Straight No Chaser - A Jazz Show

This is music for the ages, and a story for the ages as well. Trumpet great Wallace Roney and his orchestra pay tribute to Newark jazz legend Wayne Shorter with the first full performance of Universe , a long-lost composition originally created for Miles Davis by Shorter. Wallace has termed hearing composition to be like finding missing gospels in the Dead Sea Scrolls, so important is the music as...

The Spring is truly the season of spiritual awakening and celebration. Holy week for those of the Christian faith is underway, as today is Palm Sunday. The oldest of Jewish celebrations, Passover, begins with the first seder tomorrow night. The festival of Vaisaki, celebrated by Hindus is this week, just as Theravada, the New Year festival for Theravada Buddhists, is celebrated. Buddhists celebrat...

Singer Marilyn Scott carefully resists being defined by easy labels. She is thrown into the Smooth or Contemporary Jazz category because she works closely with West Coast collaborators Bob Mintzer, Russ Ferrante and Jimmy Haslip (Yellowjackets). By the same token, she is a strong interpreter of the Great American Songbook, and not afraid to thrown in a Bob Dylan or Peter Gabriel tune for good meas...

It shouldn't take Women's History Month for us to appreciate and enjoy the music of female jazz musicians.   Particularly in the last two decades, women have moved from "female performer" to "performer" in their own right, as both leaders and side players.   Women were there at the birth of jazz, and singers like Bessie Smith, and pianists like Lil Hardin Armstrong (who wrote "Struttin' With Some...

Near the top of the list entitled "Why haven't I talked to these musicians?" is the name of Lisa Hilton. A pianist and composer whose classical background has influenced her very modern approach to the keyboard, she has continued to produce a series of top-notch group CDs. With over twenty CDs released as a leader, she never fails gather some of the finest talent around to complete her musical vis...

OK, what's the most popular symbol of Valentine's Day? Uh - Cupid? Well....no. Try again. Uh....a heart? Bingo! And so Podcast 563 is our annual Valentine's Day mixtape, and this year the theme is - hearts. Each song has "heart" in the title, and it's a pretty spiffy group of tunes if I do say so myself. Feel free to download and burn this one to a CD for that last minute Valentine's Day gift for...

Seven-time Grammy award winning singer Al Jarreau died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He had recently been ill, and had cancelled his touring plans. Jarreau was 76 years old. Jarreau is one of the few artists to have won Grammys in three separate categories — jazz, pop and R&B. He is ability to perform the most difficult vocalese stylings could easily slide into his more mainstream songs, m...

It's always a pleasure to speak with saxophonist Miguel Zenón, a musician who has impeccable academic, bandstand and compositional credentials. One of an increasing number of jazz musicians who have been awarded a Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowship, the latter more commonly known as the "Genius Grant", Miguel's music continues to grow and expand its horizons. For example, his last CD, Identities...

I first heard Troy Roberts when he appeared in auspicious company at the first International Jazz Day at the United Nations in New York in 2012. There shared the stage with the likes of Wayne Shorter, Richard Bona, Vinnie Colaiuta and Zakir Hussein and more than held his own. Since then, the West Australia-born, saxophonist has won 3 consecutive DownBeat Jazz Soloist Awards, a Grammy Nomination me...

Do we have a more diverse singer today than Theo Bleckmann?  The German born singer and composer's recordings range from albums of Las Vegas standards, Weimar art songs, newly-arranged songs by Charles Ives (with jazz/rock collective Kneebody); and his acclaimed Hello Earth - the Music of Kate Bush .  You may also have heard Bleckmann on jazz recordings by Ambrose Akinmusire and Julia Hülsmann, bu...

With the release of Meditations on Freedom , Noah Preminger takes a stand against what he perceives as difficult, even dangerous times to be an artist, to say nothing of an American.  While it's the third album featuring the tenor player's current quartet - Jason Palmer (trumpet), Kim Cass (double-bass) and Ian Froman (drums) – it's his first to take classic protest songs and mix them with his own...

Israel is producing some of the finest jazz musicians outside of the US these days. Israeli guitarists are particularly prolific, including artists like Roni Ben-Hur, Gilad Hekselman, Oren Neiman, and Tel-Aviv native Yotam Silberstein.   Silberstein is something of a prodigy, having picked up the guitar at ten, and having won the "Israeli Jazz Player of The Year" title by the age of 21. Since comi...

