Jun 10, 2025 4:13 PM
Theo Croker’s Dream … Manifested!
Partway through his early set at Smoke Jazz Club, Theo Croker blinks the room back into focus. He leans over the piano.…
Trombonist Roswell Rudd will release Keep Your Heart Right, his fourth release with Sunnyside Records, on June 24. The drumless quartet features vocalist Sunny Kim, pianist Lafayette Harris and bassist Bradley Jones.
Keep Your Heart Right revisits some of Rudd’s older compositions with tracks like “Bamako,” here given English lyrics, and the title track, composed with saxophonist Archie Shepp in 1965. The album features several other gospel-tinged, New York-inspired tracks like “Suh Blah Blah Buh Subi” and “All Nite Soul,” the latter dedicated to the late Reverend John Carcia Gensel of New York City’s St. Peter’s Church.
“This horn player is definitely a frustrated singer whose playing has in turn been influenced more by singers than by other instrumentalists, such as Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Al Hibbler,” Rudd wrote in the album liner notes. “The songs came of necessity out of experiences, people, things that I read or heard, and the songs were piling up—always a part of my musicality.”
To record Dream Manifest (Dom Recs), Croker convened artists from his current and recent past ensembles, plus special guests.
Jun 10, 2025 4:13 PM
Partway through his early set at Smoke Jazz Club, Theo Croker blinks the room back into focus. He leans over the piano.…
“There’s nothing quite like it,” Springs says of working with an orchestra. “It’s 60 people working in harmony in the moment. Singing with them is kind of empowering but also humbling at the same time.”
Jun 17, 2025 11:12 AM
When it came time to pose for the cover of her new album, Lady In Satin — a tribute to Billie Holiday’s 1958…
James Brandon Lewis earned honors for Artist of the Year and Tenor Saxophonist of the Year. Three of his recordings placed in the Albums of the Year category.
Jul 17, 2025 12:44 PM
You see before you what we believe is the largest and most comprehensive Critics Poll in the history of jazz. DownBeat…
Galper was often regarded as an underrated master of his craft.
Jul 22, 2025 10:58 AM
Hal Galper, a pianist, composer and arranger who enjoyed a substantial performing career but made perhaps a deeper…
Chuck Mangione on the cover of the May 8, 1975, edition of DownBeat.
Jul 29, 2025 1:00 PM
Chuck Mangione, one of the most popular trumpeters in jazz history, passed away on July 24 at home in Rochester, New…
