Interviews

With Freedom of Art (Holthouse, 2026), Corcoran Holt releases his second album as a leader. Perhaps best known for his long tenure in Kenny Garrett’s band, it has been over eight years since Holt’s debut, The Mecca (self-release, 2018). In the time between albums, the bassist, composer, and arranger has endured family loss, a worldwide… Read more: Review: Corcoran Holt’s ‘Freedom of Art’

After being rediscovered at Newport in 1955, Miles Davis spent the next twenty years revolutionizing music. With the First Great Quintet, chordal structures were pulled apart into broader modes. Works with Gil Evans interjected improvisation ingenuity into orchestral grandeur. The Second Great Quintet, partly propelled by Wayne Shorter’s compositional prowess, approached forms with an even… Read more: Transcending: A Conversation with Sam Morrison and Bill Laswell on ‘Cosmic Trip’

Where would the world be without such television “classics” as “I Married a Horse” or “You Left Me for a Hooker”? Or without audiences discovering the paternity of strangers they had met only minutes before? 1980s and 1990s daytime talk programming was junk food in visual form, providing no sustenance for the human mind or… Read more: Embracing the Grittiness: A Conversation with Steph Richards and Qasim Naqvi on ‘Talk Show’

Accessible is hardly the first word one would associate with guitarist-banjoist Brandon Seabrook. Adventurous, edgy, zany, bizarre, unpredictable, and unconventional are far better fits. Yet, there’s a flow and some weird coherence to Hellbent Daydream (Pyroclastic, 2026) compared to his previous two albums as a leader. Hellbent showcases a new quartet that takes the leader’s… Read more: Review: Brandon Seabrook’s ‘Hellbent Daydream’

Deface the Currency (Impulse!, 2026) is the follow-up to the 2024 eponymous album by The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, issued on the same legendary label. The collaborative unit is even tighter now, having played a hundred and fifty shows together in one year. Their infectious mix of elements taken from punk, improvised jazz, and… Read more: Review: ‘Deface the Currency’ by The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis