What's New
Suzanne's areas of specialization as a freelance writer are music, culture, and business. Her work has been published by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, Huffington Post, Washington Times, Institutional Investor magazine, and various trades. In addition to staff positions at two magazines (Institutional Investor and Insight at The Washington Times), Suzanne has held editorial or writing positions at several prominent financial institutions, among them The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, and Citi.
Suzanne contributes features and reviews to Downbeat magazine, Jazziz magazine, and The New York City Jazz Record, where she has served as the VoxNews columnist for 15 years. Other recent clients include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Classical Singer magazine, United Nations Population Fund, and World Goodwill @ the UN.
What's New
Suzanne has contributed in the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll since 2007, one of the two female jazz journalists first invited to participate.
Suzanne's chapter on Carla Bley appears in The Jazz Omnibus: 21st-Century Photos and Writings by Members of the Jazz Journalists Association.
It's exciting to watch a megawatt talent unfold in real time. When Samara Joy won the Sarah Vaughan Vocal Competition in 2019, she was still a student who'd only started scatting a couple of years earlier. Today she's an...
A profile of composer Maria Schneider on the release of her retrospective album, Decades.
Suzanne served as the NYCJR's VoxNews columnist for 15 years.
Oldies but Goodies
One of the first articles about the launch of a download feature on MySpace.
Suzanne wrote 90+ sidebars on economist Paul Krugman's op-ed pages for the New York Times Syndicate during 2010-11.
An anecdote about a little boy's happy warbling on a sweltering subway.
Cover story on multiple-Grammy-winning jazz pianist/composer Chick Corea.
Program notes for the L.A. Phil's tribute to this iconic singer.
Every year at Veteran's Day we hear a lot about the need for companies to do a better job of recruiting veterans. The good news is that corporate outreach to veterans is working. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that corporate hiring of veterans has risen by 11% since 2011, the year the "VOW to Hire Heroes" Act passed.
Below are the results of NPR Music's 6 th Annual Jazz Critics Poll (my 13 th annual, going back to its beginnings in the Village Voice). Wayne Shorter's Emanon was voted Album of the Year, and Cecile McLorin Salvant's The Window Best Vocal.
I voted in The Village Voice Jazz Critics Poll, edited by Francis Davis, during my years as the VoxNews columnist for All About Jazz.
Music, Music, and More Music
Pianist Orrin Evans wants to have a word. "I'll be 50 in March, and I have been doing this for 30 years," he said in a remote interview with DownBeat from his hometown of Philadelphia. "I'm really so glad to be on the cover, but...
An artist's profile of this exhilarating singer.
Aaron Parks’ Little Big serves as a winning ensemble for the pianist/composer, given the aesthetic demands of his writing.
U.K. vocalist Norman Winstone took the title of her new album, Outpost Of Dreams, from the first piece that she and pianist Kit Downes had ever written together: his music, her lyrics. She listened over and over again to Downes'...
This master musician shares insight into the craft of writing for a sophisticated jazz audience.
As a pianist, Sullivan Fortner is a master at shifting gears. He spent years as a key member of trumpeter Roy Hargrove's quintet. He and vocal phenom Cécile McLorin Salvant regularly perform in concert settings large and small, but most...
Downbeat presents the rising stars of jazz--the new generation of emerging artists we'll be hearing about for years to come.
What Hilary Gardner wanted most growing up was to move to New York and sing jazz. But she lived in a small town in rural Alaska, and "the first music I ever got paid to sing was Patsy Cline covers at dive bars," she revealed to the...
Samara Joy posted a personal video on her social media this fall in which her grandfather, Elder Goldwire McLendon, is singing "It Is Well With My Soul," surrounded by relatives gathered in a diner to celebrate his 93rd birthday. At...
Downbeat presents the rising stars of jazz--the new generation of emerging artists we'll be hearing about for years to come.
Album review of Moor Mother's provocative new release.
Australian composer/arranger Myles Wright chose the repertoire for his latest self-produced release, Gamer, with particular care. He was adapting classic gaming soundtracks for jazz orchestra and these tunes, though utterly captivating,...
The latest record from this supremely gifted pianist.
Major record labels were once notorious for trying to entice jazz musicians into selling out; they now find it more expedient to ignore them, leaving them to sell themselves.
Michelle Lordi's fourth album as a leader, singer, and composer.
