Latest posts
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Placebo: Marc Moulin’s Visionary Belgian Jazz Fusion Band
The Forgotten Fusion Band That Helped Shape Modern European Jazz When most people hear the name Placebo, they immediately think of the British alternative rock band formed in the 1990s. Yet more than two decades earlier, another group bearing the same name was quietly redefining the possibilities of European jazz. Founded in Belgium by pianist,…
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Ryo Fukui: Scenery and the Remarkable Rediscovery of a Japanese Jazz Pianist
A Late Beginning in Sapporo Ryo Fukui’s story is often introduced through the fact that he began playing piano at twenty-two, and the detail is remarkable enough to invite exaggeration. It can easily become the foundation for a familiar mythology: the self-taught outsider who ignored conventional training, developed almost miraculously and emerged a few years…
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Tenório Jr.: The Brilliant Brazilian Jazz Pianist Behind the Masterpiece Embalo
A Remarkable Pianist Lost Too Soon Few musicians have left such a profound artistic legacy through so little recorded work as Francisco Tenório Cerqueira Júnior, universally known as Tenório Jr. Although his recording career was tragically brief, his influence on Brazilian jazz and instrumental music has continued to grow with every passing decade. His only…
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Hiatus Kaiyote: The Future Soul Band Transforming Contemporary Jazz and R&B
The Band That Changed the Sound of Modern Soul Few contemporary groups have challenged musical boundaries as successfully as Hiatus Kaiyote. Since emerging from Melbourne in the early 2010s, the Australian quartet has developed a sound that defies easy classification, blending jazz harmony, neo-soul, funk, progressive rhythm, electronic textures and improvisational freedom into a style…
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Hiromi Uehara: Virtuosity Without Borders
Before Speed Became the Story The Problem With Calling Hiromi a Virtuoso There is an obvious way to write about Hiromi Uehara, and it is also the least interesting. Watch almost any concert performance and the vocabulary arrives immediately: speed, energy, precision, intensity, technique. Her hands move across the piano with extraordinary physical confidence; rhythmic…
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Casiopea: How a Japanese Quartet Created Its Own Language of Jazz Fusion
Tokyo and the Birth of a Different Fusion Before Casiopea Had a Sound Casiopea emerged at exactly the kind of historical moment that encourages misleading comparisons. By the middle of the 1970s, jazz fusion had already become an international language. Miles Davis had opened possibilities that extended far beyond conventional jazz instrumentation, Weather Report was…
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Cama de Gato: The Brazilian Jazz Quartet That Revolutionized Instrumental Music
The Quartet That Expanded the Language of Brazilian Jazz Few Brazilian instrumental groups have combined virtuosity, rhythmic sophistication and collective creativity as naturally as Cama de Gato. Since emerging in the early 1980s, the quartet has built a reputation for transforming the rich traditions of Brazilian music into a modern jazz language that is simultaneously…
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Melissa Aldana: The Blue Note Saxophonist Shaping the Future of Contemporary Jazz
A New Voice for the Modern Tenor Saxophone Few saxophonists have emerged in the twenty-first century with the artistic maturity and individuality of Melissa Aldana. Combining remarkable technical command with lyrical improvisation and a deeply personal compositional style, the Chilean-born tenor saxophonist has established herself as one of the defining voices of contemporary jazz. Although…
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Robert Glasper: From the Jazz Trio to Black Radio and Beyond
Houston, New York and the Acoustic Trio Long before Black Radio made Robert Glasper one of the most visible musicians working between contemporary jazz, hip-hop and R&B, those categories were already overlapping in his musical life. The conventional version of his career can make the story appear more orderly than it was: a gifted jazz…