Serendipity - t he occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. No word can better describe the series of events that brought singer Kendra Shank and pianist Geoffrey Keezer together a few years back. A cancelled flight prevented Ms. Shank's regular pianist, Frank Kimbrough, from making a West Coast gig. Learning Keezer was in town, and with just 30 minutes to spare...

You've been reading the "best of" lists for the past few weeks in the press and online, but here at Straight No Chaser we take a slightly different approach to list making. Rather than presume to match artist against artist, album against album, we try to give you a list of those 2016 releases that made the greatest impression or were in the heaviest rotation throughout the year. I created five di...

For years, I've combed through album a fter album of Christmas songs to bring you podcasts of both beloved and fresh jazz for the holiday. One thing I have noticed during the course of my investigations is the number of tunes that seem to have absolutely nothing to do with the Christmas holiday. So many of the most included tunes on Christmas jazz albums – I'm looking at you "Baby, It's Cold Outsi...

Fabian Almazan won the 2014 Downbeat Critics Poll for Rising Star Pianist, and has worked steadily as a core member of Terence Blanchard's groups since 2007. Born in Cuba, he began playing classical piano at an early ag4e, but when he and his family fled Cuba, he found himself exposed to new and different music as well. A product of the Brubeck Institute and Manhattan School of Music; Fabian has b...

It was almost twenty-five years ago that saxophonist-composer Patrick Zimmerli recorded six original compositions in sessions that were eventually shelved. He met that day with a few of his musical peers and friends, who today are recognized as some of the most exciting and in-demand players in the jazz world – pianist Kevin Hays, bassist Larry Grenadier, percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, and drumme...

Matt Slocum's Black Elk's Dream was one of the best jazz CDs of 2014. Backed by musicians like Dayna Stephens, Gerald Clayton and Water Smith III, drummer Slocum presented a concept album inspired by the visionary Native American leader Black Elk and the book Black Elk Speaks . The music, whether original or deftly chosen covers, was orchestral in its feel, and packed a punch, either through mixed...

Scott Morgan has been around the New York jazz scene for more than a decade, but Songs of Life is his debut CD as a leader. After a few listens, the obvious question is: Man, what took you so long? Morgan has a warm, engaging tenor, and his phrasing rivets the listener to the lyrics he is singing, creating a wonderful intimacy. His band – pianist Fred Hersch, bassist Matt Aronoff, tenor saxman Joe...

One of the great delights in modern jazz comes when a talented composer or arranger takes on material which we have come to expect to sound a certain way, or be presented in a certain manner, and turns it upside down, or at least off-kilter. Whether it's a singer reimagining the way a tune from the Great American Songbook is interpreted (Cassandra Wilson, Kurt Elling); a soloist wringing emotion f...

If you listened to Podcast 471 last March, you heard singer/composer Thana Alexa sing the praises of guitarist Gene Ess. Ms. Alexa collaborated with Gene on his two releases, Fractal Attraction and Eternal Monomyth , two of a series of fine albums he has made since leaving the Rashied Ali Quartet over a decade ago. Growing up on a US Army base in Okinawa, Japan, Gene was exposed at an early age to...

What seems a lifetime ago, I had the opportunity to serve on a panel to award grant money from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts to musical applicants. My group reviewed instrumental music, and one of the members of the panel was none other than Anthony Braxton. For those who are unfamiliar with the name, Mr. Braxton is one of the foremost composers and performers of avant-garde jazz, opera a...

Bobby Hutcherson, a vibraphonist whose adventurous, harmonically challenging playing in the 1960s made him one of the most influential jazz musicians on his instrument, died Aug. 15 at his home in Montara, California at the age of 75. The cause was emphysema. A major player in the halcyon days of Blue Note Records, Hutcherson took the vibes in different directions than his mentors and peers would...

It's summer in New England, so why not some summer themed music for these lazy, hot days? Today is August 16th, the feast day of Saint Roch, the patron saint of Dogs, so why not celebrate the "Dog Days"? The Romans referred to the dog days as  diēs caniculārēs  and associated the hot weather with the star Sirius. They considered Sirius to be the "Dog Star" because it is the brightest star in the c...

Originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sergio Pereira starting playing acoustic guitar (violao) at the age of 8 years old, influenced by his older brother who helped him play his first chords and the bossa-nova giants at the time - Joao Gilberto, Tom Jobim, and, Marcus Valle. Growing up in Rio in the 60's and 70's contributed tremendously to the energy, groove and rhythms reflected in his music t...