandcamp.com
In May of 1969, a Chicago-based quartet of radically experimental musicians made two decisions that resonate to this day. Faced with the grim reality of joblessness in Chicago, they accepted an invitation to move to Paris. Then, while preparing for the move, the group—then known as the Roscoe Mitchell…
The Lasting Legacy of the Art Ensemble of Chicago - Bandcamp.com
In May of 1969, a Chicago-based quartet of radically experimental musicians made two decisions that resonate to this day. Faced with the grim reality of joblessness in Chicago, they accepted an invitation to move to Paris. Then, while preparing for the move, the group—then known as the Roscoe Mitchell…
Where can you hear some of D.C.’s best jazz musicians for five bucks on a Friday night? At this church. - Washington Post
It’s Friday night in Southwest Washington, and Dick Smith is holding court.
The still-barrel-chested 74-year-old is on the dais at Westminster Presbyterian Church, addressing a sanctuary so full that people are left standing in the plaza outside the glass doors, waiting for a volunteer usher to hustle them into the …
The Inside Story of the John Coltrane Quartet’s Lost Album - JazzTimes (July 2018 cover story)
It wasn’t that the session was unknown, but it seemed a given that it would be forever unheard. Researchers and scholars of John Coltrane had long known that on March 6, 1963, the legendary saxophonist had taken his classic quartet (with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin…
Last of the Bohemian - Washington City Paper (March 18, 2016 cover story)
One lunchtime last September, pianist and composer Jason Moran sat down at the Watergate’s Campono restaurant with Omrao Brown, co-owner and managing partner of Bohemian Caverns. Both then 40 years old, they’d been friendly since Moran and his Bandwagon trio had played Brown’s U Street NW venue five years before…
Blues Alley is still swinging at 50 - Washington Post (July 26, 2015 weekend cover story)
Nobody really knows the age of the weathered red-brick carriage house in the alley off Wisconsin Avenue NW, just south of M Street in Georgetown — it could be as old as the District itself. Nor is most of the building’s history known. “It has been empty for so long,” wrote…
In the year jazz went avant-garde, Ramsey Lewis went pop with a bang - Washington Post
1965 was a watershed for jazz. The avant-garde revolution reached its apex that year, pushing veterans such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane in experimental new directions as young insurgents such as Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler started making their mark.
Meanwhile, a more populist group of Chicagoans congregated in…
2019
These D.C. musicians will delight kids — and their parents, too - Washington Post
Children’s music is a field that tends to fly under the radar even in a busy cosmopolitan area like the Washington region. It’s a niche market whose target audience doesn’t make consumer choices. Parents with small children often already have too much on their plate and as such will grab…
Barkan, Wiedmaier Team for Keystone Korner Baltimore - Downbeat.com
The worldwide celebration of International Jazz Day on April 30 included the grand opening of a club bearing an iconic name: Keystone Korner. Far removed from its original location in San Francisco, however, the new venue and restaurant is perched on the eastern edge of the Inner Harbor in Baltimore…
Dave Samuels 1948-2019 - Jazztimes.com
Dave Samuels, a Grammy-award winning vibraphonist best known for his work over three decades with the crossover jazz-fusion band Spyro Gyra, passed away April 22 in New York City after a long illness. He was 70 years old. His death was announced by the band on its official Facebook page…
Live Review: Jason and Alicia Hall Moran in Washington - Jazztimes.com
One of the perks of being artistic director at a major American performing arts venue? Putting oneself on the program. But the grand Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration wasn’t some vanity project. The collaboration between pianist Jason Moran and his mezzo-soprano wife Alicia Hall Moran premiered…