Pianist-composer Sean Mason lives in New York - he moved there in 2018 to attend Juilliard - but he remains deeply immersed in the cultural heritage of his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. He summons this birthright on his 2023...
So many female histories are forgotten—if they were ever noted to begin with. On COIN COIN Chapter Five: in the garden (Constellation), composer and multi-instrumentalist Matana Roberts not only asserts this truth but seeks to remedy at least one such omission.
In some ways, it's hard to believe that Artemis is only 6 years old. Not just for the group's rapid ascent into the jazz firmament, but for its players' cool-headed resilience in the face of tectonic change. First, there was the...
For composers Sara Serpa and André Matos, the hidden world of nighttime is anything but asleep.
In 2010, when Darcy James Argue wrote "Dymaxion," a masterstroke for large ensemble, he knew it was the beginning of something bigger - a series of musical portraits, each celebrating a forward-looking 20th-century thinker. This...
During jaimie branch’s too-short life—she died in August 2022 at age 39—the forward-leaning trumpeter challenged many a status quo. You can hear her tearing down walls on Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)), her posthumous release for Chicago’s International Anthem label.
Pioneering composer/pianist Alice Coltrane joins the Downbeat pantheon of jazz greats.
The cover of Arturo O'Farrill's new trio album, Legacies, shows a 12-year-old O'Farrill sitting on his father's knee. His legendary father, bandleader Chico O'Farrill (1921-2001), liked to spend hours listening to...
The Saratoga Jazz Festival, now in its 46th year, hosted 21 top-tier acts at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center the weekend of June 24-25. SPAC, a historic venue nestled in the verdure of Saratoga State Park in upstate New York,...
Album review of the trio's latest release.
Three recent albums turn a spotlight on Balkan jazz.
Isaiah J. Thompson wins the 2023 APA competition in Indianapolis, Indiana.
This arresting collection of solo pieces for acoustic piano—entirely improvised—reveals the powerful musical mind that feeds all of Rachel Eckroth’s ensemble projects.
A pair of mountains along the Ipanema coastline serves as inspiration for Two Brothers, the latest offering from Brazilian guitarists Chico Pinheiro and Romero Lubambo. The 12 duets on this Sunnyside release give expression to the breadth of the instrumentalists’ musical passions, from classic sambas to jazz standards to contemporary pop.
Each track on singer Kurt Elling’s newest release with guitarist Charlie Hunter, Superblue: Guilty Pleasures, opens with a rhythmic signal: a rap on the rim, a kick against the skin, a thwack on a string. These salvos ignite the momentum of each tune—no question that what comes next is going to be decisive, powerful, and groove-heavy.
Hundreds of chrysanthemums filled the dim-lit room at Apparatus, a midtown Manhattan design studio where the Baylor Project performed for three nights last May. On a whim, the husband-wife duo decided to record the event. That album, The Evening: Live at Apparatus, would earn them their fifth and sixth Grammy nominations.
On Rosa Passos’ new live recording, Samba Sem Você (Storyville), the celebrated Brazilian singer/guitarist maneuvers the rhythmic currents and fast-paced melodies artfully, her longtime trio synchronized to her pace. By the time she recorded this album, the Bahian artist was two decades out from her debut, Recriação, the record that launched her reputation as one of the foremost interpreters of the Bossa Songbook.
A tenured professor at Austria's KUG, DeRose continues to head the University's vocal jazz program almost 17 years on, and Graz is her permanent home. From this perch at the center of European culture, she's crafted eight albums and solidified her global reputation as a top-tier jazz musician.
This is the 17th annual edition of the Francis Davis Jazz Poll, finally named for its founder and guiding light. The Poll collates top-ten lists from 151 jazz critics and journalists, and as such provides a wealth of insight into and data about this past year in jazz.
With his newest album, guitarist Bill Frisell honors several close friends who recently passed. From this place of loss springs a serene work inspired by these deep, lasting bonds.
Christian McBride never strays too far from his bass, not even when he's offstage. Not when he's producing an international jazz festival, or running an intensive workshop, or broadcasting a radio show. His bass informs just about every aspect of his professional life.
Review of this seminal quartet's latest release.
Singer-songwriter Claudia Acuña had thought about doing a duets album for a long time. The emotional exposure of the pared-down structure intrigued her. The concept behind the musical content excited her. And the first steps toward booking the sessions made her nervous.
