Author's posts
New Music Monday for August 21, 2017
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. A decorated veteran of the Betty Carter Trio, pianist Cyrus Chestnut came out of the experience relatively unscathed with a style and directive clearly his own It’s one steeped in the gospel church traditions of his native Baltimore, but also enlivened by an open ear aimed at a …
New Music Monday for August 14, 2017
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Though he was only 43 years old when he passed away in 1975, Oliver Nelson left behind a body of work that is staggering in its breadth and depth. He’s revered for his work with Monk, Basie, Clark Terry and Jimmy Smith, his soundtrack work for television and …
New Music Monday for August 7, 2017
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Two of John Pizzarelli’s greatest influences, Frank Sinatra and the Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim, joined forces in 1967 to present a softer, sultrier side of Sinatra. Sinatraphiles consider the disc, “Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim,” one of Frank’s greatest, a meeting that found him in an …
New Music Monday for July 31, 2017
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Ahmad Jamal’s story and journey through music from his birthplace of Pittsburgh is nothing if not astonishing. He was inspired early on after meeting virtuoso pianist Art Tatum and became a professional musician at age 17, forming quartets and then trios. His 1958 disc, “At the Pershing,” spent 108 …
New Music Monday for July 17, 2017
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. People familiar with the top tier of jazz sidemen in New York City will know of Tardo Hammer’s name. Tardo is a fixture in mainstream Manhattan jazz clubs and has performed in Europe and Japan with some of the world’s leading jazz artists. Perhaps because the demand for …
New Music Monday for July 10, 2017
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. The All Angles Orchestra is a 15-piece ensemble that forces the classical and jazz worlds to collide. The combination of orchestral woodwinds, a string quartet, a mix of brass instruments, and a jazz rhythm section allows the group to produce a wide variety of amazing colors and textures, …
New Music Monday for July 3, 2017
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. It was late June 2007 that NEA Jazz Master Dave Liebman received a call to produce a show for theBBC 3’s popular program, “Jazz on 3.” Noting that July 17, 2007 marked the 40th anniversary of John Coltrane’s passing, he was asked to bring in Saxophone Summit, Liebman’s outfit …
New Music Monday for June 26, 2017
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Veteran musical colleagues Don Braden and Joris Teepe continue a nearly quarter- century of collaborations with their new disc, “Conversations.” Having met back in 1992 at a session in New York City, the two titans of jazz immediately recognized their potential to work well together. As …
