T here are conversations that begin before anyone has spoken, shaped instead by the residue of attention already in the air. The promotional image appears, … Read More “Jazz Vocalist and Composer ...

Fifty years ago, a United States Senator named John F. Kennedy delivered a speech to mark the first anniversary of a Hungarian student uprising against … Read More “The Gig: Haynes, His Way” ...

Like anyone else who was even remotely associated with the guitar back in 1976-either as aficionado or practicing musician-I was blown away by Pat Metheny’s Bright Size Life. With that solo debut on ...

Alvin Batiste, a New Orleans-born clarinetist who played in modern settings far removed from the swing and Dixieland music usually associated with his instrument, died Sunday from an apparent heart ...

Jazz singer Andy Bey, who died at 85 on April 26, 2025, was a striking vision at the piano: a compact, muscley, mahogany-skinned man, half-smiling and lost in his own inscrutable world. Bey’s midnight ...

We’re heading toward the end of 2025 and tallying up lists, which might take a few different forms here as December unfolds. But this first list is mine — no committee, no poll, just my subjective ...

A significant addition to Ellington’s latter day recordings, this double-disc release presents for the first time in true stereo every note that the band played at Newport over that famous weekend of ...

A massive project, but one well worth the effort and time that went into it, this collection of all existing recordings by Duke Ellington for Victor literally sums up his long career, since it begins ...

Perhaps you’ve read my commentary on Pat Metheny’s new Side-Eye album. But there’s more guitar this season. As a start, here are four releases from the first quarter of 2026 that set the bar high and ...

The Tedeschi Trucks Band, among the most durable inheritors of the Allman Brothers Band’s potent blend of Southern rock, blues, R&B, soul and unrestrained, jazz-influenced jams, has mined its own mix ...

Husband-and-wife team pianist-arranger Chip Crawford and singer Eve Cornelious are highly schooled artists who feel compelled to demonstrate their hip erudition in every bar of their music. The result ...

Though Carol Welsman’s lengthy career has been liberally dotted with fine albums, she reaches a lofty new plateau with Alone Together. It’s a well-traveled route. Many of the past century’s foremost ...