DC Jazz Festival Plans for 2019 Detailed - Downbeat.com
The DC Jazz Festival announced key elements of its 15th anniversary edition at The Pillsbury Law Firm Conference Center in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. This year’s festival is set to run June 6-16 at various performance venues and other spaces around the city. Its previously announced headliners include the Joshua…
Stanley Crouch, Bob Dorough, Abdullah Ibrahim, Maria Schneider Honored at NEA Jazz Masters Tribute - Downbeat.com
On April 15, South African pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim; the late pianist, singer and songwriter Bob Dorough; composer, arranger and bandleader Maria Schneider; and writer, critic and erstwhile drummer Stanley Crouch were honored at the National Endowment for the Arts’ Jazz Masters tribute. For the third consecutive year, the…
JazzTimes 10: Essential Lennie Tristano Recordings - Jazztimes.com
“As for Lennie Tristano, I’d like to go on record as saying I endorse his work in every particular.” —Charlie Parker, 1953
Born 100 years ago (March 19, 1919), pianist Lennie Tristano has represented controversy for most of that century. Nobody can deny that he grasped the cutting edge…
Debut of the KW Big Band - Alchemical Records
On February 25, D.C. jazz fans got a rare treat at Georgetown’s Blues Alley: the debut of a brand new big band. The KW big band features 18 musicians, who collectively perform the compositions and arrangements of guitarist Michael Kramer and pianist Tim Whalen, who also lead the band and …
Jazz legend Carla Bley delivers a night of beauty and magic at the Atlas - Washington Post
Carla Bley’s long association with the jazz avant-garde seems unfathomable when she performs in her trio. Sure, the titanic 82-year-old composer, arranger and pianist writes unorthodox, complicated stuff, but her melodies and harmonies are rich, consonant and exquisite. The sellout crowd at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on Friday night…
On “Ancestral Recall,” Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah Makes Rhythmic Music Sing - Bandcamp Daily
The title of Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah’s 14th release is deceptive. Ancestral Recall is many things, but a throwback it is not.
“Most people are going to think what I’m talking about is only in the past,” Adjuah acknowledges. “But when I use the word ‘ancestral,’ I don’t just mean...
Jeff Andrews 1960-2019 - JazzTimes
Jeff Andrews, an acclaimed and influential electric bassist whose virtuosic technique and fluid sound were a key component of the jazz fusion scene since the early 1980s, passed away in New York City on March 14, according to multiple trade publications and several musicians who were close to him. He…
Hear some of jazz’s most forward-thinking musicians at this Kennedy Center arts festival - Washington Post
Direct Current, the Kennedy Center’s festival of contemporary arts, now in its second year, describes itself as focusing on “new works, interdisciplinary creations . . . and innovative responses to topical concerns.” While all of that is undoubtedly true — a glance at its programming this year will make that clear — it’s not the…
JazzTimes 10: Lester Young - Jazztimes.com
Lester Young passed away 60 years ago, on March 15, 1959. He was one of the most profound figures of genius to ever grace the music world. His eccentricities alone were earthshaking, from his love of porkpie hats to his skewed playing stance to his self-invented slang (from which we…
How a flagging nonprofit D.C. jazz advocacy group picked up its tempo - Washington Post
In late 2017, Giovanni Russonello and Luke Stewart met at a cafe for a serious conversation. CapitalBop, their grass-roots D.C. jazz advocacy organization, was in an alarming slowdown.
“It was an existential crisis,” Russonello recalls. “A lot of things were really falling to the wayside.”
