Latest posts
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Vincent Peirani and Émile Parisien: How Belle Époque Reinvented the Jazz Duo
There is something inherently improbable about the combination of accordion and soprano saxophone. Neither instrument belongs to the standard architecture of the modern jazz rhythm section, and together they remove almost every conventional source of security. There is no drummer to establish the pulse, no bassist to define the harmonic floor, no pianist or guitarist…
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Anat Cohen: The Clarinetist Who Turned Musical Borders Into Open Doors
There are musicians whose careers can be understood through a single tradition, a recognizable lineage, or a clearly defined scene. Anat Cohen has never belonged comfortably to that category. Her music moves through jazz, Brazilian choro, samba, Caribbean rhythm, Middle Eastern memory, chamber-like lyricism, big-band color and the improvisational culture of New York without treating…
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Dizzy Gillespie and Afro: How Bebop Met the Rhythms of Cuba
Dizzy Gillespie and Afro: How Bebop Met the Rhythms of Cuba There are moments in jazz history when two musical languages meet and neither emerges unchanged. Dizzy Gillespie’s encounter with Afro-Cuban music belongs to that category. It was not simply a matter of adding congas to a jazz orchestra or placing a Latin rhythm beneath…
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Kenny Barron and Wanton Spirit: The Art of Conversation in the Modern Piano Trio
Kenny Barron and Wanton Spirit: The Art of Conversation in the Modern Piano Trio Kenny Barron has spent much of his career making difficult things sound inevitable. His touch can be delicate without becoming fragile, his harmonic language sophisticated without calling attention to its sophistication, and his improvisations can develop with such natural continuity that…
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Miles Davis and the Psych-Electric Genesis: Polyrhythmic Voodoo Cauldron, Tape-Editing Sorcery, and the 1970 Bitches Brew Masterpiece Monolith
The Chronicle of an Era: The Mid-Century Collapse and the Columbia Studio B Forge By August 1969, modern jazz was staring directly into a terrifying, apocalyptic void. The historic acoustic structures that had sustained the genre for generations were rapidly burning to the ground, crushed beneath the massive cultural weight of psychedelic rock, stadium funk,…
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Claudio Roditi: From Rio de Janeiro to New York and the Global Language of Brazilian Jazz
From Rio de Janeiro to New York Claudio Roditi’s career does not fit comfortably into the familiar story of Brazilian musicians carrying bossa nova to the United States. Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1946, Roditi belonged to a generation for whom Brazilian music and American jazz were already in constant conversation. He grew up…
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Esperanza Spalding’s Chamber Music Society: Jazz, Strings and a Breakthrough Beyond Categories
From Portland to Chamber Music Society When Chamber Music Society appeared in August 2010, Esperanza Spalding was already well beyond the stage of being merely a promising young bassist. She had released Junjo in 2006 and reached a considerably wider audience with Esperanza two years later, establishing herself as a musician whose identity could not…
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Tom Jobim and Wave: The Quiet Architecture of Bossa Nova
By 1967, Antônio Carlos Jobim no longer needed to prove that bossa nova could travel. The music he had helped shape in Rio de Janeiro had already crossed languages, oceans and cultural boundaries, entering American jazz, popular song and the international imagination with a speed that few Brazilian movements had ever experienced. “The Girl from…
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Roy Hargrove and the Neo-Bop Vanguard: Soulful Post-Bop Technical Execution, Hip-Hop Genre Synthesis, and the 2003 Hard Groove RH Factor Masterpiece
The Chronicle of an Era: The Late-Twentieth-Century Renaissance and the Soulquarian Crucible By the arrival of the mid-1990s and early 2000s, jazz was navigating a complex, deeply polarized crossroads. The “Young Lions” neo-bop movement had successfully spent a decade restoring the pristine acoustic disciplines, immaculate formal attire, and complex harmonic vocabulary of the 1960s post-bop…