Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify Regarded as one of Africa’s first international superstars, Zenzile Miriam Makeba elevated the spirit of a continent, including her native South Africa. Her courage, however, was met with three decades of political exile from her homeland followed by blacklisting in the U.S. after her marriage to …
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify There are a mere handful of guitarists that have changed the way we think about the guitar over the past five or six decades. Pat Martino is perhaps one of the greatest and best-known of those icons. His life story was the very definition of the term “genius.” …
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify Grammy-nominated vocalist Catherine Russell’s deep connection to her chosen material is part of a calling. As the daughter of pioneering and legendary musicians, pianist/orchestra leader/composer/arranger Luis Russell, and bassist/guitarist/vocalist Carline Ray, Catherine was born into jazz royalty. When asked to characterize her new album, “Send for Me,” …
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify “Dave Brubeck Trio—Live from Vienna 1967” is a newly-discovered recording of the extraordinary evening when the iconic Dave Brubeck Quartet was forced to take the stage as a trio. On November 12th of that year, the Quartet was nearing the end of their last tour of Europe. …
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify On his self-released ninth album, “Henri and Rachel,” titled for his parents, Tel Aviv-based saxophonist and composer Eli Degibri reveals his ability to convey profound emotions in the language of notes and tones. Recorded days before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, this is Eli’s first album …
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify Cecile McLorin Salvant, a 2020 MacArthur Fellow and three-time Grammy Award winner, is a singer and composer bringing historical perspective, a renewed sense of drama, and an enlightened musical understanding to both jazz standards and her own original compositions. Classically trained, steeped in jazz, blues and folk, and …
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and SpotifyAlvin Queen arrived on the jazz scene in the late 1960s and quickly became known as the drummer for icons, including Horace Silver, the Brecker Brothers, George Benson and Tom Harrell. He’s perhaps best known as the longtime rhythmic anchor in Oscar Peterson’s final trio, remaining in the …
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and SpotifyWhy would one of poetry’s most revered voices want to curate a jazz saxophonist’s album of gospel hymns and spirituals? “These songs are so important,” says Nikki Giovanni, one of Oprah Winfrey’s 25 Living Legends and a Maya Angelou Lifetime Achievement Award winner for 2017. “They comforted people …
