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…
Composer Tom Harrell’s new studio album, Wise Children, hit stores Sept. 9 on Arista’s Bluebird label with 10 new, original compositions.
The 20th recording from the trumpeter and flugelhornist once again brings together his quintet of tenor saxophonist/flutist Jimmy Greene, pianist Xavier Davis, bassist Ugonna Okego and drummer Quincy Davis. The album also features guest vocalists Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Claudia Acuña and Jane Monheit and guest instrumentalists Howard Johnson, Café and Reuben Rodgers, among others.
“Every time I record a new album , I try to make it different from what I’ve done in the past,” Harrell said of his vocal follow-up to 2002’s Live At The Village Vanguard. “Everything is in flux. It’s like…surrealism: The minute you feel you’ve got a grip on life, it’s already slipped away and changed into something else. You can’t do the same thing over and over again.”
For more information, go to www.bluebirdjazz.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 —…
