Dec 3, 2024 1:04 PM
Mike Stern’s Triumphant Recovery
Stories of major shifts and rebirths among musicians during the past five years are common, from weathering the…
Dec 3, 2024 1:04 PM
Stories of major shifts and rebirths among musicians during the past five years are common, from weathering the…
Oct 29, 2024 12:51 PM
In the often-fragile domain of record labels, technologies and means of production perpetually change — and sometimes…
Aug 20, 2024 12:12 PM
Jihye Lee joins the growing ranks of young, tradition-respecting and medium-rethinking big band leaders, blessed with a…
Aug 20, 2024 12:11 PM
On the index of jazz record labels bearing fitting and poetically resonant names, we might readily cite such historic…
Jul 23, 2024 2:12 PM
Over the last three decades, bassist Stephan Crump has established himself as one of the significant voices in jazz…
Jul 9, 2024 12:40 PM
Jacky Terrasson has always gone his own special way, finding expressive routes to accommodate both deep musical…
Jun 18, 2024 3:19 PM
Tending the soil of large ensemble jazz culture can be a challenging, labor-intensive and sometimes thankless job. The…
Apr 23, 2024 9:49 PM
It has become standard practice for jazz labels of any substance and historical depth to revisit, remaster and re-issue…
Apr 11, 2024 12:21 PM
For decades, the radar of important avant-garde musical culture, especially in North America, has steered artists and…
Apr 4, 2024 3:56 PM
Last year, the Vossa Jazz Festival in Western Norway officially joined the rare ranks of jazz fests at 50. It is an…
Mar 26, 2024 12:54 PM
At the risk of oversimplifying and romanticizing the story, Ambrose Akinmusire came bursting on the jazz scene at the…
Feb 21, 2024 11:14 AM
Rotem Sivan, the Israeli-born guitarist who has established himself as a strong new voice after moving to New York in…
Feb 13, 2024 1:53 PM
To put a simplified spin on the musical saga of Jonah Tolchin, the singer-songwriter and nimble guitarist was going…
Jan 16, 2024 11:37 AM
As part of the finale evening of this year’s Angel City Jazz Festival, bassist-bandleader Billy Mohler took the stage…
Nov 28, 2023 12:42 PM
Five years ago, the mighty Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy, paid lavish tribute to Quincy Jones on the occasion…
Oct 31, 2023 1:57 PM
Portland, Oregon-based guitarist Ryan Meagher abides by the power of certain “E” words: He practices eclecticism of…
Sep 19, 2023 1:52 PM
On the list of ambitious and paradigm-shifting jazz or jazz-related projects this season, Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri’s…
Aug 29, 2023 12:12 PM
For many musicians who found themselves under a veritable house arrest during the COVID lockdown of 2020–’21, the…
Jul 25, 2023 2:32 PM
In a sense, the Umbria Jazz Festival has been such a formidable and evolving part of the international jazz festival…
Jun 27, 2023 1:20 PM
It may come as a surprise to find that the artist known as Taj Mahal — born Henry Fredericks Jr. — has officially…
Jun 13, 2023 3:46 PM
Composer, pianist, accordionist and bandleader Ben Rosenblum’s musical purview is, by nature, a worldly one. Although…
May 30, 2023 1:31 PM
For nearly four decades, seekers of full-service avant-garde festivals in North America have been drawn to the…
May 16, 2023 3:37 PM
While the trajectory of a jazz musician’s career often follows a somewhat logical arc, others take more complex and…
Apr 27, 2023 11:31 AM
Jazz festival culture remains a relatively young, by most accounts birthed by promoter George Wein with the Newport…
Mar 14, 2023 12:06 PM
Beyond the musical merits and depths unfolded, Charles Lloyd’s latest concert at Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theatre…
Jan 24, 2023 12:18 PM
A pressing question is routinely faced by musicians deprived of live music outlets during COVID times: “What did you…
Jan 17, 2023 2:24 PM
