Fifty-five years ago this week, Miles Davis brought a new-ish band into Washington D.C.’s Cellar Door club for a four-night engagement. Columbia Records, perhaps hoping to catch lightning in a bottle, sent a crew and two eight-track tape machines to record the ten sets. Edited versions of material from the final night’s three sets found […]
2025 was a year of great growth for our site. In addition to Brian Kiwanuka and John Chacona’s reviews, friend turned staff writer Jim Hynes, joined us in a big way. That includes his review of the Big Ears Festival, an event I have long wanted to attend, but for which the timing never seems […]
Deeming any album the “best” of a given year is inherently fraught with problems. First, there are the logistical issues. Generally, thousands of recordings are released annually. Given that a year has only 8,760 hours, it is logistically impossible to listen to everything. Often, classifications can help limit the scope. Focusing on only the “best […]
Over the last few years, tenor saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh has released recordings thst featured his dulcet tones with several jazz elders – Kenny Barron (Vintage (Sunnyside, 2023)) and the late drummer Al Foster (Heart (Analog Tone Factory, 2024)). With Stand Up! (Analog Tone Factory, 2025), Sabbagh returns with this twenty-year running quartet with guitarist Ben Monder, bassist Joe Martin, and newly added drummer Nasheet […]
Folk music is often broadly defined as being a music “of the people.” But what does that really mean? Of course, the generally understood definition implies that it is music not of the conservatory or the upper strata of society, but from the average person, one of the commoners. But the descriptor of the music […]
The vibraphonist Bill Ware is perhaps best known for his work with The Jazz Passengers and Groove Collective. He has a cross-genre bent that includes work with Steely Dan and Elvis Costello. He is also incredibly prolific. Since 2016, he has composed over two hundred and fifty pieces, including sixty during the pandemic. These pieces […]
With Ancestral (Whirlwind, 2025), alto saxophonist and composer John O’Gallagher explores the late-period work of John Coltrane, specifically Interstellar Space (Impulse!, 1974) and Stellar Regions (Impulse!, 1995). These examinations build upon O’Gallagher’s doctoral work, which argues that so-called “free” music is not actually free as the term is commonly used. Or, in O’Gallagher’s words, researching […]
In many ways, the burgeoning improvised music community in Brooklyn resembles downtown New York’s loft movement of the ‘70s. But it differs in one important way: Brooklyn seems to have an even stronger sense of community, with musicians often collaborating on each other’s albums. Such is the case for Chilean-born, Brooklyn-based bassist and composer Simón […]
Guitarist John Scofield and NEA Jazz Master bassist Dave Holland are not only both masters of their respective instruments but incredibly prolific. Versatile too, especially Holland. Since both artists’ rise – a decade apart – through their times with Miles Davis, they have respectively explored a wide area of music. That includes intimate duo settings. […]
Over the last half-century, a growing number of artists and theorists have explored the concept of ecomusicology, a theoretical approach to music that emphasizes the relationship between man and nature as manifested through sound. Initially developed from the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s, ecomusicology focuses less on whether a particular sound comes from […]