On the surface of things, it seems counterintuitive that DownBeat critics would name the same musician both Jazz Artist of the Year and Beyond Artist of the Year - until you learn that the musician in question is Jon Batiste, and...
Bandleader Shabaka Hutchings departs from the usual with Afrikan Culture, his solo debut on Impulse! Records. Not that the Barbadian-British tenor player traffics much in the usual.
Standards, blues, theater, rock, R&B—jazz singers find musical incentive everywhere that groove and verse intersect. Six new releases show how this incentive, in a skilled vocalist’s hands, leads to artistic revelation.
When you hear vibraphonist Joel Ross play live, what amazes is his ability to extemporize compositions as fully fledged as if he'd fussed over their design for days.
Downbeat cover story on this multi-Grammy-winning singer's latest creative expansion.
Just how does William Hooker get all of his improvisational ideas to coalesce in real time?
Pat Metheny's most recent album, Side-Eye NYC (V1-IV)—launched through Modern Recordings on September 10—is of a new order altogether. The album features his latest group, The Side-Eye Trio, which Metheny formed in 2016 as a platform for up-and-coming players.
Jazz isn't an orthodoxy, a religion, a form of faith healing, or a tribal rite - you don't have to be in the room with it the moment it happens to reap its benefits. When I had to scramble to find new headquarters for my annual Jazz Critics Poll once before, I called it "the oldest, established, permanent, floating crap game" in ...
Ten years after Craig Taborn introduced Avenging Angel, the studio album that first captured the composer’s singular approach to improvised solo piano, he releases Shadow Plays, an extrapolation of the earlier achievement.
The Takatsuki Trio Quartett takes the first part of its name from the Japanese city that rests equidistant between Osaka and Kyoto. It takes the second part—the paradoxical part—from its gig format.
On William Hooker's second Org Music release of all new music, the prolific drummer again reveals an uncommon talent for spontaneous compositional design.
Warren Haynes: 'The First Sound That Moved Me' At last, Warren Haynes is carrying the banner of the blues. For the first time in the long life of his jam band Gov't Mule, the guitarist has hunkered down and recorded a blues album...
Jazzfest Berlin returned to in-person concerts Nov. 4–7 with the 58th edition of the acclaimed arts organization’s annual jazz festival. Building on last year’s innovative digital hook-up, this year’s festival aired concert broadcasts from four global cultural centers, featuring well over a hundred musicians in 40 improvisatory performances under the overarching theme Scenes of Now.
With Somewhere Different, Brandee Younger makes her much-deserved major-label debut as a leader.
“A big philosophy of mine is to follow what you love,” says free jazz legend Jay Clayton, who turned 80 this past October.
The concept behind Snark Horse, pianist Matt Mitchell and percussionist Kate Gentile's new release for Pi Recordings, intrigues as much for its exhaustive execution as for its perspicacious musicianship.
Given the tenor of the times, Carla Bley's extraordinary career shouldn't have happened. What were the chances in the 1950s that a teenaged girl from Oakland, California, would land smack in the middle of New York's vibrant jazz scene, much less emerge as one of its most lasting compositional voices?
Midway through the 2021 Jazz Foundation of America Gala on June 30, singer Norah Jones took her seat at the piano, the smattering of sequins on her jacket glinting here and there in the lights of the City Winery stage. "It's my first...
Purest Form (Blue Note) By Suzanne Lorge | Published July 2021 On James Francies' second Blue Note album, the pianist doesn't so much compose music as conjure fascinating nebulae of sound. Like Flight, his 2018 label debut, the sequel continues Francies' research into music as an abstract language grounded in the stuff of everyday life - vulnerability, resolve, love.
Todd Cochran, a chameleon at the keyboards, breaks a 10-year hiatus from recording with Then And Again, Here And Now. That Cochran chose to return with a standards album seems significant.
Below are the results of NPR Music's 8th Annual Jazz Critics Poll (my 15th, going back to the poll's beginnings in the Village Voice). These are the jazz albums that lit up a dark, unsettling year.
Sweet Megg (a.k.a singer Meaghan Farrell) and woodwind player Ricky Alexander tap into the enduring appeal of early swing on their debut, I'm In Love Again.
Daring Mind (Motéma 0385) By Suzanne Lorge | Published May 2021 In 2018, South Korean composer/leader Jihye Lee won the BMI Charlie Parker Jazz Composition Prize for her big band chart "Unshakeable Mind," which led to a commission for a second piece, "Revived Mind."
