Straight No Chaser - A Jazz Show

Since Yellowjackets' eponymous 1981 debut album, the group has hewed its own creative path, influencing colleagues with enviable compositional craftsmanship and an ever-shifting blend of influences. In many ways Yellowjackets embody both continuity and renewal, with founding­ pianist/keyboardist Russell Ferrante providing the four-decade thread first joined by Will Kennedy­, who took over the drum...

Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal's Bossa Nova-themed animated film  They Shot the Piano Player will be in wide release nationwide from Sony Classic Pictures this week. Trueba and Mariscal are the duo behind the 2012 Academy Award nominated Chico and Rita, and their latest work features a who's who of the best of Brazilian music, including João Gilberto, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Vinicius de...

The legendary George Coleman's latest project is a release from hard-bop supergroup One For All, an album appropriately called  Big George on Smoke Sessions Records. One For All is composed of tenor saxophonist  Eric Alexander , trumpeter  Jim Rotondi , trombonist  Steve Davis , pianist  David Hazeltine , bassist  John Webber , and drummer  Joe Farnsworth . Coleman joins the group on three tracks,...

New York's premier hard-bop supergroup,  One for All   has evolved over the course of its quarter-century history from a sextet of young torchbearers to an assemblage of the music's most revered traditionalists. Just how in-demand these six artists have become can be traced by the span of time that elapses between albums. 2016's  The Third Decade   followed its predecessor by five years; seven yea...

Italy-born, Long Island, New York-based saxophonist and arranger  Ada Rovatti 's seventh album as a leader,  The Hidden World of Piloo  is deeply personal, and stylistically varied. It features six improvisationally rich instrumentals that include blues grooves, samba vibes, straight-up lyricism, melancholic balladry and a comedic finale. Two songs include strings; another features the dobro, a co...

In Part One of our conversation, pianist and composer Sullivan Fortner talked about the creation of his latest release, the creative two-disc Solo Game . One disc is solo piano, the result of a curation in the studio with his mentor Fred Hersch, and the other electric keyboard and other musical toys to create both composed through and improvised soundscapes.  Part Two talks about future Fornter pr...

The latest release from the rising star Sullivan Fortner shows off two very different sides of his musical pallet – lyrical and moving solo piano, and electronic explorations. Both will leave you wanting more, and to hear what he has next up his sleeve. Frustrated by his lack of musical outlets during the pandemic, "Game," the second of two discs that make up Solo Game came first. Visiting a studi...

Giorgi Mikadze (pronounced "Gih-ohr-gih Mih-kahd-zeh") is a pianist who values his heritage and roots, having been born and raised in Georgia, at the foot of the Caucasus mountains. While his training and early carer arch may have seemed typical for an aspiring jazz musician – classical training, Berklee and Manhattan School of Music studies, time on the road with his elders – his choice of music...

Following in the footsteps of the giants of solo piano who have recorded for ECM Records, Call on the Old Wise  is  Nitai Hershkovits ' first record as a leader for the famous label, presenting his powerful pianistic ingenuity in a largely improvised solo setting. A veteran of Oded Tzur's quartet (he appears on Isabela  and  Here Be Dragons ) , Nitai was also a mainstay of Avishai Cohen's trio fro...

As 2023 comes to a close, Straight No Chaser posts a few conversations with artists who produced memorable albums this year. Today's podcast features bassist Buster Williams, who released Unalome on the Smoke Sessions label this past winter. While the band on Unalome is familiar – drummer Lenny White, pianist George Colligan, alto saxophonist Bruce Williams and Vibes master Stefon Harris are all l...

Dominic Miller may be best known to the world as Sting's "right-hand man on guitar" and co-writer of "Shape of My Heart," among the ex-Police bassist's other pop hits. But the multi-faceted Miller has a completely different outlet for his improvisatory talents as well. Vagabond is the guitarist's third recording for ECM, and might prove his most poetic tale to date. After Dominic's debut  Silent L...

On Part Two of our conversation, guitarist Ralph Towner talks about his growth as a guitarist from his early days playing trumpet and piano, through his time with influential bands like the Paul Winter Consort and Oregon, and then his many solo, duo and trio recordings. We talk about his work with Wolfgang Muthspeil and Slava Grigoryan ( From a Dream and Travel Guide in 2008 and 2013) as well as h...

At the age of 83, guitarist Ralph Towner continues to write, perform and improvise on the highest of musical levels. He has been an ECM artist for more than fifty years, appearing in many different contexts, one of the most important being a run of solo recordings which began with  Diary  in 1973.  At First Light  is the latest addition to the solo guitar series. Never one to be pigeon-holed as an...

One of the few positives of the horrid COVID pandemic that shook the music world to its core has been the release of musci composed during those uncertain days. Alton and soprano saxophonist Christine Jensen's lastest album, Day Moon  (Justin Time Records) stands as a shining example of how a great musician turns struggle into art.  Recorded with her quartet of pianist Steve Amirault and her long-...

For the first time ever, the complete  Vince Guaraldi  soundtrack to  A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving , the timeless 10th animated  Peanuts special, from writer and creator Charles Schulz, director Bill Melendez and Phil Roman and producers Melendez and Lee Mendelson. Originally airing on November 20, 1973 on CBS-TV, the special has been broadcast or streamed every year for the last 50 years. But the...

Perennial DownBeat Critics Poll winner trombonist Michael Dease has embraced his role as a torchbearer for his mentors and the great jazz ancestors over his 15 deeply-swinging, state-of-the-art mainstream recordings. For  The Other Shoe (Origin Records), Dease teams with the formidable composer Gregg Hill, expanding his rhythmic & harmonic palette with a flexible, in-the-moment perspective while r...

Keyboardist Jon Cowherd has been on my list of interview subjects for a long time, and after an unconscionable delay, Podcast 956 features him and his latest release, a trio album on the Le Coq Records imprint called "Pride and Joy." And what a trio it is - Cowherd joined by long-time friend and musical running partner Brian Blade on drums, and the sensational John Patitucci on bass. Add guest spo...

As a fan of the Great American Songbook (and really, who isn't?) I'm always looking for new and different approaches to these storied songs. Enter the Nigerian born singer Douyé, whose latest release The Golden Sèkèrè , is a wonderful meld of polyrhythms, swing and soul.  Having grwon up listening to American torch singers as well as Afrobeat, it was inevitable that Douyé, would tackle tunes by Ra...

Pianists Joe Alterman and Les McCann make something of an odd couple. The pair are separated in age by more than half a century; McCann is confined to a medical rehab facility in Los Angeles, while Alterman left New York City to return to his native Atlanta, Georgia six years ago. But since their paths first crossed back in 2012, according to Alterman, "barely a day has passed that we haven't chat...

Listeners to Straight No Chaser know I have great fondness for the music of the piano trio, an art I consider one of the highest forms of jazz in terms of improvisation and collaboration. The music these groups make grows richer over time, so those groups that stay together can often take their sound to another level as they mature. Pianist Omer Klein has made some of the most intriguing piano tri...

"I'm freer than I've ever been in my personal life, and I'm freer than I've ever been in my music. I'm accepting who I am. I love who I am. And as I continue to evolve – my artistry, my sexuality, and my overall humanity – my music will continue to become more and more personal " - Eric Reed  Pianist Eric Reed has been a key component in memorable bands led by Wynton Marsalis, Joe Henderson and Fr...

Wayne Escoffery was riding high the morning I spoke with him. And why not? Just that weekend he had become the first person of color to conduct a performance of Charles Mingus' epic "Epitaph.," a piece he had played before under the direction of Gunther Schuller. His latest album, Like Minds , ws just out on Smoke Sessions Records, and featured top notch guests like Gregory Porter, Tom Harrell, an...

A new face on the New York jazz scene, 25-year-old guitarist-composer Tomer Cohen made his debut as a leader earlier this year with the release of Not the Same River , an album that shows how painting with sound and silence can create often striking musical moods.   Accompanied by the highly interactive rhythm tandem of drummer Obed Calvaire (a ubiquitous figure on the NYC scene and currently a me...

If you think Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's remarkable, 1960 interpretation of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1892 ballet, The   Nutcracker , is the final jazz word on the popular orchestral work, think again. Performed by drummer/leader Joe McCarthy's New York Afro Bop Alliance Big Band,  The Pan American Nutcracker Suite  is a distinctly different take on the famous score, integrating the poly...

If it's June, then jazz festival season must be underway. As always, the early highlight for me is Freihofer's Saratoga Jazz Festival, held in lovely Saratoga Springs' Performing Arts Center June 24-25. Impressario Danny Melnick has a strong lineup for the festival this year, with acts performing on two stages, along with juried crafts, food and drink. The line-ups for Saturday, June 24 include Sn...