Kurt Vonnegut, the late, great American novelist and iconoclast, was many things: satirist, science fictional…
Oct 4, 2022 2:13 PM
Musicians of a certain age and public visibility can lay claim to homecoming rites at special, sentimental venues,…
Sep 27, 2022 2:35 PM
When Brazilian guitarist Diego Figueiredo took the stage of Hollywood’s Catalina Bar and Grill this summer, it…
Sep 7, 2022 12:56 PM
Internationally, the jazz festival scene has been simultaneously enjoying and struggling through the processes of…
Jun 29, 2022 10:25 AM
Mark Turner is sitting in a coffeehouse bakery in Westwood, California, talking in circles. Concentric, full circles,…
Jun 29, 2022 10:34 AM
Festival International Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV) in Quebec boldly explores and extolls music of the…
May 10, 2022 2:52 PM
When it comes to major, all-purpose jazz conference/festivals across the Atlantic, all roads have led to Bremen for the…
May 3, 2022 2:59 PM
Like virtually every other jazz festival in the world, the venerable, adventure-leaning FIMAV festival in…
Oct 26, 2021 1:00 PM
Charles Lloyd belongs to an ever-narrowing elite club of influential jazz veterans who have managed to carry their…
Sep 7, 2021 3:10 PM
Brian Bromberg, Arizona-born but long California-based, has often resided in smooth jazz circles. But the bassist, now…
Jul 14, 2021 11:48 AM
Little epiphanies and discoveries can await the eager jazz festival-goer, even in the midst of a richly stocked…
Jul 27, 2020 5:12 PM
This summer, Steve Cardenas should be gigging, touring in others’ ensembles and putting energy into promoting his own…
May 11, 2020 3:58 PM
When it comes to the long, storied career of Robert Cray, time and musical fashion have been slippery slopes of the…
Apr 24, 2020 4:23 PM
When considering the artistic legacy of Bakersfield, California, many people think of country music legends Merle…
Jan 23, 2020 8:23 PM
On the occasion of his 80th birthday, saxophonist Charles Lloyd staged a concert of homecoming proportions. The show on…
Dec 10, 2019 1:59 PM
Unlike many festivals, Helsinki’s venturesome We Jazz Festival, which ran Dec. 1-8, is an inherently restless…
Nov 3, 2019 4:24 PM
Perched about 400 miles above Stockholm, the cultured university town of Umeå hosted its namesake festival, curated by…
Oct 29, 2019 9:36 AM
A search for the heart of the ECM Records operation leads to a small, quiet space located on the second floor of a…
Sep 5, 2019 11:26 AM
Jazzfestival Saalfelden celebrated its milestone 40th anniversary Aug. 22 with a prefestival night at The Ranch, a…
Sep 11, 2019 9:35 AM
Among the ranks of free-jazz artists, British saxophonist Evan Parker is one of the scene’s most vital players—and…
Aug 1, 2019 4:47 PM
When it comes to jazz festivals of an adventurous bent, blessed with an idyllic setting, Austria’s International…
Jul 16, 2019 11:01 AM
Among the many allures of the recent International Festival de Jazz de Montreal was a mini-focus on ECM artists, the…
May 14, 2019 9:49 AM
This year at Bremen, Germany’s jazzahead! festival and trade fair, Norwegian acts were featured during an…
Apr 18, 2019 10:29 AM
A spirit of camaraderie and collaboration permeated the room when Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn took the stage of…
Dec 11, 2018 10:43 AM
An important event on the Helsinki jazz scene, now in its sixth year, We Jazz has made a point of staging shows in…
Nov 6, 2018 11:21 AM
Certain salient historical legacies stand out in Tampere: It’s where Lenin and Stalin plotted the Russian Revolution…
Aug 9, 2018 11:02 AM
What keeps Umbria Jazz in the upper echelon of the world’s festival scene is its inspired balance of elements. Its…
May 28, 2018 7:47 AM
There is a comforting ambience and routine awaiting the rush of visitors to Victoriaville, Quebec, for Festival…
May 28, 2019 2:44 PM
A serious musical lineage long has been part of the civic bone structure of Bonn, Germany.
