Straight No Chaser - A Jazz Show

Podcast 895 is Part Two of my conversation with the extraordinary Dave Douglas. In Part One, we focused on the inspiration for, then writing and recording of Secular Psalms, now available on his Greenleaf Music label. Created as part of the celebration of the 600th anniversary of the Ghent Altarpiece painting "The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb," Douglas and mostly European musicians recorded the sp...

With the start of the month of April, Straight No Chaser begins a month long celebration of the life and music of Charles Mingus, one of the most important jazz performers, composers and personalities ever. Six years ago I interviewed Kris Gabbard , the author of Better Git It in Your Soul :   An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus   (University of California Press), who considered Mingus not...

Dave Douglas, one of the most prolific writers, performers and recording artists in jazz today is also one of its widest-ranging stylists and important entrepreneurs. At the age of 59, his award-winning career includes more than fifty recordings as a leader, close to one hundred as a sideman,  and more than five hundred published compositions. In 2005 Douglas founded Greenleaf Music, a record labe...

One of the benefits we get as jazz listeners from the inactivity in recording and releasing of music due to the COVID-19 pandemic is the backlog of exciting music that is now coming out. Trumpeter Avishai Cohen describes his album as the outcome of a "two-year meditation." He had been sitting with the main motif of Naked Truth since the start of Covid, and used the layoff to follow that melody to...

Nourished by the abundant creative energies of the scene in his native Chicago, drummer and composer Kabir Dalawari has developed a unique musical on his vibrant debut  album, Awareness . Dalawari fronts a talent-packed quartet with altoist Kyle Brooks, pianist Eric Arroyo and bassist Matt Ulery for a set of original pieces brimming with rhythmic animation, melodic richness and bristling interacti...

Quentin Angus has received national and international recognition for winning three ASCAP 'Young Jazz Composer Awards', five Downbeat Magazine Awards in the 'Composition' and 'Soloist' categories. The State of Things  is his third album as a leader. He carefully chose his collaborators for the album, choosing the topnotch drummer Nate Smith as the core of his band. Pianist Can Olgun and bassist De...

Since the 1991 release of his debut album A Guitar Thing , featuring Benny Green, Cecil Brooks III and Lonnie Plaxico, guitarist Ron Jackson has steadily built a robust reputation as a sideman and solo artist. Standards and My Songs is his ninth title as a leader on his independent label Roni Music, the logical follow-up to his. Standards and Other Songs . The seven-string guitar player  put toget...

Matt Slocum's latest work is a long-form suite, performed by one of the best quartets I've seen put together in some time. Slocum, the drummer and composer of the songs on With Love and Sadness (Sunnyside Records), originally planned for a trio, but decided the music called for a fuller sound. The resulting group – Walter Smith III on saxophone, Taylor Eigsti on piano and Fender Rhodes, Larry Gren...

It's been seven years since Tel Aviv-based saxophonist-composer Eli Degibri has released an album of original music. However, that drought ends this week with the release of his deeply personal album of tunes, Henri and Rachel. Recorded on March 9, 2020, days before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Henri and Rachel is Degibri's first album of original music since 2015, when he recorded Cliff Ha...

In Part One of this two-part conversation,  Bill Summers explained the long path he has followed to learn the art and the history of Bata, placing him firmly in a thousand plus year history of percussionists. We talked about Forward Back, his new project with his longtime friend Scott Roberts, a way to blend spiritual music with the sounds of the modern western world, especially hip-hop. That EP,...

Years ago, the study of percussion led Bill Summers to a particular ceremony in Brooklyn, where he was introduced to the rich history of religious, spiritual drumming by vocalist Leon Thomas. The path led him to Cuba, where he studied with a venerated master, immersed in a spiritual drum fraternity (Anya) that took him all the way back. He innately recognized the origin, the source, the foundation...

Les Bon Temps Rouler! It's Mardi Gras time in New Orleans, and this year the parades and parties are in full swing. So if you're not in the Big Easy to sample the music, food and fun, here's an hour plus of music to get you in the swing of things: Kermit Ruffins - "Drop Me Off in New Orleans" Marcus Roberts - "New Orleans Blues" Cyril Neville - "New Orleans Cookin'" The Hot 8 Brass Band - "New Orl...

