Feb 3, 2026 12:10 AM
In Memoriam: Ken Peplowski, 1959–2026
Ken Peplowski, a clarinetist and tenor saxophonist who straddled the worlds of traditional and modern jazz, died Feb. 2…
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.”
Peplowski first came to prominence in legacy swing bands, including the final iteration of the Benny Goodman Orchestra, before beginning a solo career in the late 1980s.
Feb 3, 2026 12:10 AM
Ken Peplowski, a clarinetist and tenor saxophonist who straddled the worlds of traditional and modern jazz, died Feb. 2…
Hammond came to the blues through the folk boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which he experienced firsthand in New York’s Greenwich Village.
Mar 2, 2026 9:58 PM
John P. Hammond (aka John Hammond Jr.), a blues guitarist and singer who was one of the first white American…
“I play what I want and what I like,” said Andrew Cyrille. “I use my knowledge artistically and professionally.”
Feb 3, 2026 12:15 AM
Midway through August, a few days after concluding a week at the Village Vanguard with the quartet that Andrew Cyrille…
Marsalis will, if he chooses to use it, have a strong voice in perpetuating his vision through a role in choosing his successors.
Feb 3, 2026 12:09 AM
For the better part of a year, rumors have been swirling that Wynton Marsalis was going to step down as artistic and…
Lettuce, from left: Eric Coomes, Adam Deitch, Ryan Zoidis, Eric Bloom, Adam Smirnoff and Nigel Hall
Feb 17, 2026 11:05 AM
They were Berklee misfits. Neither jazzy enough for the straightahead crowd at Boston’s highly prestigious College of…