Most famously, it is the…
Apr 10, 2018 2:54 PM
Versatile Danish drummer Kresten Osgood was getting busy during a solo gig at the Vossa Jazz Festival, deploying his…
Mar 20, 2018 11:18 AM
When he was in his 60s, the linguistically limber veteran saxophonist Charles Lloyd likened himself to a “junior…
Jan 10, 2019 12:08 PM
The incidence of screening films along with live musical performances—onstage or in an orchestra pit—is nothing…
Nov 21, 2017 10:54 AM
The Berlin Jazz Festival handily accomplished a two-fold mission to preserve its prodigious historical legacy while…
Nov 13, 2017 8:23 PM
Once again, the compass needle for important jazz happenings pointed to Berlin recently, with the daring and impressive…
Sep 6, 2017 6:10 PM
Considering his status as co-founder of one of America’s major pop bands of the past half century, Walter Becker was…
Aug 24, 2017 1:09 PM
For nearly 40 years, the densely-packed Copenhagen Jazz Festival has been a bold calendar marker on the European jazz…
Aug 10, 2017 6:26 PM
Analyzing the status and “map” of the European jazz festival circuit is an inexact science and art, but general…
Jul 26, 2018 4:59 PM
Up at the lovely and artistically rewarding Molde Jazz Festival in Norway (boasting status as one of Europe’s oldest…
Jul 28, 2017 11:24 AM
Vijay Iyer has done more than his share in the contemporary cause of musical border-crossing and idiom-fusing in—and…
Jun 16, 2017 5:29 PM
For several decades, the idyllic small town of Ojai, California, has been the annual site of one of America’s more…
Jun 1, 2017 10:02 PM
Among other new developments at the unique cultural phenomenon that is FIMAV (Festival International Musique Actuelle…
May 5, 2017 3:04 PM
Come April in Bremen, Germany, the ever-expanding ranks of visitors to jazzahead! have come to expect a multi-cultural…
Apr 18, 2017 5:00 PM
My first, and lasting, musical impression of Norway’s Vossa Jazz Festival, a fascinating Nordic-centric event, came…
Dec 15, 2016 10:41 AM
For more than 30 years now, the illustrious and versatile Los Angeles Guitar Quartet has earned its bragging rights as…
Dec 15, 2016 10:43 AM
Saxophonist Charles Lloyd sometimes talks about his early desire to be a singer, a desire which has transformed his…
Dec 1, 2016 5:46 PM
The Jazztopad festival in Wroclaw, Poland, is deeply invested in the idea of commissioning new works. That message was…
Dec 6, 2016 6:05 PM
There may be some poetic justice in the fact that Jazztopad, one of the more innovative and important of the…
Dec 7, 2016 3:06 PM
The harbingers of a deep winter had arrived in Tampere, Finland, in early November, with diminishing daylight,…
Nov 17, 2016 3:24 PM
For the Le Boeuf brothers, the path through and around jazz has been a circuitous and self-redefining one. For the past…
Oct 18, 2016 2:12 PM
Turning 53 this year, the Berlin Jazz Festival—aka JazzFest Berlin—is one the oldest on the jazz circuit. It continues…
Oct 10, 2016 4:15 PM
Youth has never been wasted or neglected at the Monterey Jazz Festival—a result, no doubt, of its year-round education…
Oct 10, 2016 3:53 PM
Pat Metheny startled many longtime fans by actually taking some time off last year, but the prolific and restlessly…
Sep 8, 2016 3:23 PM
Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter are regular visitors to the Hollywood Bowl, one of the world’s largest venues in…
Aug 24, 2016 5:21 PM
Part of what makes the Molde Jazz Festival a prize on the global jazz festival circuit is its delicate balancing act in…
Aug 23, 2016 10:27 AM
Aside from being one of the world’s oldest jazz gatherings, the Molde Jazz Festival, which turned 56 this year, is…
Jul 20, 2016 4:21 PM
First-time visitors to Aarhus, Denmark are well advised to first head up to the panoramic perch of the “Rainbow…
Jul 15, 2019 10:35 AM
As veteran jazz festivals go, Copenhagen’s is more labyrinthine than most. Whereas the Montreal festival centers…
Jul 19, 2016 3:43 PM
A warm bath of synchronicity hit the lakeside town of Voss, Norway, in the heart of the 43rd annual Vossa Jazz…
Jul 8, 2016 1:19 PM
I first caught the all-star outfit known as the Blue Note 75 group at the Montreal Jazz Festival two years ago, during…
Jul 8, 2016 12:43 PM
One of the distinctive features of the annual Montreal Jazz Festival is its famous “Invitational” series, which…
Jul 8, 2016 12:22 PM
On Wednesday afternoon, I bumped into Gregory Porter, an unmistakable presence, in the elevator of the Hyatt Regency in…
Jul 26, 2018 4:57 PM
The crown jewel of Norway’s rich and celebrated jazz festival season, the Molde Jazz Festival—aka Moldejazz—also…
Jun 21, 2016 3:06 PM
Although it is generally categorized as a jazz festival, the phenomena known as FIMAV (Festival International de…
May 31, 2016 5:01 PM
Trying to keep tabs on the uniquely prolific and ever-morphing force of culture that is John Zorn can be difficult.…
Jul 11, 2016 12:32 PM
In its 11 years of operation, the biggest jazz “meeting” in Europe has been extending an invitation to musicians,…
May 18, 2016 11:56 AM
Fifty years after arriving on the international jazz scene, pianist Keith Jarrett remains one of its greatest…
Jul 11, 2016 12:39 PM
Jazz forces from around the globe converged in Bremen, Germany, in late April for Jazzahead!, a conference with…
Apr 18, 2016 4:26 PM
When strong, individually driven jazz players gather under the umbrella of an organizational agenda, such as a road…
Mar 28, 2016 10:31 AM
Norway’s contribution to the conversation and culture of jazz is by now thoroughly entrenched, in terms of…
Feb 9, 2023 6:59 PM
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Considering Kamasi Washington’s bold, dramatic ascendancy on the international jazz scene during the past year, it…