Straight No Chaser - A Jazz Show

The Lost Jazz Shrines series is dedicated to bringing legendary NYC jazz clubs back into the consciousness of the world with a thorough remembrance and celebration. In celebration of the resonant history of Birdland, BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center will host two exceptional evenings that examine the musical and stylistic legacy of Charlie Parker through artists’ completely different lenses and...

"A Celebration of the Life and Music of Dave Brubeck" will be held on Saturday, May 11, 2013 at 4:00 P.M. at The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue in New York City.  There are no tickets to this event; the event is free and all are welcome. Artists scheduled to perform Chick Corea, Paquito D'Rivera, Branford Marsalis, Paul Winter, Eugene Wright, Randy Brecker, Jon Fadd...

Fred Hersch’s weekly residences at New York’s finest jazz clubs provide highlights of any jazz season. The veteran pianist enjoys performing with a wide variety of sidemen and group configurations, from his trio to solo and duo setting. This week (May 7-12), Hersch takes the stage at the Jazz Standard for a series of duo and trio performances with some very special friends, in the annual tradition...

ECM is making an early run at “Label of the Year” for jazz releases. In the first four months of 2013, Manfred Eicher and company have given us outstanding new CDs like Chris Potter’ s The Sirens ; the Tomasz Stanko New York Quartet’s Wislawa ; and Charles Lloyd and Jason Moran’s teaming on Hagar’s Song ; plus two fabulous reissues as box sets from Lloyd and from Paul Motian. Adding to this embarr...

The artistic muse strikes when it will. Personal tragedy or pain can be the catalyst for the creation of art just as often as joy, or the experience of beauty. The artist takes what comes, and if they are successful in their chosen medium, the resulting work gives the world a sense of what Susanne K. Langer called “felt life”. For Bill Horvitz, the tragedy was the sudden death of his younger broth...

Jane Monheit has been a creative whirlwind since the birth of her son almost five years ago. She and her band are almost always touring the major jazz halls of the world; she has recorded and released three albums under her name, as well as a charity holiday single with Sara Gazarek; begun teaching master classes; and honed her skills as a singer-songwriter. Her latest release, The Heart of the Ma...

If it can be said that anyone has music in her D.N.A., that person would be Lisa Kirchner. The daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning classical composer Leon Kirchner and coloratura soprano Gertrude Schoenberg, Lisa was raised in a home that appreciated Bach as much as Jimi Hendrix, Duke Ellington as much as Mozart. Ms. Kirchner made the most of that eclectic musical upbringing, successfully working o...

Holy week for those of the Christian faith begins today, and the first night of Passover, the Jewish festival of freedom, begins tomorrow evening. Last week marked the Baha'I festival of Nowruz, and the Hindu festival of Holi takes place later this week, as does the Sikh holiday of Hola Mohalla.   The Buddhist New Year festival of Theravada takes place on April 6. And of course, the pagan celebrat...

2013 has started off as a very good year for Jazz CDs. We’ve had excellent releases from Wayne Shorter, Chris Potter, Joe Lovano and Charles Lloyd, and I’m looking forward to some new material from Tomas Stanko, Jane Monheit and Terence Blanchard in the next few months. The CD I’ve been waiting for with the greatest anticipation, though, is the studio debut of pianist Aaron Diehl. Ever since I cau...

“Paul was one of a kind: a musicians' drummer who thought about the music, not just the rhythm, and cast his own sound on everything he played... he could play anything, and with anybody." -Keith Jarrett Symphony Space in Manhattan will be presenting an all-star cast of jazz greats on March 22, coming together to pay tribute to their colleague, legendary drummer and composer, the late Paul Motian...

There has been a plethora of strong guitar-based music coming across my desk lately, so Podcast 338 is an attempt to pass on some of the news about these releases. Some of the artists, like Kevin Eubanks, may be well-known to you. Others, like Dan Phillips, may be as new to you as he was to me. In any event, these are jazz guitarists at the top of their game, and well worth a listen. Kevin Eubanks...

This week at Straight No Chaser we will continue focusing on some of the finest guitar players in the world of jazz.. Hopefully by now you have enjoyed Podcast 336, which featured a conversation with Japan-born/Boston-based guitarist Yuto Kazamto. Today we feature another talented six string slinger, Jonathan Kreisberg. I’m familiar with Jonathan’s work as a leader of a talented Quartet, and for h...