Once, when alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón was working as Charlie Haden's sideman, Ornette Coleman joined his former bassist on stage for an encore. Decades before, these two players had spearheaded the free-jazz movement as founding members of Coleman's revolutionary quartet. "That was the only time I ever saw them play together," Zenón remarked during an interview from his Manhattan home.
Jazz pianism today - in all of its compositional variety - serves as a roadmap to our shared cultural history. Through the innovations of ragtime and stride pianists like James P. Johnson and Jelly Roll Morton, swing players like Duke Ellington and Art Tatum, bebop pioneers like Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, and post-bop experimentalists...
Pat Metheny's latest, Road To The Sun, represents several departures for the individualistic guitarist-composer.
The trombone's warm, reverberating sound often goes unappreciated, contends Jennifer Wharton. Look to jazz history for the reason: The trombone, once the bellwether of swing, lost its popular footing when bebop arrived. Slides just can't move as fast as valves. "People forget that the trombone is so glorious," Wharton remarked in a remote interview from her New York home.
The little-known fact that light has mass intrigues Paris-based pianist Benoît Delbecq. In a quest to elucidate the physical manifestation of such ineffable things, the improvisatory composer launches The Weight Of Light, his first solo piano recording in more than a decade.
Many things recommend the former whaling town of Hudson, N.Y. besides its river perch, Greek Revivalist architecture and mid-century modern antique stores. Not the least of these is the Hudson Jazz Festival (Feb. 10-13 and Feb. 17-20), now in its fourth year.
It's hard to think of Chris Potter as only a saxophone phenom after There Is A Tide, his 2020 solo album recorded at home and launched during lockdown. A one-man jazz orchestra, he played 14 instruments on the release, his third for the U.K.-based Edition imprint.
With Adventures Of The Wildflower, Yelena Eckemoff's new release on her label L&H Production, the composer adds another voluptuous creation to her extensive oeuvre of nature-themed works. This modern jazz song cycle-18 distinct pieces in all-depicts the life of a columbine plant, from seed to eventual death and rebirth.
Only once does drummer Francisco Mela cede control on MPT Trio Volume 1, his first album with tenorist Hery Paz and guitarist Juanma Trujillo.
In the summer of 2016, pianist Keith Jarrett set out on a solo tour, concertizing extemporaneously in some of Europe's greatest performance halls. ECM, his label since the 1970s, was on hand to document the performances.
On This Land, The Westerlies, an impeccably calibrated brass quartet, continues to stretch our understanding of musical inventiveness. This time, the pair of trumpeters and trombonists join forces with vocalist Theo Bleckmann on a program that alternates between stirring protest songs and soothing palliatives.
The next generation of jazz leaders does not hesitate to push past artistic boundaries. From their positions of increasing visibility,... This content is available to subscribers only. To continue reading, please login or start a FREE 14-Day Digital Subscription. Bundle your subscription with our award-winning print magazine here.
In 2014, Gretchen Parlato's album Live In NYC earned her a Grammy nomination-a crowning glory to a decade of career triumphs-and then the singer-songwriter nearly dropped out of sight. Through the nine tracks on her new album, Flor (Edition), Parlato speaks to the personal transformation that inspired this career hiatus.
In 2020, soon after the pandemic reached Brooklyn, Ivo Perelman's base of operation for decades, the tenor saxophonist decided to relocate to Fortaleza, a city in the northeast corner of his native Brazil. Perelman appreciates the daily routines he's established since then: a jaunt to the beach, diving in the Atlantic Ocean and hours of studying bel canto opera.
In late June of 1964, in between Impulse Records studio dates for Crescent and A Love Supreme, saxophonist John Coltrane brought his classic quartet with 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.
Thanks to an anonymous custodian with a tape recorder, today we have Palo Alto, the live recording of an unscheduled, off-tour concert that Thelonious Monk and his road band played in the fall of 1968.
Michael Feinberg tackles the concept of place on From Where We Came, the bassist's originals taking their titles from the names of cities that fostered groundbreaking talents-a device that suggests more than a passing interest in the formative conditions begetting greatness.
Saxophonist Dayna Stephens' worldview differs from that of most people. As the survivor of a rare kidney disease, he understood the threat of the impending global pandemic earlier than most. "At the beginning [of the COVID-19 outbreak], I was really freaked out, because I'm on immunosuppressant drugs to keep the kidney I received," he recalled during a recent Zoom call.
