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 Pat Metheny Unity Group will release The Unity Sessions, one of two new albums from the guitarist on Nonesuch Records, on May 6
(Photo: Jimmy Katz ©2013 Pat Metheny Tours)Coming off a banner year that included a stint as artist-in-residence for the Detroit Jazz Festival, guitarist Pat Metheny will release two new albums that place him in the dual roles of leader and sideman. Nonesuch Records will release The Unity Sessions and Cuong Vu Meets Pat Metheny on May 6.
Both albums feature collaborators and colleagues with whom the 61-year-old Grammy-winning guitarist has worked for years. The Unity Sessions is taken from a filmed performance with the Pat Metheny Unity Group (drummer Anonio Sanchez, saxophonist Chris Potter, bassist Ben Williams, multi-instrumentalist Giulio Carmassi) that was recently released on DVD. The set comprises 13 songs by Metheny, including one he co-wrote with Ornette Coleman, and a well-known standard by Ray Noble.
The group’s first record, Kin (←→) (Nonesuch), was voted Jazz Album of the Year in the 2014 DownBeat Readers Pol.
On Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny, the guitarist joins a trio led by longtime Pat Metheny Group trumpeter Cuong Vu. (Other members of the trio include Stomu Takeishi on bass and Ted Poor on drums.) The album consists of five tunes written by Vu plus one by Metheny and one by Andrew D’Angelo.
Pre-orders of The Unity Sessions and Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny are available now at iTunes and nonesuch.com, each with an instant download of a track from its album (“This Belongs to You” and “Let’s Get Back,” respectively).
“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…
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…
Queen Latifah extols Harlem and the Apollo Theater at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.
Dec 12, 2024 1:58 AM
Cuban-American jazz trumpet legend Arturo Sandoval and Harlem’s Apollo Theater were among the honorees at the 2024…
“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…
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…
