I have a friend who is a master of ceramics. When I’m inspired, I take out the teapot that he designed and serve tea to my friends and family. The teapot is an exquisite work of art reminiscent of ancient China. It doesn’t change the taste of tea in any way but it reminds me […]

A seasoned master of the piano and a leading voice in modern jazz, Mulgrew Miller continues to advance the tradition of swinging improvised music. From stints with Art Blakey, Woody Shaw, Betty Carter and Tony Williams to recording sessions with Dave Holland and Kenny Garrett to his dozen releases as a leader, Miller consistently delights […]

Pianist Kenny Barron is a bona fide jazz master. Over his fifty-year career he has played with many of the best in the business, from apprenticing with legends such as Dizzy Gillespie and James Moody, to more recent collaborations with the likes of Charlie Haden and Regina Carter. His discography is a mile long, with […]

The premise of Jazz Winnipeg’s Nu Sounds series is pretty straightforward: book strong local players and invite them to share what’s really firing them up these days. Now in its fourth season, Nu Sounds has offered Winnipeg audiences some amazing music—and a fuller notion about what jazz musicians here are doing with their time and […]

Chances are you’ve heard the rich sound of Ken Gold’s baritone saxophone on a Winnipeg stage or club. Gold plays a lot of bari these days, though he’s comfortable on tenor, alto, and soprano as well. If you’re going to make a living as a working saxophonist, he points out, it helps to have facility […]

This lesson was designed for a jazz band class comprised of grade 9 to 11 students. In order to be successful at improvising, young musicians have to become absolutely familiar with song structures. One of the most effective ways to do that is by learning to construct and play bass lines over different chord progressions. […]

Sonny Rollins is arguably the greatest living improviser in jazz. His muscular, meaty tenor-sax playing and eloquent improvisations have made him an intimidating wonder of jazz. Rollins is also one of the jazz world’s more interesting people. Three times he has taken a sabbatical from music. His initial break in 1954 was his most desperate, […]

I first felt invited into the African-American narrative through Tony Morrison’s Beloved, a novel that continues to be on my Desert Island list. The chance to feel the lives of her characters, and to see how they coped with a history of brutal disenfranchisement, deepened the impact of the musicians I admired who shared that […]