Latest posts
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Stan Kenton & Bill Holman: When a Powerful Orchestra Met an Arranger Who Knew How to Make It Swing
A Different Kind of Power Few American big bands projected power as unmistakably as Stan Kenton’s orchestra. From the 1940s onward, Kenton built an identity around scale, dramatic brass, ambitious arrangements and a willingness to push the big-band format beyond the conventions of dance music. His orchestras could sound monumental. They could also divide listeners.…
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Yo-Yo Ma: The Cellist Who Made Musical Borders Feel Unnecessary
Before the Borders Disappeared There is an obvious problem with placing Yo-Yo Ma inside a publication devoted primarily to jazz: he is not a jazz musician. His central tradition is Western classical music, his instrument is the cello, and much of his reputation was built through Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvořák and the major concerto repertoire…
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Vertigo Records: The Swirl Label Where British Jazz, Progressive Rock and Experimentation Collided
Before Progressive Music Had a Name When Vertigo Records appeared in Britain in 1969, the record industry was confronting a problem created by its own success. Rock music had evolved faster than the categories designed to sell it. Psychedelia was mutating into progressive rock, blues musicians were incorporating jazz improvisation, jazz musicians were experimenting with…
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Black Jazz Records: The Independent Label That Gave 1970s Black Jazz Its Own Space
A Label for a Changing America When Black Jazz Records emerged at the beginning of the 1970s, jazz was experiencing a crisis that was simultaneously commercial, cultural and generational. Rock had transformed the record industry, soul and funk had become dominant forces in Black popular music, and many major labels increasingly treated acoustic jazz as…
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Jef Gilson: The French Visionary Who Heard Jazz Beyond Its Borders
Before French Jazz Learned to Stop Imitating There is something almost contradictory about Jef Gilson. He became one of the great restless experimenters of French jazz, yet his musical life began inside a revival movement looking backward. He would eventually work with free improvisation, bitonality, changing meters, African musicians, electric instruments and independent recording, but…
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Clifford Jordan: The Tenor Saxophonist Who Never Needed to Shout
Chicago, Blue Note and the Making of a Voice Chicago Before New York When Clifford Jordan arrived in New York in 1957, he was entering a jazz world crowded with extraordinary tenor saxophonists. Sonny Rollins was establishing an imposing new standard for thematic improvisation. John Coltrane was moving rapidly toward the language that would transform…
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Motoharu Yoshizawa and the Tokyo Free Jazz Underground: Mutant Acoustic Textures, Zen Minimalism, and the Subterranean Friction of ‘Inland Fish’
The Chronicle of an Era: The 1970s Tokyo Jazz-Kissa Subculture and the Radical Expansion of Free Improvisation By the arrival of 1974, the underground musical landscape of Tokyo, Japan, had engineered one of the most insular, intensely radical, and uncompromising artistic subcultures on the planet. While the mainstream global jazz markets were chasing the commercial…
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Kuku Agami: The Voice Between Copenhagen, Hip-Hop and the Global Groove
A Different Kind of JazzLatitude Story Some artists enter the JazzLatitude universe through an instrument. Others enter through a scene, a record label or a historical movement. Kuku Agami arrives through something more fluid: the movement of the human voice across hip-hop, soul, funk, electronic production and jazz-adjacent groove. Born in Denmark in 1977 and…
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Chris McGregor: The South African Exile Who Set European Jazz on Fire
Before the Brotherhood, There Was a Country He Had to Leave Chris McGregor’s music begins with a contradiction. He was a white South African pianist who became one of the most important interpreters and organizers of Black South African jazz during the apartheid era. He received formal training in European composition but was transformed by…