Sonny Simmons will turn 75 this year and the range of musical knowledge and influence heard in his playing suggest multitudes beyond the ???free??? label he usually carries. Dating back to his debut on ESP in the mid '60s, Simmons was a Dolphy-esque, Coltrane-inspired force of nature on alto.
Yesterday marked the 17th anniversary of jazz giant Stan Getz 's passing, lost to liver cancer at age 64 in 1991. Though best known for popularizing Brazilian music with mainstream America with 1961's No. 1 selling Jazz Samba and especially 1964's ???The Girl From Ipanema" with Astrud Gilberto , there were tremendous depths to this hugely influential musician.
Charles Lloyd is in top form, and this may be his best quartet ever, which is saying quite a lot. Made up of Eric Harland on drums, Reuben Rogers on bass, and Lloyd??™s latest discovery, the amazing Jason Moran on piano, the ???New Quartet??? has the depth, grace, and indefinable allure of a classic group on the order of John Coltrane??™s 1960s quartet, or the bands that Miles Davis put together in the
If it weren't for Bruce Ellis' half-baked idea, legendary jazz DJ Oscar Treadwell's radio show wouldn't be heard on WVXU-FM (91.7) two years after his death.
Distances is an entrancing experience. The concentration required to fully appreciate the music created by Winstone, Klaus Gesing (bass clarinet, soprano saxophone) and Glauco Venier (piano) is requested rather than demanded.
(Courtesy photo) Pianist Nobu Stowe performs at An Die Musik Live tonight. Pianist Nobu Stowe accepted a challenge not many musicians have been willing to take.
Saxophone player Willie Williams takes a 'Trane to his "Comet Ride." That is said with some trepidation, because invoking the name of John Coltrane lifts an album to a near-holy level.
If it's hard to achieve success in music, that may be even more problematic when you're the son or daughter of a legendary musician. Sure, it can be a plus: It's unlikely that Jakob Dylan, Rosanne Cash or Hank Williams Jr. ever considered changing their last names.
Two-time Grammy winners and classical jazz innovators the Turtle Island Quartet have brought their unique mixture of folk, bluegrass, swing, funk and R&B all over the world, and now they're bringing it to Queens College for a performance on Saturday.
The music of the great jazz composers and soloists lives in perpetuity. There are big bands on the road paying homage to the music of Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus decades after their deaths. In many ways, the music of Miles Davis and John Coltrane is so prevalent that a novice would be forgiven for thinking they're still with us.
Although the Madison Center for Creative and Cultural Arts no longer has a physical space downtown, it continues to sponsor a wide range of cultural activities in local schools and around the Madison area. One of the most prominent is its annual fund-raiser and celebration of contemporary improvised music, FreedomFest, which takes place on Friday, Feb. 22, in the Overture Hall Lobby.
NEW YORK -- A fertile, vibrant period of jazz history was explored with panache when the Cookers opened a four-night stand Thursday at the Iridium Jazz Club.
Impressive debates, caucuses and primaries spark political banter in schools, at work, in diners, around the dinner table and even in children's books. Children, too young to cast a ballot, can still contribute to the voting process. Give them a book to read on the history of women's voting. "Elizabeth Leads the Way: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Right to Vote" is written by Tanya Lee Stone
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