Self-titled albums are typically introductory statements reserved for an artist's first release. In the case of trumpeter/keyboardist Rick Braun, it took until his 30th anniversary as a solo recording artist.to release  Rick Braun  – a stylistically eclectic, ultra-soulful/funky and exotica-tinged collection of 10 new songs. While put into the box we call "smooth jazz" for years, Braun stylistical...

The music of Danish composer/performer Anders Koppel has defied genre almost since he learned to walk. The son of classical composer and pianist Herman D. Koppel, Anders Koppel was a child singer in the Copenhagen Boys Choir and studied piano with his sister and father from the age of five. He took up the Hammond organ in 1966 and the following year founded with his brother Thomas the legendary Da...

Musicians who are "on the scene" in New York don't always get wider recognition with jazz fans around the country, to say nothing of the world, unless they are lucky enough to constantly record. In the case of pianist Michael Weiss, he's been busy playing in and around New York, but he hasn't recorded as a leader since 2003's Soul Journey . Persistence - Weiss' fifth recording as a leader and firs...

Perhaps no song in the canon of the Great American Songbook is associated with Valentine's Day than Rodgers & Hart's 1937 classic "My Funny Valentine." The song was originally written as part of the score of their Broadway show Babes in Arms, which gave us classics like "Johnny One Note," "Where or When," and "The Lady is a Tramp." For a deep dive into the details of the song and the show, check o...

Saxophonist Azar Lawrence has been seen as someone who can, as they say, cover both sides of the street. Lawrence has performed with numerous jazz titans that include pianists Horace Tapscott and McCoy Tyner; trumpeters Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, and Woody Shaw; percussionist James Mtume; and drummers Elvin Jones and Billy Higgins. However, the Los Angeles-born Lawrence,  has never been confine...

Here's an event perfect for jazz fans and those looking to delve more deeply into Black History Month – a combined lecture and musical performance by flutist and educator Galen Abdur-Razzaq chronicling how jazz musicians became advocates for the Civil Rights Movement. From stirring performances that called out injustice to  performing benefit concerts that financed major events such as the Freedom...

Javon Jackson turns to one of the finest poets in America for inspiration on his latest release, The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni , on his Solid Jackson label. Jackson,  in addition to leading his own group, is a faculty member of The Hartt School at the University of Hartford and director of its Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz. It was in that capacity that he invited Giovanni, one of the wo...

Keyboardist Bob James is so deeply associated with electric music from the 1970's and the all-star band Fourplay that it's easy to forget his roots lie in the acoustic piano trio. From his days working with Sarah Vaughan and then with a series of solid trios (check out The Lost 1965 New York Studio Sessions for proof), James has always had the chops to play in that demanding format. His latest tri...

When I spoke with saxophonist Steve Slagle last summer, he had a number of projects ready to go. One of those, his first album of all ballads, Ballads: Into The Heart Of It,  will be released in February on Panorama Records. The album features pianist Bruce Barth, bassist Ugonna  Okegwo, drummer Jason Tiemann and Richard Sussman, who provides synth orchestrations and drum programming to great effe...

Having spent four decades on the New York City jazz scene, pianist Pete Malinverni has crossed paths with countless revered artists and come away with a host of tales to tell. But few moments measure up to the time that Malinverni met the iconic composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein. The seeds planted in that meeting decades ago come to fruition on Malinverni's new album, On the Town – Pete Malinve...

Once he got over the funk that so many of us experienced during the COVID-19 shutdown of early 2020, Fred Hersch was musically active, streaming live from his home and playing music that made people smile and tap their toes. He began playing live again this summer, and now has a new recording of original material, Breath By Breath , the first time he has written for a jazz piano trio and string qu...

In a time when archival releases are becoming almost commonplace, it's worth taking an extra moment to focus on A Time for Love: The Oscar Peterson Quartet – Live in Helsinki, 1987 from Two Lions/Mack Avenue Records. The final gig of a long international tour that began with 4 concerts in Brazil, this date was the 14th of a European tour that took the quartet all over mainland Europe and Scandinav...

We continue to lose talented jazz masters at an alarming rate.  All of the musicians featured in this podcast will be terribly missed. Take some time to listen to "Noted in Passing 2021" featuring the music of some of my favorite musicians who are now gone, but never forgotten so long as we can hear their music: Barry Harris - " Uno Dos Tres" Chick Corea (with the Akoustic Band) - "Humpty Dumpty"...