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…
Madeleine Peyroux is set to issue Anthem (UMG) on Aug. 31.
(Photo: Shervin Lainez)The personal is political, but singer Madeleine Peyroux made sure to keep her pending album—Anthem (UMG) due out Aug. 31—from being preachy.
On the disc—which was produced by Larry Klein, who’s worked with everyone from Freddie Hubbard to Tracy Chapman and Melody Gardot—Peyroux explores contemporary society on a handful of tracks written during the 2016 election cycle. And “On My Own,” a first-person trip through a day in Peyroux’s life, finds the singer turning in a seemingly playful track that’s as tied to a Kinksian pop lineage as it is to lightly swinging jazz and the singer-songwriter genre.
“I think of ‘On My Own’ as a new song about loneliness,” Peyroux said. “I feel a little odd, too small, too big, out of place and alone. But the world around me is also strange, full of all sizes, all perspectives, constantly changing. So, perhaps I, too, can change.”
For more information about Peyroux’s work and upcoming tour dates, visit her website. DB
“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…
Butcher Brown, clockwise from top left: Marcus Tenney, DJ Harrison, Morgan Burrs, Corey Fonville and Andrew Randazzo. (Keyboardist Harrison couldn’t make the gig, so special guest Jacob Mann sat in with the band at the Reno Jazz Festival.)
Aug 19, 2025 12:41 PM
The band known as Butcher Brown has enjoyed the last half-decade basking in the glow from the twin engines of critical…
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…