Nov 19, 2024 12:57 PM
In Memoriam: Roy Haynes, 1925–2024
Powerhouse jazz drummer and bandleader Roy Haynes died Tuesday in Nassau County, New York. He was 99. One of the few…
Jazzmeia Horn is among the 25 artists DownBeat thinks will help shape jazz in the decades to come.
(Photo: Emmanuel Afolabi)In pre-COVID times, Jazzmeia Horn recalled that her packed touring schedule meant “singing into my recorder while on the train, or on the airplane, or in the line to board the plane ... or in bathroom stalls.”
Since the pandemic began, the ambitious 29-year-old Dallas native with the stunning vocal technique has stayed busy. She used her forced hiatus at home in New York to spend more time with her two toddlers, work on a forthcoming big-band album with strings, finish a book she’d been writing for the past seven years and focus more on composing.
Horn’s original songs were what set her 2019 album, Love And Liberation, apart from her debut, A Social Call, released two years earlier. Both Concord discs were critically acclaimed and nominated for Grammys. The first album, with its mix of sass, politics and straightahead scatting, announced her as an artist with a distinct vision. The second album deepened that vision by adding eight original songs that displayed a mature talent as a composer.
She writes about her artistry in her self-published book, Strive from Within: The Jazzmeia Horn Approach. “What separates me from other artists my age is my brand,” she told DownBeat. “I think of myself as a business. I make my own clothes. I don’t have a manager. I don’t like to have people make decisions for me.”
Horn is far from being a typical millennial. “I don’t have a TV,” she said. “If I’m in a bar, it’s because I’m going to hear someone sing or play, or I’m going to play myself.” Musically, she said she carries “a reverence for the tradition and for the elders who have walked this path before me—the shoulders I stand on ... . My music will evolve, but I’ll stick to the tradition of straightahead, classic jazz. There’s nothing like it. And it makes me feel really good.” DB
This story originally was published in the November 2020 issue of DownBeat. Subscribe here.
“I treat every day like it’s Thanksgiving,” said Roy Haynes.
Nov 19, 2024 12:57 PM
Powerhouse jazz drummer and bandleader Roy Haynes died Tuesday in Nassau County, New York. He was 99. One of the few…
“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.”
Dec 3, 2024 12:52 PM
Stories of major shifts and rebirths among musicians during the past five years are common, from weathering the…
Jazz journalist Michael Jackson, left, dispenses a live Blindfold Test to drum master Billy Cobham.
Nov 19, 2024 12:26 PM
Drum king Billy Cobham, who, believe it or not, turned 80 in May, ruled the roost at January’s Panama Jazz Festival.…
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…