Latest posts
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Emma Pask: The Australian Jazz Singer Who Made the Standards Her Own
The Night a School Concert Became a Career Some jazz careers begin with years of conservatory training, jam sessions, small clubs and gradual recognition. Emma Pask’s began almost overnight. She was sixteen years old, still attending high school in Sydney, when Australian jazz virtuoso James Morrison visited her school for a workshop. Pask was already…
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Masayoshi Takanaka: The Guitarist Who Gave Japanese Fusion Its Brightest Colors
From Sadistic Mika Band to Seychelles Before the Tropical Landscape Long before beaches, palm trees and impossible shades of blue became inseparable from Masayoshi Takanaka’s musical identity, there was rock. His career began in a Japanese music scene undergoing rapid transformation, as musicians absorbed British and American rock, progressive music, soul, funk and the expanding…
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Oscar Castro-Neves: The Bossa Nova Architect Who Took Brazilian Music to the World
Before Bossa Nova Had a Name Some musicians become symbols of a movement. Others become so deeply embedded in its construction that history eventually forgets how much they contributed. Oscar Castro-Neves belongs to the second category. When the story of bossa nova is told internationally, a familiar constellation appears: Antônio Carlos Jobim, João Gilberto, Vinicius…
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ZASKA: How Dublin’s Collaborative Soul Scene Found Its Own Groove
ZASKA: How Dublin’s Collaborative Soul Scene Found Its Own Groove There are bands built around a fixed lineup, bands built around a singer, and bands whose identity depends on the chemistry of a few musicians who remain together for years. ZASKA belongs to a different category. From the beginning, guitarist, composer, producer and musical director…
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Louis Stewart and the Flawless Linear Architecture: Bebop Virtuosity, the European Jazz Guitar Metamorphosis, and the 1977 Out on His Own Masterpiece Monolith
The Chronicle of an Era: The Mid-Seventies Archtop Evolution and the Solo Guitar Frontier By the middle of the 1970s, the jazz guitar universe found itself fiercely divided between two extreme philosophical poles. On one end, the explosive, high-voltage innovations of jazz-rock fusion were pushing players toward solid-body instruments, massive effects racks, and screaming rock…
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The Afro-Brazilian Jazz Band That Was Decades Ahead of Its Time
The Other Sound of Ipanema Say the word Ipanema and a particular version of Brazil immediately appears. A beach at sunset. João Gilberto’s restrained guitar. Antônio Carlos Jobim’s elegant harmony. A voice barely above a whisper. The sophisticated cool that transformed Rio de Janeiro into one of the great musical images of the twentieth century.…
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Scott LaFaro and the Reinvention of the Jazz Bass: Sunday at the Village Vanguard and the Bill Evans Trio Revolution
The Sunday That Changed the Piano Trio On Sunday, June 25, 1961, Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian entered the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village for what appeared to be another engagement in the working life of one of the most remarkable young trios in jazz. Across five sets that afternoon and evening, the…
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Count Basie: The Atomic Mr. Basie and the Orchestra That Turned Swing Into Precision
The Big Band That Discovered the Power of Less By 1957, the big-band era was supposed to be over. The economic machinery that had sustained enormous touring orchestras during the swing years had weakened, bebop had radically altered the language of modern jazz, rhythm and blues was reshaping popular entertainment, and the LP was creating…
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Nelson Faria and Três : The Brazilian Guitar Trio Built on Conversation
Nelson Faria and Três: The Brazilian Guitar Trio Built on Conversation Brazilian instrumental music has always resisted simple borders. Jazz vocabulary may be present, but so are samba, bossa nova, choro, the harmonic sophistication of MPB, regional rhythms and a tradition of improvisation that developed according to its own history. Few guitarists embody that intersection…