Latest posts
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The Lost Brazilian Jazz-Fusion Masterpiece That Waited 45 Years to Be Heard
The Brazilian Future That Almost Disappeared Some lost albums sound lost. They arrive decades later carrying obvious traces of unfinished sessions, abandoned experiments or musicians still searching for a direction. Their historical fascination can be greater than their musical achievement. The 1976 recordings of Marcos Resende & Index are something else entirely. When the tapes…
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Michael Garrick: The Poet of British Jazz Who Made Improvisation Speak in an English Voice
Before British Jazz Found Its Own Accent There was a time when being a serious modern jazz musician in Britain almost inevitably meant looking across the Atlantic. New York was the center of gravity. Charlie Parker had rewritten the language of improvisation, Thelonious Monk had transformed harmonic possibility, and Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and John…
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The Detroit Visionaries Who Built Their Own Jazz Universe
Detroit Had Its Own Idea of Freedom When the history of radical jazz in the 1970s is told, geography usually determines the story. Chicago had the AACM. St. Louis had the Black Artists Group. Los Angeles had Horace Tapscott and the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra. New York remained the gravitational center, where loft jazz, free…
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Tohru Aizawa: The Japanese Jazz Bass Pioneer Who Defined an Era
The Quiet Foundation of Japan’s Jazz Revolution The history of Japanese jazz is often told through its extraordinary pianists, visionary saxophonists and internationally celebrated composers. Yet every thriving musical movement also depends upon artists whose work is less visible but equally essential. Among them stands Tohru Aizawa, one of the bassists who helped transform Japanese…
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Mongezi Feza: The South African Trumpet Genius Who Changed European Jazz
From the Eastern Cape to Exile Mongezi Feza’s story belongs to two histories that cannot easily be separated. One is the history of modern South African jazz, a music that developed under apartheid while drawing together American bebop, township rhythms, dance music, church traditions and local melodic languages. The other is the history of European…
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Som Imaginário: Brazil’s Progressive Jazz Masterpiece Beyond Clube da Esquina
The Band That Imagined a New Brazil Through Music When international audiences think about Brazilian music, they often picture samba, bossa nova or the elegant sophistication of Antônio Carlos Jobim. While those traditions remain essential, they represent only part of Brazil’s extraordinary musical landscape. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, another revolution quietly emerged…
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Gato Barbieri: The Argentine Jazz Legend Who Redefined Latin Jazz
From Argentina to the European Avant-Garde There is a moment in Gato Barbieri’s career when the familiar categories of jazz history begin to feel inadequate. He was Argentine, but the international audience that first encountered him knew him largely through European and American avant-garde jazz. He absorbed Charlie Parker and the language of modern American…
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Eje Thelin: The Swedish Trombone Pioneer Who Shaped Modern European Jazz
The Trombonist Who Helped Europe Find Its Own Voice The evolution of European jazz is often told through the stories of saxophonists, pianists and trumpeters who forged new artistic identities after the Second World War. Names such as Jan Garbarek, Albert Mangelsdorff, Kenny Wheeler and John Surman have become central to that narrative. Yet one…
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Janko Nilović — Soul Impressions and the Hidden Revolution of European Library Music
The Composer Millions Heard Without Knowing His Name There is a peculiar contradiction at the center of Janko Nilović’s career. His music has circulated through television, radio, film, production libraries, record collectors’ shelves and, decades later, some of the most visible corners of hip-hop, yet for much of his working life the composer’s name remained…