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…
Trombonist Roswell Rudd had teamed with the Mongolian Buryat Band for an exploration of jazz and Asian Music. Blue Mongol, which is set for an Oct. 11 release on Sunnyside/Soundscape, is a 13-track synthesis of cultures that is an extension of a 2004 concert that features Rudd with musicians from Mongolia.
The Mongolian musicians on Blue Mongol are led by throat singer and multi-instrumentalist Battuvshin Baldantseren, a virtuoso on the bamboo flute, horse-head bass and jaw harp. Joining Rudd and Baldantseren are singer Badma Khanda, Dmitry Ayurov on fiddle, dulcimer player Kermen Lakyaeva and Valentina Mandykova on zither.
Rudd calls their music “art folk, because is combines the sophistication of conservatory, Western training with the indigenous performance style of their long history.
“The Mongolian instruments and the trombone create a sound that is the ideal acoustic realization of these Central Asian flavors,” Rudd said.
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 —…