Winnipeg poet Duncan Mercredi summed up 2013 best as “the year that Winter sat down on Spring and wouldn’t let her get up.” How poetic is that? Someone has to issue an award of distinction to each one of us that reads: I survived the ongoing winter of 2013! At least on the surface, everyone […]
George Benson is one of the most recognized figures in the jazz world. He’s an icon—not only for his work in straight ahead jazz, but smooth jazz, R&B, and pop. He’s one of those rare people who’s stayed true to himself but also has a sense of how to create music that has mass appeal, […]
Jane Monheit has been singing all her life. By the time she was in high school, she was singing professionally. In 1998, while still a student in the jazz program at Manhattan School of Music, she was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk Jazz Institute’s vocal competition. That turned everybody’s head, and her career was […]
Rudresh Mahanthappa is one of the most innovative and forward-thinking musicians of today. Perhaps best-known for his collaborations with Vijay Iyer and more recently with Jack DeJohnnette, Mahanthappa has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship, and various prestigious commissions. On top of this, he was named alto […]
Without question, Chicago-based pianist, vocalist, composer and bandleader Patricia Barber is one of the most passionate and eloquent artists on the scene today. When she is not maintaining a weekly Monday night gig with her quartet at the Green Mill in Chicago, she is constantly touring throughout all parts of the world, and on June […]
Courtney Pine is at the leading edge of British jazz. Known primarily as a saxophonist, he is also a master performer on flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, and keyboard. Born in London to Jamaican immigrant parents, Pine has been adding his particular signature to the jazz tradition for almost three decades. His debut recording, Journey to […]
Ariel Posen spent his childhood immersed in music—his parents both played in the band Finjan and the family toured all over North America. He got his start on piano, but got into guitar, thanks to 90s rock and grunge, and hasn’t looked back. He’s a busy musician with a lot of different projects on the […]
In March, I was fortunate to be one of two dozen musicians under the age of twenty-five attending Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead Residency Program at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Betty Carter’s band has long been known as a finishing school for young jazz musicians, particularly rhythm section players. Active since 1955, Carter is […]
For many fans, Wes Montgomery is to jazz what Jimi Hendrix is to rock or what B.B. King is to the blues. After listening to an album by jazz guitarist Charlie Christian (who died aged twenty-five in 1942), Montgomery went out the next day and bought a guitar and amp. At the age of eighteen […]
It’s almost a decade since I first heard Steve Kirby observe that jazz is not so much a style of music as a particular approach to music-making. Up to that point I hadn’t given it a lot of thought. I was more of an accidental listener, wandering through a huge field of options, led only […]