Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Southern California Fires Hit the Jazz Community
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
Greenleaf Music recently released Meaning & Mystery from label owner’s Dave Douglas Quintet on April 11. The album, Douglas’ first quintet recording since 2004’s Strange Liberation, was recorded on Feb. 1 in New York and includes nine new original compositions by Douglas.
The ensemble playing on Meaning & Mystery has been together for six years and includes Uri Caine on Fender Rhodes, Donny McCaslin on tenor sax (who replaced Chris Potter), James Genus on bass and Clarence Penn on drums.
Douglas tapped into inspiration from poetry, visual arts, architecture, dance, film, and artists such as Lee Morgan and Anthony Braxton, as well as groups he said are “not given the appropriate credit for the great expansions in music.” Of the songs that fill Meaning & Mystery, Douglas said they are “songs that can be approached with –- that invite -– personality, expressiveness, immediacy.”
A national tour in support of the new album will launch with three nights at The Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles, April 20-23.
Tour dates and more information can be found at greenleafmusic.com and davedouglas.com.
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.
Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
“She said, ‘A lot of people are going to try and stop you,’” Sheryl Bailey recalls of the advice she received from jazz guitarist Emily Remler (1957–’90). “‘They’re going to say you slept with somebody, you’re a dyke, you’re this and that and the other. Don’t listen to them, and just keep playing.’”
Feb 3, 2025 10:49 PM
In the April 1982 issue of People magazine, under the heading “Lookout: A Guide To The Up and Coming,” jazz…
The Old Country: More From The Deer Head Inn arrives 30 years after ECM issued the Keith Jarret Trio live album At The Deer Head Inn.
Jan 21, 2025 7:38 PM
Last November, Keith Jarrett, who has not played publicly since suffering two strokes in 2018, greenlighted ECM to drop…
“The first recording I owned with Brazilian music on it was Wayne Shorter’s Native Dancer,” says Renee Rosnes. “And then I just started to go down the rabbit hole.”
Jan 16, 2025 2:02 PM
In her four-decade career, Renee Rosnes has been recognized as a singular voice, both as a jazz composer and a…
“If you don’t keep learning, your mind slows down,” Coleman says. “Use it or lose it.”
Jan 28, 2025 11:38 AM
PolyTropos/Of Many Turns — the title for Steve Coleman’s latest recording on Pi and his 33rd album overall —…