Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Blindfold Test: Buster Williams
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
On Tuesday, trombonist George Lewis was named one of the 24 winners the annual “genius grants” awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. With the Fellowship award, the AACM stalwart will receive a total of $500,000 over five years from the Chicago-based foundation.
Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the Fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight and potential to effect positive change. The purpose of MacArthur Fellowships is to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of society at large.
Lewis is the second member of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians to win the award, as composer Anthony Braxton won in 1994.
Lewis is currently a music professor at the University of California at San Diego; and he’s currently spending the semester at the University of California at Irvine.
“What I got from Percy was the dignity of playing the bass,” Buster Williams said of Percy Heath.
Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Don and Maureen Sickler serve as the keepers of engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s flame at Van Gelder Studio, perhaps the most famous recording studio in jazz history.
Sep 3, 2025 12:02 PM
On the last Sunday of 2024, in the control room of Van Gelder Studio, Don and Maureen Sickler, co-owners since Rudy Van…
The Free Slave, Cosmos Nucleus and Sunset To Dawn: three classic Muse albums being reissued this fall by Timer Traveler Recordings.
Aug 26, 2025 1:32 PM
Record producer and “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman has launched his next endeavor, the archival label Time Traveler…
This year’s Jazz em Agosto set by the Darius Jones Trio captured the titular alto saxophonist at his most ferocious.
Aug 26, 2025 1:31 PM
The organizers of Lisbon, Portugal’s Jazz em Agosto Festival assume its audience is thoughtful and independent. Over…
Trio aRT with its avalanche of instrumentation: from left, Pheeroan akLaff, Scott Robinson and Julian Thayer.
Sep 3, 2025 12:03 PM
Trio aRT, a working unit since 1988, shockingly released its very first studio recording this summer. Recorded in…
