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. …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. At just 25 years old, Veronica Swift has built a resume that even many late-career jazz singers would envy: tours as featured vocalist with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Chris Botti; a guest collaboration with Michael Feinstein; engagements at A-list clubs like …
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. The reversal of the flow of the Chicago River is one of the greatest engineering feats ever undertaken, and greatly improved the city of Chicago’s sanitation and public health while also having less positive consequences on the natural environment and cultural landscape for other parts of the …
