Author's posts
New Music Monday for September 30, 2019
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. New York-based Ray Blue has been an important tenor saxophonist on the jazz scene for the past 20 years, leading his own ensembles on a regular basis since 2001. Among those he’s worked with over the years include Eddie Henderson, the Charlie Persip Super Band, Wycliffe Gordon, …
New Music Monday for September 23, 2019
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Miles Davis shocked the music world in 1985 when he left Columbia Records after 30 years to join Warner Bros. Records. In October of that year, he began recording the album “Rubberband” in Los Angeles. The musical direction Davis was taking during the sessions marked a radical …
New Music Monday for September 16, 2019
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. In his very productive career, Henrik Meurkens has excelled on both harmonica and vibraphone in many different settings—ranging from straight ahead jazz to Brazilian music. He’s collaborated with such notables as Herb Ellis, Mundell Lowe, Charlie Byrd, James Moody, Paquito D’Rivera and Ray Brown among many others. …
New Music Monday for September 9, 2019
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. “He wasn’t just one of the guys. For me, he was beyond that,” says Miguel Zenon about Ismael Rivera, the subject of his latest project, “Sonero.” “He exemplified the highest level of artistry. He was like Bird, Mozart, Einstein, Ali—he was that guy.” Zenon and his quartet offer …
New Music Monday for September 2, 2019
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. The art form commonly referred to as Latin jazz is a musical expression of the heart and soul of New York, an exciting reflection of the rhythms and spirit of the city’s merging of Latino and African-American cultures. The music of Bill O’Connell is a product of …
New Music Monday for August 26, 2019
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Ask Jimmy Cobb how it feels to have spent over seven decades as one of jazz’s pillars and he responds in typically effacing fashion, “I didn’t really expect to be alive all these years later—I’m thankful I’ve been able to be here this long.” Starting with his …
New Music Monday for August 19, 2019
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Several years in the making and infused with a lifetime of inspiration and appreciation, “Wareika Hill (Rastamonk Vibrations)” is Monty Alexander’s delightfully imaginative and compelling interpretation of the music of Thelonious Monk. Wareika Hill refers to a place in Jamaica where Rastafarian musicians used to gather, …
New Music Monday for August 12, 2019
Rio de Janeiro native Antonio Adolfo was just a teenager in the early 1960s when he became a part of the bossa nova revolution that was sweeping Brazil and the rest of the world. Not content to spend most of career backing vocalists, the pianist and many of his peers began crafting a …