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…
A live Alice Coltrane recording from 1972 marks a turning point in her music.
(Photo: DownBeat Archives)Ella Fitzgerald, Ella In Rome: The Birthday Concert (1988)
Recorded in 1958 on her 41st birthday, Fitzgerald’s performance runs through a batch of standards just as she was entering a particularly verdant period of her career. Funneling “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” through Louis Armstrong was both a playful nod to the past and a profound exhibition of the bandleader’s skills as an entertainer.
Jimmy Smith, Root Down Live! (1972)
There are a lot of Jimmy Smith albums out there. And while he remains one of the most lauded organists of his—or any—generation, some of the studio dates are pretty staid. Root Down Live!, though, finds the bandleader working out what’s ostensibly a funk band, one so instantly groovy, the Beastie Boys co-opted the title track for a 1995 EP of the same name.
Joe Henderson Quintet, At The Lighthouse (1970)
The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, California, has hosted more than its share of notable recordings. Henderson’s group here straddles bop and a relatively sedate fusion ideal, with George Cables contributing some definitive electric keys. A front line of Henderson and trumpeter/flugelhornist Woody Shaw, though, is pretty unbeatable.
“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…
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…
Robertson had a penetrating, pliant sound with a remarkable softness at its center.
Dec 11, 2024 10:34 AM
Herb Robertson, a trumpeter and flugelhornist known for his wide-lens explorations of the avant-garde, died Dec. 10. He…
