Author's posts
New Music Monday for April 2, 2018
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. “The Questions,” Kurt Elling’s newest studio recording, is his musical response to this moment in history and the widespread anxiety of our times. It touches artfully on challenges—personal, political, global, spiritual, and existential—and on hopes and aspirations for the future. Elling offers a vibrant and surprising choice …
New Music Monday for March 26, 2018
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Pianist Manuel Valera’s new trio CD, “The Planets,” draws upon and interprets the wisdom of the late Russian composer Nicolas Slonimsky whose “Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns,” originally published in 1947, became a seminal opus for musicians, composers, and educators. The likes of Arnold Schoenberg, Freddie Hubbard and …
New Music Monday for March 19, 2018
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. In the course of its 30-year lifespan, the trio of Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette—the group colloquially known as The Standards Trio—made many outstanding recordings. And “After the Fall,” overflowing with sparkling playing and dynamic interaction, must rank with the very best of them. The performance—in Newark, …
New Music Monday for March 12, 2018
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Akira Tana has been an elite drummer since the mid-1970s, working with jazz masters like Art Farmer, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Golson and others. He’s also been immersed in Brazil’s surging rhythms and sensuous melodies his entire career. His new album, “JAZZaNOVA,” was designed to showcase a superlative cast of …
New Music Monday for March 5, 2018
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Originally from the Minneapolis area, flugelhornist John Raymond moved to New York City after spending some time studying music in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He was able to establish himself on the New York scene playing alongside well-known musicians like Billy Hart, Orrin Evans and Kurt Rosenwinkel. But …
New Music Monday for February 26, 2018
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Before embarking on a career in jazz, Leslie Pintchik was a teaching assistant in English literature at Columbia University, where she also received her Master of Philosophy degree in seventeenth-century English literature. She first surfaced on the Manhattan jazz scene in a trio with legendary bassist Red …
New Music Monday for February 19, 2018
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. America has always been fascinated by the popular music exported back to us by our neighbors from across the pond. The British Invasion of the 1960s profoundly influenced music in every decade to the present. For the trio of Hart, Scone and Albin, the invaders are the …
New Music Monday for February 12, 2018
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. The inspiration for the DIVA Jazz Orchestra came from Stanley Kay, one-time manager and relief drummer for Buddy Rich. In 1990, he was conducting a band in which Sherrie Maricle was playing the drums. He immediately picked up on her extraordinary talent and began to wonder if there were …