Sometimes, the voice of an outsider provides a fresh perspective that adds richness to the status quo and pushes things in new directions. This was certainly the case with Ethiopian jazz. Over the last two decades, the music – sometimes referred to as Ethio-jazz – has proliferated via the internet, dissolving geographic boundaries around sounds […]
Coined by the philosopher Glenn Albrecht, the term ‘solastalgia” centers on the theme of homesickness while still at home with a focus towards surveying environmental damage. “Our environment is transforming around us, and we grieve for the landscapes and ecologies we knew,” says Albrecht. These feelings inspire The Solastalgia Suite (Pyroclastic, 2025), Grammy-winning pianist and […]
The most common defense for insisting on genre classifications is that it “simplifies” discussions about music. According to Kelefa Sanneh, author of Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres (Penguin, 2021), “Devotion to a sound is essentially about community and belonging.” In this sense, one can see adherence to genre norms as […]
The popular perception of time is linear. One thing leads to another and then to another. But the passage of time is better viewed as a cyclical path, with shadows of the past and hints of the future emerging throughout. As Marcus Aurelius notes in Book VI of Meditations, “Each thing is of like form […]
Saturday, December 19, 1970 For first-time listeners to The Cellar Door Sessions 1970 (Columbia, 1970), the first four discs can be like a side trip to unfamiliar neighborhoods of a well-known place. The language is the same, the architecture familiar, but the details are new and delightfully alive. Arriving at discs five and six is […]
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 […]
Here is a fun exercise for a reader’s consideration. Consider these two quotes: “[It is] just a bunch of notes thrown together without melody or soul—hardly what I’d call music” and “[It’s] not music… [it] doesn’t require musicianship….” What genre of music are they referring to? Here is a hint- the music grew organically through […]
Although instruments like the Teleharmonium plugged in as early as the late Nineteenth Century, it was not until the 1970s that electronic sounds would meet the depths of human improvisation-based music by the name of jazz. At the height of fusion, synthesizers added to the works of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Weather Report, and others. […]
The comparison of a familiar hell to a strange heaven drives Australian-born bassist and composer Linda May Han Oh’s thinking for her trio album Strange Heavens (Biophilia, 2025). It is far too easy to be lulled by society into complacency and benign acceptance of social and political conditions. Strange Heavens stands opposed to this status […]