Russonello and Stewart founded the…
The Comet Is Coming: Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery (Impulse!) - JazzTimes
Submerged in Sun Ra’s Afro-cosmological vision, The Comet Is Coming’s brand of psychedelic jazz on their second full-length album sounds like it’s been fused with soundtrack music by Tangerine Dream. Synthesist Danalogue (Dan Leavers) tends toward old-school analog axes. Combine them with King Shabaka’s (Shabaka Hutchings) sax and bass clarinet…
Washington Women in Jazz Festival Founder Amy K. Bormet Explains Vision, Growth - Down Beat
Pianist Amy K. Bormet was hoping to create a grassroots network of female jazz musicians in Washington, D.C., when she started the Washington Women in Jazz Festival in 2011. She ended up building a network that stretches across the United States and includes not only musicians, but a new series…
Guitarist Ed Bickert Dies at 86 - JazzTimes
Bickert was Canadian jazz royalty—all the more so because, unlike such peer countrymen as Oscar Peterson and Paul Bley, he never attempted to break into the New York jazz scene but spent his entire career in Canada. “He’s not an aggressive guy, and in the United States, you really…
JazzTimes 10: Classic Organ Jazz Albums - Jazztimes.com
Though it’s been a part of jazz from its early days—Fats Waller recorded on it in 1926—the organ occupies a distinctive niche within the music. All the more so since the invention of the electric organ, which Laurens Hammond began marketing in 1935 and which caught on in…
Form is Relative on Jeff Cosgrove, Matthew Shipp, and William Parker's Near Disaster - Washington City Paper
In avant-garde jazz, it’s not uncommon for the listener to lose the drums. They don’t play notes or a beat, per se, and the collision of the other instruments tends to usurp the attention. Moreso when the other instruments are Matthew Shipp’s clanging, resonant piano and William Parker’s probing, kinetic…
Nate Wooley: Columbia Icefield (Northern Spy) - JazzTimes
It takes little imagination to associate the glacial, alienly beautiful soundscapes of trumpeter Nate Wooley on his album Columbia Icefield with the titular glacial, alienly beautiful landscape that graces the CD cover. The musical part of the equation is remarkably accessible—certainly more than its forbidding physical counterpart. Accessibility, however…
Ira Gitler 1928-2019 - JazzTimes
Ira Gitler, one of the most important voices in post-World War II jazz journalism and criticism and a historian who co-authored The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz, died Feb. 23 at an assisted living facility in New York. He was 90 years old.
His death was confirmed by his son, Fitz…
Critics’ Pick: Ron Stabisky - Washington City Paper
It’s hard to know where to place Ron Stabinsky in the context of jazz piano. He is an improviser and an avant-gardist—but not of the Cecil Taylor, relentless-atonal-blitzkrieg school. Instead, he starts in warm, richly rhythmic meditations that often develop into motifs that he can explore. Other times, the…
Album of the Day: Nubiyan Twist, “Jungle Run” - Bandcamp Daily
To anyone who grew up in the 1990s, certain elements of Jungle Run may be more apparent than others: neo-soul, acid jazz, a dash of trip-hop, and, yes, jungle. Yet even the most cursory listen—more than, say, 90 seconds—will dispel any notions that the album is merely…
Archie Shepp’s performance at the Kennedy Center was absolutely beautiful - Washington Post
Many years from now, when we take stock of the beautiful moments in our lives, everyone who was in the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall on Sunday night will remember Archie Shepp singing “Prelude to a Kiss.”
The legendary tenor saxophonist has been known to grab the microphone for a tune…
JazzTimes 10: Great Recordings of “My Funny Valentine” - Jazztimes.com
It’s become a cliché among jazz musicians and jazz fans: They never want to hear “My Funny Valentine” at a gig again. They do have a point. There are over 1,600 recordings of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s song, written for their 1937 musical Babes in Arms. The number of…
Critics’ Pick: Mark G. Meadows - Washington City Paper
The ever-restless pianist Mark G. Meadows is a finely honed composer in his own right, but he is no less skilled in jazz repertory. For evidence, look no further than Signature Theatre, where Meadows is at the core of a revival of the revue Ain’t Misbehavin’: The Fats Waller Musical…
On His New Album, Reginald Cyntje Soundtracks the Resistance - Washington City Paper
The remarkable thing about Reginald Cyntje’s Rise of the Protester is its thoughtfulness. The long history of jazz as protest music has always trended toward overt displays of anger, sadness, and/or bitterness—intensity, in a word. What’s more, Cyntje plays trombone, whose slide and big bore lend themselves to violent…
JazzTimes 10: Essential Herbie Nichols Tracks - jazztimes.com
Except for a short festival at the Stone in New York, the 100th birthday of jazz pianist Herbie Nichols (born Jan. 3, 1919) came and went with little fanfare. But then, Nichols spent his short life—he died of pneumonia in 1963, just 44 years old—being similarly ignored. The…