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. On Aug. 28 Swift, billed as one of "The Three Divas," had played...
Diana Krall's This Dream Of You marks a turning point in the singer-pianist's career: a 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 her move in other musical directions.
On Jackets XL, Yellowjackets partner with WDR Big Band, one of Germany's most illustrious jazz organizations. It seems inevitable that these two ensembles would meet up: Longtime Yellowjackets saxophonist/EWI player Bob Mintzer has been conductor of the large ensemble for the past four years.
Live, News, COVID-19, Henry Threadgill, Potsa Lotsa XL, Anna Webber, Lakecia Benjamin, Tomas Fujiwara, Joel Ross, Kris Davis, Ingrid Laubrock, Craig Taborn In curating Jazzfest Berlin, Artistic Director Nadin Deventer always looks for a unifying narrative. For this year's edition, which ran Nov. 5-8, the fest's narrative wrote itself-but the plot twists kept Deventer hustling for months.
During Edward Simon's lengthy career, his profile as a go-to sideman rose with gigs for heavy-hitters like Terence Blanchard. His own 13-disc catalog as a leader has received less attention, but 25 Years works to correct the lapse.
By mashing up the names of two individualistic tunes, tenorist JD Allen arrived at the title of his new album, Toys/Die Dreaming. The first, "Toys," smolders as a freely melodic rumination, with Allen feeling out impressionistic lines alongside bassist Ian Kenselaar and drummer Nic Cacioppo.
For the fourth release on their newly established Jazz Is Dead label, composers Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad team up with Azymuth, a long-standing Brazilian fusion trio.
Fort Adams State Park-traditionally home to the Newport Jazz Festival-was uncharacteristically quiet the first week of August this year. Across the harbor from the park, sailboats rocked gently in the Newport, Rhode Island, marina and remained locked up tight. In town, only a few masked folks-girded against the pandemic-strolled the sidewalks.
Last fall, Blue Note Records made history by signing pianist Renee Rosnes' adventurous septet, Artemis, to its roster. The deal stands out for its departure from the norm: Blue Note typically represents solo artists and bandleaders. The self-led groups it does represent tend to be small.
Heading into his 80th birthday, Eddie Henderson issues Shuffle And Deal-a material addition to his vast oeuvre of leader dates. The album builds on several long-term creative relationships fostered during the trumpeter's prolific career.
New York-based vocalist Somi thought that her May 2019 date with the Frankfurt Radio Big Band in Germany was just a gig-an exciting one. It was her first performance ever with a big band, and world-renown pianist John Beasley had...
Love Letter, completed just weeks before Jimmy Heath's death in January, represents a significant first: Of the saxophonist's more than 20 albums as a leader, this poignant farewell is his only recording solely consisting of ballads.
Alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa continues to dig into the Charlie Parker songbook on Hero Trio (Whirlwind), a smart sequel to his 2015 album Bird Calls (ACT).
With Four Questions, Arturo O'Farrill proves prescient. On his first album of all self-composed pieces, the Grammy-winning pianist shoulders what he calls his "sacred obligation" to counter injustice. The exhilarating Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, O'Farrill's big-band vehicle, delivers both the pith and the punch of his message.
With touring on hold due to the pandemic, multi-instrumentalist and jazz organ icon Joey DeFrancesco has been staying put in his Arizona home. For him, this break from the road has been a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence: During his 33 years as a professional musician, DeFrancesco rarely has spent an extended period of time at home, instead living his life on the stage and in the recording studio.
Pianist Andy Milne uses building metaphors to talk about music. Construction is "about how you bind two things together-and that's how I think about composition," he explained during a March interview in the Harlem apartment that he shares with his wife, singer La Tanya Hall.
When the progressive trio Medeski Martin & Wood first got together, they all agreed to keep the ensemble going only as long as it felt good. Keyboardist John Medeski thought that maybe the group would last five years. Tops. That was...
Pianist Aruán Ortiz recalls the cacophony of ritmas that pervaded his childhood in Santiago de Cuba on Inside Rhythmic Falls (Intakt 339; 49:22 ***1/2). Joining with drummer Andrew Cyrille and percussionist Mauricio Herrera, Ortiz descends into a deep feeling on these 10 tracks, each one the personalization of some aspect of his musical life.
When saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin finished the fourth song of her set, "Pursuance," at Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan on Jan. 11, a techie gave her a time warning. The amped-up crowd expressed dismay. "Don't tempt me," she quipped into the mic. "Any woman who made a Coltrane album will play all night."
DB cover story on guitarist Pat Metheny and his latest album.
Below are the results of NPR Music's 7th Annual Jazz Critics Poll (my 14th, going back to the poll's beginnings in the Village Voice). 2019's results provided surprise after surprise. The only predictable winner was in Latin Jazz: Miguel Zenon's Sonero, the alto saxophonist's fifth victory in this category.
In 1997, Seattle musicians Matt Jorgensen and John Bishop birthed Origin Records, an independent label "run by musicians for musicians." An instrumentalist-led jazz label was a daring concept 23 years ago, when players had few recording options aside from those that the majors provided. But Origin was nothing if not daring.
The box set The Fred Hersch Trio: 10 Years/6 Discs captures a landmark ensemble in the studio, on the road and at its spiritual home, the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village. Two of the albums' six discs were session gigs and the...
Vocal doyen Nona Hendryx commanded the stage at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on Feb. 29, bedecked in a silver, winged spacesuit and dark helmet. "Welcome to this Afrofuturistic-cala-fragilistic evening," she told the crowd that assembled for Nona Hendryx and Disciples of Sun Ra in the Temple.
A few years ago, actress Glenn Close and saxophonist Ted Nash started to toss around ideas for a new collaborative project. They were fresh off the success of Nash's Grammy-winning recording, Presidential Suite: Eight Variations On...
Kurt Elling's work as a vocalist and poet-cum-lyricist always has exerted depth; vocal frippery isn't his style. So, it comes as a surprise that he digs even deeper into eloquence on Secrets Are The Best Stories, a new disc set for...
Dominican operatic tenor Francisco Casanova, recognized for his ringing, bel canto vocal style, died on 26 September 2019, in Providence, Rhode Island, at the age of 61. He had been undergoing treatment for gallbladder and liver cancer for several months before his death from complications related to this illness.
The curation for ECM Records at 50, Jazz at Lincoln Center's tribute to the famed record label on Nov. 1 and 2 in New York, must have been near impossible. How to choose from the legions of venerable artists who have recorded for Manfred...
On the third night of her June run at Jazz Standard in New York, Jazzmeia Horn leapt into her opener, the Betty Carter signature tune "Do Something," with a fleet, peripatetic scat. As she progressed further into the improvised number,...
Chucho Valdés and Chick Corea had never played together before they squared off across two grand pianos in the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York on Nov. 15. This four-handed performance was the first of two evenings for...
Jazz pianism today stands at an apex. There have been other moments in the music's history when innovation rushed ahead of performers and listeners. But more than a century after jazz's emergence, there are countless virtuosic...
Last year, Blue Note released Kenny Barron's leader debut for the label: Concentric Circles, a tour de force for quintet featuring, for the most part, the pianist's original compositions. Barron had recorded for Blue Note on other high-profile dates-as a sideman for bassist Ron Carter, saxophonist Sonny Fortune, singer Dianne Reeves and vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, for example-but never under his own name.
Pain might not be pretty, but honesty is riveting. Thirsty Ghost is an unabashed exploration of loss, heartache and, ultimately, healing. It represents a departure for vocalist Sara Gazarek, whose career began its ascent when she was a teenager singing with Wynton Marsalis at Avery Fisher Hall. It’s also the most exciting recording of her career.
On the penultimate evening of the 35th annual Belgrade Jazz Festival, which ran Oct. 21-28 in the Serbian capital, pianist Gerald Clayton sat alone on a darkened stage. His fingers seemed barely to touch the keys as he launched into "La...
First and foremost, Michael Janisch is a bassist. He’s about to drop his third solo album after having worked as a sideperson with dozens of A-list jazz players and toured relentlessly with innumerable bands. So, yes, a bassist first.
Vojislav Pantić, the artistic director of the Belgrade Jazz Festival, can recount all sorts of stories about the jazz greats who have played the event, which will present its 35th edition this fall. There was the time in 1971, the...
What would jazz without patriarchy sound like? It's a provocative question-and one that drummer Terri Lyne Carrington seeks to answer. To this end, she founded the Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice at Berklee College of Music, inaugurated at an open house at the Boston campus on Oct. 30.
