For me, college is roughly analogous to life. During the first year of entering the student body, the stark reality of campus protocol can turn all preconceived notions about the university experience on end with a jolt. The first thing a student discovers is Newton’s law of motion: for every action, there is an equal […]

I’m a fan of the drums and the people who play them. When I hear a song, the first thing I listen to is the drum part. I’ll watch the drummer more than anyone else in the band. Drums have the power in modern-day music, whether hard rock or country ballads, to drive and give structure […]

Drumheller is Toronto jazz quintet—or, in their words, “a collective of individual composers”—which pushes boundaries in some seriously playful ways. They are rooted in the jazz tradition, but they are hardly nostalgic. Now Magazine likens them to “the Dirty Dozen Brass Band with a touch of dementia.” All of them are involved in the improvisational […]

Ron Paley hardly needs an introduction to prairie audiences—his big band has been pulling people onto dance floors since it formed in 1976. Paley, a pianist with a genuine love for big band sound and repertoire, got his start playing with the big bands of Buddy Rich and Woody Herman. He has quick hands and […]

How can you explain the alchemy that happens when jazz musicians are really locked in, making music together? That’s the kind of question that hums just below the surface of a jazz lab. Throughout the year, visiting musicians borrow time from their performance schedules to unlock the door to their laboratories, and offer tours to […]

Charles Mingus is one of the music world’s true characters and one of its most disturbing. A demanding, even bullying band-leader, a talented composer, and an innovative bassist, Mingus helped to free the bass from its traditional supportive role in jazz and make it an instrument that people listened to. His unpredictable, volatile personality was […]

The first time I read a short-short story, I was stunned by how big and how small it was. These stories hardly have time to get heated up, yet they can still be smoldering in you years later. I have been thinking lately about the arc of narrative, how it’s more like music than it […]