On the third release with her trusted ensemble, Kaisa's Machine, rising star Kaisa Mäensivu displays a mature compositional voice, creating seven beguiling tracks that make excellent use of her superb colleagues. The Finnish bassist...
Stefano Tanzi is an up-and-coming Italian guitarist with a knack for smooth playing. His debut as leader, Wrong Together, is essentially a tribute to jazz legend Steve Swallow , but it also communicates so much more... [ read more ]
With over 50 million streams across global digital platforms, the Emil Brandqvist Trio has established itself as one of the most compelling trios in Europe. The Scandinavian band's previous release, Layers of Life (Skip Records, 2023),...
The Charles Mingus ensemble that arrived in Argentina in 1977 for the Buenos Aires concerts remains one of the lesser-known yet musically potent groups in the bassist-composer's storied history. These concerts are now presented in this...
The classical guitarist offers a mesmerizing East meets West collision, teaming up with a family of Indian musicians who play the sarod, a darker-toned cousin of the sitar.
The Song That Changed My Life is a segment that gives a chance for musicians and artists to tell us about the song that made them who they are. This week, we talked to Casual – he was a founding member of underground Bay Area rap crew...
Quick--when you think of instruments that sound airy, what comes to mind? Piccolo, mandolin, some kind of synthesizer or possibly the theremin? Most of us would take quite some time before guessing the tuba. It takes some imagination to...
California-born Lucy Southern , now based in France, is on a jazz journey that took her to Poland for the Seifert Competition. A wee-hours party ensued, a good time that rolled to the break of day. At one point, Southern and Michal...
Let us play an enormously simple game: Name three bands or three albums of any musical conglomerate --jazz, hop, bop, rock, neo-ethical bluegrass--whose legendary sobriquet was the absolute definition of the sound, soul, and propriety of...
Trumpeter Kenny Dorham 's stature in jazz history is undeniable, yet he remains one of music's most under-appreciated masters. Despite being a vital presence among the great innovators of his era, Dorham never achieved the star power his...
If you have a fondness for albums imbued with a nostalgic air, this one should resonate with you. Writing for All About Jazz, Jack Bowers described the previous album, Persistence (Self Produced, 2022), as: "captivating on every...
Guitarist and sound-chaser Mary Halvorson never fails to hypnotize. Add the equally hypnotic pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and beauties like Bone Bells materialize to shift your news-exhausted consciousness to greater possibilities... [...
Davis was jazz critic for The Village Voice and a contributing editor for The Atlantic. He wrote many books on jazz, and won a Grammy for his liner notes for the reissue of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue.
His band TV on the Radio was part of the frenzy of great music coming out of Brooklyn in the early 2000s. Now, Tunde Adebimpe is releasing his first solo album, "Thee Black Boltz."
On their 1955 live recording At the Cafe Bohemia (Blue Note), the Jazz Messengers' Art Blakey introduced his trumpet player, Kenny Dorham , as the "Uncrowned King," a title that was perhaps fitting at the time given Dorham's still-rising...
Italian singer Mafalda Minnozzi, who already had a solid recording career in Italy, went to Rio for a date in the late 1990s, stayed for a year, then decided to make it her home. Like many musical immigrants to that great city, she went...
Composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1979. She started playing drums when she was nine years old; in her teens she played drums with local college punk rock bands. She attended the University of...
Juan Carmona celebrates 40 years of a remarkable career in 2025, marking the occasion with the release of his album, Laberinto De Luz. For those who have yet to discover this exceptional flamenco guitarist, his universe seamlessly blends...
"Do not go gentle into the good night," Dylan Thomas wrote that; Art Pepper did it. He did not go gentle. He raged with his horn across continents: Asia, Europe, the Americas. There was gentleness too at times. He raged against his own...