May 21, 2024 1:46 PM
Lizz Wright: The Artist as Gardener
Twenty years ago, Lizz Wright emerged as an astounding new voice in music with her superb 2003 debut, Salt, spiced with…
May 21, 2024 1:46 PM
Twenty years ago, Lizz Wright emerged as an astounding new voice in music with her superb 2003 debut, Salt, spiced with…
Mar 5, 2024 11:57 AM
With a propensity for chasing a rainbow of stylistic colors, Ross Pederson has embarked on a quest to speak as many…
Dec 27, 2023 1:46 PM
In his first Blindfold Test, pianist and composer Bill O’Connell worried a bit about guessing artists correctly but…
Nov 14, 2023 12:08 PM
Just when it feels like the darkened clouds are bearing down with ominous portends, when it feels that the music has…
Sep 12, 2023 2:13 PM
The viable flow of the blues continues to cultivate. Elemental and rooted, it has percolated through the American…
Aug 1, 2023 1:40 PM
Eighty miles east of the world’s jazz capital, the tony South Fork Long Island enclave of the Hamptons has long been…
Jul 27, 2023 2:33 PM
In 2017, Mary Halvorson unpredictably garnered the top guitarist award in DownBeat’s Critics Poll, outpacing…
Jun 20, 2023 2:49 PM
After more than 30 years of living as an expatriate in Italy, the amiable Ralph Towner is sitting comfortably at his…
May 9, 2023 12:40 PM
Alto saxophonist Jim Snidero’s latest date, Far Far Away, stands as a career milestone. He’s reached the plateau of…
Mar 8, 2023 11:20 AM
Eliane Elias scored a rarity in 2022. The renowned singer and remarkable pianist won two Grammys in the same year for…
Dec 27, 2022 11:53 AM
When Alex Acuña bought his home 37 years ago in the Lake Balboa neighborhood of Los Angeles County, the Peruvian-born…
Aug 16, 2022 2:26 PM
The pandemic not only shut down clubs, concert halls and festivals, but tours ground to a halt and the urge to travel…
Aug 9, 2022 2:49 PM
Bassist Marc Johnson says, “Rhythmically, a bassist has to perform very secure and confident phrases to really…
Jun 29, 2022 10:36 AM
During his long break from the road due to the pandemic, Marco Benevento didn’t just sit at home and twiddle his…
Jun 15, 2022 2:41 PM
Every four years, the American Pianists Association recognizes five aspiring American pianists as finalists to compete…
May 24, 2022 12:15 PM
Randy Brecker has done four Blindfold Tests, according to DownBeat archives. This one was his first in a long time,…
Feb 23, 2022 1:03 PM
Drummer Joe Farnsworth, like countless other New York musicians, was largely out of work for more than a…
Jan 25, 2022 12:23 PM
Having joined the Jazz at Lincoln Center education program 10 years ago, Todd Stoll has overseen the organization’s…
Jul 20, 2021 5:03 PM
The history of jazz is fraught with artists who’ve died too young. But what lives on is their music — the legacy of…
Oct 9, 2020 12:40 PM
With Flight, his spirited debut album released by Blue Note in 2018, pianist James Francies avoided musical…
Aug 18, 2020 8:57 AM
Jimmy Heath outlived most of his towering contemporaries during a career that saw the spirited saxophonist serve as a…
May 4, 2020 8:46 AM
In late January, Aaron Diehl elegantly delivered an intimate solo-piano show in front of a packed house at Mezzrow in…
Mar 30, 2020 10:40 AM
Canadian tenor saxophonists Anna Webber and Angela Morris push open the modern notion of large-ensemble music on the…
Feb 28, 2020 8:09 AM
Eric Alexander doesn’t understand how people can get bored. “There are so many things to do, and there’s so…
Jan 21, 2020 4:11 PM
At last year’s Umbria Jazz Festival, Nick Grondin made his mark without even lifting his guitar. He served as the…
Jan 21, 2020 4:12 PM
In contrast to the summer edition of the Umbria Jazz Festival, Umbria Jazz Winter in Orvieto, Italy, usually drives…
Oct 8, 2019 10:17 AM
On the Jimmy Lyons Stage at the Monterey Jazz Festival, which ran Sept. 27-29 in Monterey, California,…
Sep 24, 2019 11:23 AM
The phenomenon of “lost” jazz recordings finally emerging has caused waves throughout the jazz world. In addition…
Sep 9, 2019 8:17 AM
At this year’s INNtöne Jazz Festival in Austria, Abdullah Ibrahim vividly demonstrated the intimacy and cosmic…
Aug 15, 2019 10:15 AM