Valentine’s Day can be a tricky day. If you remember it, but that special someone in your life doesn’t, there can be hell to pay.   If you spend the big bucks on flowers, chocolate, etc., etc. and your special someone didn’t want you to break the budget, you feel like a dolt. Is it too soon in the relationship to make a big deal about the day? Does it send the wrong message? Or if you go low key,...

An exciting new jazz guitarist, 26 year old Yuto Kanazawa, will release his CD Earthwards this week to coincide with his appearance at Sculler’s in Boston , MA . Earthwards – also the name of his backing group - will be a world-wide affair, including saxophonist Mario Castro from Puerto Rico , clarinetist Felix Peikli from Oslo , Norway , bassist Zwelakhe-Duma Bell le Pere from Connecticut ( USA !...

Last month I posted a podcast interview with Javon Jackson , one of the many jazz stars who are converging on Portland, Oregon this coming week to perform in the 10 th U.S. Bank Portland Jazz Festival presented by Alaska Airlines . From February 15 to 24, 2013 there will be large and small events in and around Portland, creating an exciting mix of music. One of the local bands to be featured in th...

Dr. Donald Byrd, one of the great trumpet players to emerge in the post be-bop era of the 1950’s has died at his home in Delaware. He was 80 years old. Byrd was born Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II in Detroit in 1932 and began his career with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in the 1950s, in a version that included Horace Silver and Hank Mobley.  He appeared as a sideman on more than 50 albums...

It's never too early to start celebrating the Mardi Gras! Fat Tuesday comes a bit early this year - February 12 - so make your plans right here and now to blow it out good before Lent comes along (if you follow that sort of thing). Here's just about an hour of Nawlins inspired or styled music to get you going. Whip up a little Etouffe or maybe some Jambalaya, crank up these tunes, and have yourelf...

The Sirens is acclaimed saxophonist Chris Potter's ECM debut as a leader, an album of mood and melody inspired by Homer's The Odyssey - both its epic atmosphere and its timeless humanity. Potter, who has been a featured player on ECM albums by the likes of Dave Holland and Steve Swallow, found the timeless tale a source of inspiration as he sought to create for his latest band a year ago. Since th...

“We started the Messengers because somebody had to mind the store for jazz. No America –no jazz. It is the only culture that America has brought forth.” – Art Blakey The 2013 U.S. Bank Portland Jazz Festival, presented by Alaska Airlines,  will start in less than a month, running Friday, February 15 through Sunday, February 24 at venues throughout Portland , OR . The 10th anniversary celebration w...

“…Mr. Fagen's music is a rich-textured, harmonically oblique amalgam of rock, jazz and soul. It is, in a word, music for grown-ups—with lyrics to match. What is especially interesting about Mr. Fagen, though, is that unlike most of his contemporaries, he has always made music for grown-ups. Steely Dan, the group that he co-founded with Walter Becker in 1972, never did go in for kid stuff, and does...

Last year, the Jazz Standard presented a new interpretation of John Coltrane’s Ascension that knocked out audiences and critics alike. Click here to listen to a conversation with participant Donny McCaslin on the project. On January 16 th , the Standard continues this tradition and  presents an all–star tribute to Ornette Coleman and his influential work Free Jazz . In the spring of 1961, the alto...

When ticking off the names of the truly great jazz figures that came out of the be-bop era, Tadd Dameron may be the name that least comes to mind. Saxophonist Dexter Gordon called Dameron the "romanticist" of the bop movement, as perhaps more than any other musician, he added form to the then-emerging style of bop. Whether as a composer (standards like “Lady Bird”, “Hot House”, “Good Bait” and “If...

‘Tis the season for “best of” lists, and you can find some mighty fine ones from NPR’s A Blog Supreme ; Critical Jazz ; various members of the Jazz Journalists Association; and Ben Ratliff of the New York Times . Rather than call things “the best”, I prefer to look back the year’s releases and determine which ones, for one reason of another, earned repeat plays and became my favorites for one reas...

Kenny Barron will be celebrating his 70 th birthday in 2013, and you can bet we’ll have a celebratory Podcast that day. One of our finest, most versatile and hard working pianists, Barron shows no sign of slowing down as he approaches this milestone. He has a new CD set to come out in 2013, and he is currently playing a series of duets with his friend, bass legend Dave Holland. The pair will get t...

Are you wrapping presents? Trimming the tree? Firing up the Yule Log? Baking cookies? Making use of the Mistletoe? Sipping some mulled cider by the fire? Maybe a Christmas cocktail or two? If you are partaking in any of these worthy seasonal activities, you need a soundtrack. And that is where the annual Straight No Chaser Nuthin’ But Christmas Podcast comes in. Download this hour plus extravaganz...