May 30, 2013
Wadada Leo Smith’s four CD, 4 ½ hour opus Ten Freedom Summers is more than an outstanding work of jazz. Rather, it has to be viewed as a major artistic statement about African-American history, and compared favorably with jazz works like Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown, & Beige and Wynton Marsalis’ Blood on the...
May 28, 2013
When you are asked to think of the “typical ECM artist”, you could do worse than think of Tomasz Stanko. The Polish-born veteran trumpeter has a distinctive, sometimes mournful sound from his horn that has been called “sophisticated dread” by a well-known critic. His music retreats from the requirement of chord...
May 28, 2013
The great pianist Mulgrew Miller has died at the age of 57. Miller had suffered a stroke late last week, and had been hospitalized since then.
Miller was one of a handful of pianists born just after the be-bop period that carried the torch of the likes of Bud Powell and Oscar Peterson, maintaining his acoustic chops ...
May 24, 2013
Repost of Podcast 183:
What can I say about Bob Dylan that hasn't already been said a million times over....
May 21, 2013
The passing of Ray Manzarek, the co-founder and musical center of The Doors, leads me to ask the question I do when thinking of many of the great 1960’s rock figures.
What kind of jazz was he into?
I ask because it seems that almost all of these musical pioneers were deeply into the sounds of the Blues and the sounds...