Dec 17, 2024 9:58 AM
Tabla Master Zakir Hussain, 73, Succumbs to Illness
Tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain, one of India’s reigning cultural ambassadors and a revered figure worldwide…
The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival continued late into the night on Friday, April 29 with a free improvised set by bassist Cecil McBee and alto player, Gary Bartz. Joined by local composer, Hannibal Lokumbe on trumpet and Adonis Rose on drums, McBee and Bartz rounded out their group with percussionist, Alfred Uganda Roberts, who made his mark recording with Allen Toussaint, Professor Longhair and the Wild Magnolias back in the ‘70s. Playing to a small crowd of locals, McBee combined a New Orleans sense of rhythm and blues with odd times that sounded like they were caught somewhere between funk and free jazz.
At the Fairgrounds yesterday, Jamie Cullum played a new composition he said he wrote over the holidays when he was visiting family, looking at old photos. Using just piano and voice, the ballad, “Ordinary Life,” showcased Cullum’s rich rasp well, but some of his usual energy was lost on the big stage. Still, he managed to win back the baking hot audience with his Coldplay cover, “High And Dry.”
Playing a much funkier brand of piano, Henry Butler heated up the blues tent with a few tunes from his new album, “Homeland,” while the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars brought a little rock to their Klezmer swamp-funk with the help of a large dose of guitar feedback. Nicholas Payton joined the Doc Cheatham Tribute, playing traditional classics like Fats Waller’s “What Did I Do To Be So Black and Blue.” While Payton shines among older players, though, he seemed constricted by the formal format of the music and a somewhat predictable order of solos. Payton’s Sonic Trance plays today in the Jazz Tent, where the leader should feel more comfortable letting as loose as he does on the album.
“Watching people like Max Roach or Elvin Jones and seeing how they utilize the whole drum kit in a very rhythmic and melodic way and how they stretched time — that was a huge inspiration to me,” Hussain said in DownBeat.
Dec 17, 2024 9:58 AM
Tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain, one of India’s reigning cultural ambassadors and a revered figure worldwide…
“I love doing ballads,” Mike Stern says. “It’s just a part of me, some part of emotionally how I feel sometimes.”
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Stories of major shifts and rebirths among musicians during the past five years are common, from weathering the…
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
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Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
Queen Latifah extols Harlem and the Apollo Theater at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.
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“With jazz I thought it must be OK to be Black, for the first time,” says singer Sofia Jernberg.
Jan 2, 2025 10:50 AM
On Musho (Intakt), her recent duo album with pianist Alexander Hawkins, singer Sofia Jernberg interprets traditional…
