Author's posts
New Music Monday for July 11, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Saxophonist and composer Chris Cheek has come to feel at home in a variety of musical contexts, from the infectious grooves of Brooklyn Boogaloo Blowout to the challenging global music of Guillermo Klein. Much of his compositional style’s effectiveness stems from his love and use of …
New Music Monday for July 4, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. It’s no secret that the Branford Marsalis Quartet can be as freewheeling off the bandstand as in performance. The saxophonist and his ensemble, made up of pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Justin Faulkner, are each bold personalities with strong opinions, equally intense in …
New Music Monday for June 27, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. At a time when jazz bandleaders from across the musical and generational spectra regularly lament the difficulty of keeping a band together, it’s all the more remarkable that a supergroup like One For All has stuck it out for twenty years. But the impeccably swinging …
New Music Monday for June 20, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. For the past five years, 29-year-old trumpeter Marquis Hill has been invigorating the Chicago jazz scene with his sleek approach to modern jazz, which often incorporates elements of spoken word and hip-hop. JazzTimes magazine praised his trumpet playing by stating, “His articulation, precise but unlabored, calls …
New Music Monday for June 13, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. For 20 years, Guillermo Klein has been creating some of the most singular and exciting music for his highly adept 11-piece ensemble, Los Guachos. His compositional style has been evolving over the years, though always utilizing elements of jazz, folkloric music of his native Argentina, …
New Music Monday for June 6, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Trinidad-born trumpeter Etienne Charles’ sixth full-length release, “San Jose Suite,” is an ambitious ten-part work exploring the histories, cultures and musical traditions of three Western settlements that share a name: San Jose, Costa Rica; San Jose, California; and Charles’ native St. Joseph, Trinidad, known as …
New Music Monday for May 30, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Both a joyous act of communion and a solemn farewell, “Beginning of a Memory” is a celebration of life, community and family expressed with the virtuosic wit and embracing humor that has made drummer Matt Wilson so beloved in the jazz community. Returning to the studio as …
New Music Monday for May 23, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. An artist whose music is at once timeless and yet utterly of its time, Gregory Porter solidifies his standing as his generation’s most soulful jazz singer with “Take Me to the Alley”, the much-anticipated follow-up to his sensational 2013 Blue Note debut. As he’s done with …