Behind The SFJAZZ Collective's Original Approach To Joe Henderson
The SFJAZZ Collective, an all-star octet representing the SFJAZZ institution in San Francisco, has an intriguing approach to repertoire. Each year, each member writes a new piece for the Collective,...
View ArticleAnat Cohen's Roots Of Rio
The genre choro — a word which means "cry" in Portuguese — is often described as "the New Orleans jazz of Brazil." Like its U.S. counterpart, both are Afro-Western hybrids which emerged in the early...
View ArticleCelebrating Billie Holiday's Centennial With Cassandra Wilson
Among the celebrations of Billie Holiday's centennial birthday anniversary is a new album from Cassandra Wilson. In Coming Forth By Day , one of today's top jazz vocalists salutes one of her idols,...
View ArticleThe Legacy Of The Jazz Organ In Philadelphia
In mid-century Philadelphia, dozens of organists reshaped jazz into a popular, swinging, danceable contemporary music. Often in trios with drums and guitar or saxophone, these organ players made church...
View ArticleVenezuela's National Jazz Orchestra Returns
This year Venezuela celebrates the 40th anniversary of its national youth music education program, known as El Sistema. Part of the celebration is to send one of its newest bands, a national jazz...
View ArticleA Tribute To Kenny Wheeler
The late Kenny Wheeler's stunning compositions and imaginative improvisations on trumpet and flugelhorn left deep impressions on generations of musicians. Two such devotees — trumpeter Ingrid Jensen...
View ArticleThe Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival With Akua Dixon
Every spring, a New York City community organization puts on a month's worth of jazz events centered around the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival turns...
View ArticleJimmy Greene Remembers A 'Beautiful Life'
Unfathomable. Unimaginable. These are among the words used to describe the recent mass shooting in a rural Texas church, which left more than two dozen parishioners dead, eight of them children. For...
View ArticleJoey Alexander And Jazz Prodigies Through The Years
Sometimes, musical talent emerges at an astoundingly early age. Jazz is no stranger to teenage phenoms — or even pre-teen wonders — but the improviser faces creative challenges that other performers...
View ArticleTootie Heath's 80th Birthday
The iconic drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath turned 80 on May 31, and Jazz Night went to the celebration. Heath, who first recorded in the 1950s with John Coltrane, has been active for over 50 years,...
View ArticleCelebrating Max Roach
To say Max Roach was a bebop pioneer, or a paramount innovator of the drums, or a prominent social activist would be accurate. Yet these individual labels fall short of his totality. Ali Jackson had a...
View ArticleCelebrating Betty Carter
For years, one of jazz's top institutions of higher education was "the school of Betty Carter," an esteemed collection of her band's alumni and singers bound together by the thrall of her titanic...
View ArticleUp And Down The Mississippi With Bill Frisell
For the past two years, the remarkably versatile guitarist Bill Frisell has curated Jazz at Lincoln Center's Roots of Americana series. For the final performance of the series, he took a crowd back to...
View ArticleCelebrating Rahsaan Roland Kirk
Rahsaan Roland Kirk, who would have been 80 this year, was a boundary-pushing virtuoso on multiple wind instruments (sometimes at once). It certainly rubbed off on Steve Turre, who apprenticed with...
View ArticleWayne's World: Wayne Shorter With The Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra
Wayne Shorter is a living legend — a saxophonist, composer and lifelong original thinker. He's never been afraid to be different, which is perhaps why he's accomplished so much. Among his...
View ArticleWein's World: George Wein At 90
There's no one person responsible for creating music festivals — or for making them such a huge part of how we witness live performances today. But starting in 1954, one person developed a recipe for...
View ArticleJason Moran Plays Thelonious Monk's Town Hall Concert
" Thelonious Monk is the most important musician, period," Jason Moran says. He laughs out loud. "In all the world. Period!" Moran is in a dressing room deep within the John F. Kennedy Center for the...
View ArticleArturo O'Farrill Presents 'Cuba: The Conversation Continues'
The pianist and composer Arturo O'Farrill knows better than almost anyone that more than 50 years of a trade embargo between the U.S. and Cuba hasn't fully prevented the exchange of jazz between the...
View ArticleThe Making Of Marquis Hill
About a year ago, trumpeter Marquis Hill, now 28, traveled to Los Angeles, played five tunes for a panel of judges, and won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition . You can think of it as a...
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