The two sold-out concerts staged in November at Los Angeles’ Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, both in honor of…
Jul 31, 2019 9:27 AM
When Sons of Kemet formed in 2011—a product of the burgeoning London jazz renaissance—the vibrant quartet drew…
Aug 9, 2019 5:55 PM
During the 43rd Umbria Jazz Festival, which ran July 11–21 in Perugia, Italy, crowds gathered in the streets for free…
Jul 1, 2019 9:20 AM
Even though she excelled as a math major at Columbia University, Stephanie Chou had already looked ahead to a saxophone…
Jun 12, 2019 9:43 AM
As many of its longtime attendees say, the INNtöne Jazz Festival, now in its 25th year, takes place in the middle of…
Apr 29, 2019 5:51 PM
Trumpeter Ralph Alessi’s third album for ECM, the post-bop, neoclassical, subtly disjunctive Imaginary Friends,…
Apr 1, 2019 9:29 AM
Concept albums help an artist establish an identity. They’re more than a mere exercise in composing songs as vehicles…
Jan 31, 2019 10:57 AM
Gary Burton’s new release encapsulates a remarkable, unprecedented career. In his first interview in about two years,…
Oct 5, 2018 10:04 AM
Midway into his career, pianist Ethan Iverson has experienced a universe of multifaceted artistry and in many collegial…
Oct 2, 2018 9:57 AM
Last year marked the 60th anniversary of the Monterey Jazz Festival, the longest continually running jazz festival in…
Aug 30, 2018 1:21 PM
When asked about the primary influencers of his big band project Big Heart Machine, multi-reed composer and leader…
Aug 24, 2018 9:13 AM
Call it a revelatory jazz moment. As a classical music prodigy in Seoul, South Korea, pianist Bongwool Lee was…
Jun 15, 2020 11:30 AM
Kurt Elling’s new album, The Questions (OKeh), is more evidence of his stature as one of the top vocalists in jazz.…
Jun 15, 2020 11:31 AM
A MacArthur Fellow, Harvard University faculty member and winner of the Jazz Artist category in the 2018 DownBeat…
Jun 15, 2020 11:31 AM
In her first Blindfold Test, Jazzmeia Horn—who topped the category Rising Star–Female Vocalist in the 2018…
Jul 4, 2018 9:53 AM
The career of pianist Christian Sands, 29, has shifted into high gear since the release of his Mack Avenue Records…
Jul 3, 2018 9:30 AM
As the buzz around him continues to build, more and more fans in the United States are learning the name Shabaka…
Jun 8, 2018 8:13 AM
High hopes always accompany the launch of a record label. But many labels falter due to the challenges of today’s…
Aug 2, 2018 3:38 PM
The indefatigable Dave Douglas is sitting in his composition room surrounded by comfortable couches, a piano, a wall of…
Sep 8, 2017 12:39 PM
Judging from the flood-related atrocities in New Orleans (Hurricane Katrina in 2005) and Baton Rouge, Louisiana (an…
Sep 10, 2018 10:17 AM
As a tribute to guitarist John Abercrombie, who died Aug. 22, DownBeat has posted the following feature, “The Moment…
Jan 10, 2019 12:17 PM
This year’s Umbria Jazz festival in Perugia, Italy, once again featured an ambitious multifaceted program that ranged…
Jul 25, 2017 10:45 AM
From the Afro-Cuban re-imagining of “Epistrophy” to a lively rap version of “Brake’s Sake,” Thelonious…
May 16, 2017 9:58 PM
Playing at the Village Vanguard in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village—the downstairs club that has been the home of 132…
Apr 22, 2017 9:12 AM
On the end of his five-city U.S. tour, pianist Tigran Hamasyan returned to New York (where he had lived briefly years…
Nov 17, 2016 3:44 PM
On Nov. 10, Chick Corea continued his 75th birthday celebration at the Blue Note in New York with what is expected to…
Aug 25, 2016 2:53 PM
It was a long time coming. Prior to this year, pianist/bandleader Arturo O’Farrill’s last appearance at the North…
Aug 12, 2016 1:26 PM
Even though he’s still riding the crest of his latest recording, Wanted (Sunnyside), harmonica virtuoso Grégoire…
Nov 9, 2021 3:03 PM
Esperanza Spalding buoys with moxie-plus, high-octane ebullience, spirited determination and respectful humility in the…
Sep 5, 2017 10:49 AM
There were no straight lines, no sudden leaps, no predictable trajectory in John Abercrombie’s coming of age as a…
Apr 6, 2021 1:55 PM
The picturesque stretch of Highway 1 along the Pacific Ocean coastline between San Francisco and Santa Cruz may not be…