One reason that reedist Paquito D’Rivera likes playing with Mark Walker is that the Grammy-winning drummer “doesn’t play too loud.”
Berlin-based singer-songwriter Céline Rudolph grew up immersed in multiculturalism, surrounded by different languages, the grooves of several continents and the tones of various instruments. Her mother taught her French and introduced her to the melodic richness of chanson. Her father taught her German and presented Rudolph with the compelling grooves of African drumming and the soft sweetness of Brazilian vocal jazz.
Bandleader and percussionist Adam Rudolph sees himself as an inventor, rather than a composer. Composers typically generate written music using a pencil or a music notation program, but he does more than that.
Violence. Brutality. Segregation. Exploitation. These are the words that singer/composer Sara Serpa uses when she talks about the family legacy that she inherited—a legacy that her latest musical projects tackle head-on.
There’s a photo of Sam Rivers at the White House, most likely from the so-called “White House Jazz Festival” on the South Lawn during Jimmy Carter’s administration. “That blue suit he had on? He made that,” said Monique Rivers Williams, daughter of the revered multi-instrumentalist. “He sewed all his own clothes ... he wasn’t just a musician.”
Linda May Han Oh has gotten used to carrying her double bass up the four flights of stairs to the Harlem walk-up she shares with her husband, pianist Fabian Almazan. No doubt she's had lots of practice of late. Besides composing for...
Free-jazz percussionist Andrew Cyrille introduced tenor player Edward “Kidd” Jordan from behind the kit at Brooklyn’s Roulette on June 11, the opening night of the 2019 Vision Festival. “We’re going to take you someplace else,” he said before jumping into mesmeric repartee with the saxophonist and monster improviser.
In May 2018, drummer Antonio Sánchez was performing with pianist/composer Arturo O'Farrill at the Fandango Fronterizo, a trans-border festival at the 18-foot-high fence that separates San Diego, California, from Tijuana, Mexico. What...
The day before guitarist/composer Hedvig Mollestad and her six-person band headlined the 46th annual Vossa Jazz Festival, which ran April 12-14, the group went hang-gliding in the mountains surrounding Voss, Norway. A small village on the train line between Bergen and Oslo, Voss is a popular center for extreme sports-longboarding, dirt biking, BASE jumping-and the local delicacy is half a roasted sheep's head, eye intact.
On Stage at JALC: Paul Jost by Suzanne Lorge, published on June 23, 2018 at All About Jazz. Find more Profiles articles
Much of drummer Allison Miller's life is about juxtapositions. She's the creative force behind two related but very different bands. She manages an active music career while co-parenting her two preschoolers. And she gives voice to her activism through her art.
Anwar Robinson has the kind of voice that could stop traffic-rich, soulful, and reverberant. Beyond his innately spectacular instrument, Anwar is well-schooled in just about all vocal styles-jazz, blues, R&B, pop, musical theater, spirituals. So it's no wonder that in 2004, he moved quickly into the winners' circle on the fourth season of American Idol, one of the most popular shows in television history.
With his new album, bassist Corcoran Holt demonstrates that a shared connection trumps musical athleticism at every turn.
Claudia Villela was all set to catch a December 2017 return flight to California from her native Brazil when a fire broke out in her Rio de Janeiro apartment. The singer and composer suffered several severe injuries that day, and the...
In his intro to “McCoy Tyner and Charles McPherson at 80,” a tribute concert honoring the two jazz giants at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater on April 5–6, saxophonist Sherman Irby summed up pianist/composer Tyner’s distinguished career in one sentence: “McCoy Tyner has presented the world with almost six decades of pure excellence.”
On the final afternoon of the second Oscar Peterson International Jazz Festival, a quintet led by pianist Kenny Barron launched into a magnetic, hard-swinging rendition of "I've Never Been In Love Before," the opener of a nearly two-hour set.
Saxophonist Camille Thurman kept her singing under wraps all throughout her time at the famed LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts in New York City. And in college at SUNY-Binghamton, she wasn't even a music major-she earned a...
Even as an expatriate engineer in Saudi Arabia, French-born saxophonist Stéphane Spira found opportunities to play. As a student, he'd excelled in math, a skill that gained him entrée to one of the best polytechnic schools in Paris,...
Adi Meyerson not only hears music, she also sees it. "I have this thing called synesthesia," the bassist said during a recent interview at Jazz at Lincoln Center, explaining that her brain is wired to link sound with colors, letters...
