Sep 18, 2025 11:23 AM
Alternative (and Great) Careers for Jazz Graduates
Congratulations! After years of study, you’ve earned your degree in jazz performance. But let’s face it: Making a…
Chuck Manning Works for NASA … and plays jazz.
Sep 18, 2025 11:23 AM
Congratulations! After years of study, you’ve earned your degree in jazz performance. But let’s face it: Making a…
“I’ve told students, ‘I don’t mind if you use AI for this or that project,’” says MIT’s Pascal Le Boeuf. “‘But you need to tell me.’”
Sep 18, 2025 11:14 AM
A standard joke when it comes to discussing artificial intelligence, or AI, is that it’s developing so rapidly that…
Sep 18, 2025 10:00 AM
The 2026 DownBeat College Guide is an invaluable resource for music students, especially jazz students, to find a…
Gadabout Season developed over many months of recording sessions in Brandee Younger’s East Harlem living room.
Sep 16, 2025 11:52 AM
When she’s on the road, Brandee Younger enters a hybrid state of action and contemplation. Free of daily distractions…
“People don’t truly understand or know about the contributions of Black artists, Black composers, Black inventors,” said saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, who aims to change that with his new recording, Painter Of The Invisible.
Sep 16, 2025 11:46 AM
Ralph Ellison’s compelling 1952 novel Invisible Man used the notion of invisibility to explore the issues and…
“Think of all the creative people I’m going to meet and a whole other way of thinking about music and a challenge of singing completely different material than I would have sung otherwise to my highest level in dedication to the moment,” Elling says about his Broadway run.
Sep 9, 2025 1:18 PM
Kurt Elling was back at home in Chicago, grabbing some family time in a late-June window between gigs. Sporting a smile…
Trio aRT with its avalanche of instrumentation: from left, Pheeroan akLaff, Scott Robinson and Julian Thayer.
Sep 3, 2025 12:03 PM
Trio aRT, a working unit since 1988, shockingly released its very first studio recording this summer. Recorded in…
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…
“It’s energetic,” says Brittany Davis of feeling the spirits of the ancestors. “It’s interpretive. It’s a dance of sound and vibration. It’s a memory, it’s a wash. It’s washing over you.”
Sep 3, 2025 12:01 PM
Since she was 3 years old, Brittany Davis has been mimicking bird songs on the piano. Davis, who was born blind, also…
Mark Masters, right, with Billy Harper.
Sep 3, 2025 12:00 PM
The Rising Star Category of this publication’s annual Critics Poll was once called Talent Deserving Wider Recognition…