In January 2017, drummer Sanah Kadoura fell in her New York apartment and hit her head on the corner of a windowsill. Three days later, she was on her way to a gig when she became disoriented and unable to breathe, and by the next day,...
To say that French alto and soprano saxophonist Émile Parisien is doing well in Europe would be an understatement. In 2016, he received his third Victoires du Jazz Award, the French equivalent of a Grammy, in the album of the year...
Aug 14, 2018 8:55 AM Medeski Martin & Wood is set to issue Omnisphere (Indirecto), a live disc the trio recorded in Colorado during 2015... Aug 17, 2018 3:30 PM The creative seeds that 23-year-old trumpeter and vocalist Andrea Motis has been planting since her days as a teen...
Aug 14, 2018 8:55 AM Medeski Martin & Wood is set to issue Omnisphere (Indirecto), a live disc the trio recorded in Colorado during 2015... Aug 17, 2018 3:30 PM The creative seeds that 23-year-old trumpeter and vocalist Andrea Motis has been planting since her days as a teen...
This is what consensus in jazz looks like now: In winning the vote for 2017's best new recording in NPR's Fifth Annual Jazz Critics Poll, Vijay Iyer's Far from Over was named on 53 of 137 ballots - almost twice as many as either Steve Coleman's Morphogenesis or Tyshawn Sorey's Verisimilitude, which finished second and third, respectively.
Before NYC-based singer/actor Julie Benko took top honors in the American Traditions Competition in Savannah, Georgia, this past February, she'd already completed two Broadway contracts, two national tours, and several regional shows. In a recent phone call from her TheatreWorks Silicon Valley gig i
Rising jazz star Dara Tucker has added three new trophies to a rapidly growing lineup of awards. At this year's Nashville Industry Music Awards (NIMAs) she won Best Jazz Vocalist, Best Jazz Album, and Song of the Year for her April release, Oklahoma Rain (Watchman Music).
Jazz singer Alexis Cole's career has been anything but conventional. She's done residencies in far-flung places like Ecuador, India, and Japan. She fronted the Army's big band for several years as a soldier herself. And now she's a faculty member in the jazz program at SUNY Purchase.
Composer John Zorn headlined at the 2016 Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Québec, Canada.
I've voted in this poll by music journalist Francis Davis for the last 10 years.
MacArthur Grant winner and Grammy nominee Vijay Iyer raises social awareness with his music.
The Dominican Jazz Festival features some of the best Latin jazz musicians around.
Music tourists, eco-tourists, and art lovers are discovering Bogotá.
This cover story on pianist Ran Blake discusses his relationship with jazz theorist George Russell and Blake's own theory of jazz composition and performance.
I interviewed singer Dianne Reeves for this cover story the month before she won a Grammy for the album "Beautiful Life."
The Panama Jazz Festival, founded by pianist Danilo Pérez, both inspires and entertains.
Cover story on saxophonist Jan Garbarek.
I write CD reviews regularly for this monthly jazz trade paper.
Beyond its stylistic differentiators, jazz contains what vocalist Mark Murphy calls "a wonderful mystery," a mystery that was fostered in small, regional clubs around the US during the '30s-40s, when Murphy was developing the distinctive vocal style that launched his decades-long career. "I've seen this mysterious quality of jazz set rooms on fire," Murphy attests.
Review of two legacy Billie Holiday recordings.
Artist profile of Grammy-winning jazz singer Cassandra Wilson.
A review of the re-release of this beloved jazz soundtrack by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.
Review of journalist Ashley Kahn's book about this revolutionary jazz label.
CD/concert review of German jazz/cabaret singer Max Raabe.
Before her October 23, 2004 gig at the Jazz Standard, singer Nancy King hadn't played a major New York club in several years. She's never been signed to a major jazz label, although she's come close.
Jay Clayton's career as a singer defies easy classification. True, she most often sings jazz, but she's also collaborated with two of the most prominent modern composers of art music-Steve Reich and John Cage. Even when it comes to jazz, her palette is nothing if not diverse; she is as comfortable with free improvisation and electronic music as with standards.
On March 27-30, 1986, Steve Kuhn played the Village Vanguard with bassist Ron Carter and drummer Al Foster. This noteworthy gig produced two live recordings, The Vanguard Date (Owl, 1986) and Life's Magic (Blackhawk, 1986).