Straight No Chaser - A Jazz Show

The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC )  is beginning its live, in-person programming in the coming week (see Podcast     for a preview) and in six weeks will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the annual TD James Moody Jazz Festival,   showcasing an all-star lineup of the country's best musicians. Held in and around NJPAC from Nov 6-20, this year's programing has a little something for...

Jazz supergroup The Cookers announce their return to the scene with their first album in five years,  Look Out! The band is currently composed of Billy Harper (tenor sax), Cecil McBee (bass), George Cables (piano), Eddie Henderson and David Weiss (trumpet), plus two newly minted Jazz Masters from the National Endowment for the Arts - drummer Billy Hart and alto saxophonist Donald Harrison. Billy H...

Kate McGarry's 2018 collaboration with life and stage partner Keith Ganz, The Subject Tonight Is Love was a song cycle that addressed love in its many different forms and iterations. From Rodgers and Hart to the Beatles to their own tunes, the album was uniformly wonderful, and featured many of their long-time musical collaborators, most notably the musical human Swiss army knife, Gary Versace, an...

Podcast 841 is Part Two of my two-part conversation with saxophonist Kenny Garrett.  His latest album, released August 27th on Mack Avenue Records, is entitled Sounds of the Ancestors , and as the title suggests, it's a musical trip through Kenny's past, as he digs into the sounds that have moved him in the past, and chased them from his hometown of Detroit to the Caribbean and Africa and back. He...

Saxophonist Kenny Garrett makes some of the most uplifting, joyous music on the planet. Whether he is playing his music on  the bandstand with some of the greatest performers in jazz history – Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, Marcus Miller, and Chick Corea – or writing and recording his own music with his band, this is music charged with a positive message and vibe. He's well aware of wha...

The loss of Lyle Mays in early 2020 after a lengthy illness deprived the jazz world of a brilliant composer and performer. Although he had been away from music for over a decade, his niece Aubrey Johnson, herself a talented jazz performer, told me that he never stopped working on his craft, or tinkering with compositions. This month sees the release of Eberhard , Lyle's self-professed "humble trib...

It's past the midpoint in summer in New England, so why not some summer themed music for what may still be 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"? Plus, Saint Roch's name is to be invoked to avoid plagues, so need I say anything more? The Romans associated the hot weather with the star Sirius. They considered...

At just 20 years old, Matthew Whitaker has already shared his powerful story and ascent to the biggest stages in jazz with 60 Minutes and The Today Show; but on the young star pianist's new album Connections (on Resilience Music Alliance), he takes a bold step forward in defining for himself, on his own terms and in his own words, what it truly means to be Matthew Whitaker. After being born three...

"The harmonic language of jazz, as well as that of the Great American Songbook, is certainly rich -- look how much has come out of it -- but it's circumscribed. I started wanting to hear something else" – Patricia Barber Singer/Pianist/Composer Patricia Barber has found success mixing cutting edge projects like her 2019 release Higher , which featured an art song cycle "Angels, Birds and I…," with...

Is the current trend of live jazz performances going to continue through the Fall? Large presenters are certainly moving forward as if they will be swinging along. The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC )  is welcoming live, in-person jazz back to its stage this Fall beginning with Grammy Award-winning vocalist Gregory Porter (Sep 24). The TD Jazz Series continues in the Fall with "Salsa Mee...

If there is a jazz version of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , it might well be Beneath Missouri Skies: Pat Metheny in Kansas City 1964-1972   by Carolyn Glenn Brewer. Ms. Brewer, a jazz musician, writer and former educator has a lifelong connection with the Greater Kansas City area. This makes her uniquely qualified to tell the story of a certain place and a certain time, a...

Like many New Yorkers, when COVID-19 shut down much of their the world, saxophonist Jon Irabagon and his family decided it would be best  if they left their city home for a quieter, more secure environment.  Unlike almost all New Yorkers, for Jon it meant moving to western South Dakota, the home of his in-laws. Two weeks of quarantine turned into a month away from home, then three months, and even...

Pianist/composer Arturo O'Farrill was as locked down as any of us during the pandemic that shut the door on live performances over the last 18 months. However, he and his compatriots at the nonprofit Afro Latin Jazz Alliance used new technology and a whole lot of hard work to create  "ALJA Digital Village," streaming programming that reached more than 1 million people in over 25 countries and rais...

The second Record Store Day of 2021 came and went this past weekend, and left in its wake some exciting archival releases from our old friend Zev Feldman and his cohorts at Resonance Records. Two of the albums that dropped on July 17 are of particular note. The first is In Harmony , a rare duet recording of trumpeter Roy Hargrove and pianist Mulgrew Miller. Both jazz titans passed away far too soo...

Vince Mendoza has been at the forefront of the Jazz and contemporary music scene as a composer, conductor and recording artist for the last 30 years. He has written scores of compositions and arrangements for big band, extended compositions for chamber and symphonic settings while his jazz composing credits read like a "who's who" of the best modern instrumentalists and singers in the world today....

I've been following Joel Frahm since his days in the jazz program at the storied Hall High School in West Hartford, Connecticut. Since then, he has assumed his position as one of the leading lights on the tenor sax, releasing seven albums of his lyrical sound as a leader, and serving as a sideman for some of jazz's best, including former classmate Brad Mehldau, pianist Bill Charlap, and notably wi...

Late last spring,  artist Jim Watt and jazz trumpeter Antione Drye began hosting  Jazz at The Shop , a bi-weekly donation-only outdoor jazz series at Watt's Asbury Park studio. For many, and despite their world-class talent, it was their first opportunity to play since the world shut down in March. Onlookers seemed utterly awed by the level of the music. In all, $30,000 was raised over ten perform...

Benjamin Sherman 'Scatman' Crothers (1910-1986) was a truly diverse star of the stage, film, and television. He first started performing in clubs as a singer and drummer in his teens, and wound up performing on Chicago's speak-easy circuit in the latter part of the 'Roaring 20's.' In 1931, Crothers found himself hosting his own radio show on WFMK in Dayton, Ohio, where he became well known for sca...

The careers of jazz musicians Troy Roberts and Tim Jago have run scarily parallel. Both born and raised in Australia, they both initially re-located to the US to study at the prestigious University of Miami Frost School of Music. Multi-instrumentalist Roberts and guitarist Jago have remained close as they have carved out careers as in-demand sideman for the likes of Joey DeFrancesco, Aretha Frankl...

It's a pleasure to be able to say that there is a two day live jazz festival happening this weekend, June 25-26, in upstate New York. After a one-year hiatus, the Freihofer's Saratoga Jazz Festival is back! Scaled down in size due to health restrictions, nonetheless Danny Melnick, the festival producer is happy with the results. Any festival that presents Christian McBridge, Dianne Reeves, Joey Al...

Let's trace the line of great tenor saxophone players, from the likes of Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and Ben Webster to Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins and James Moody and then to Stan Getz, Paul Desmond and John Coltrane. From there the many diverse threads of jazz lead us to Michael Brecker, Wayne Shorter, Grover Washington Jr , and Archie Shepp, right up to Joshua Redman, Kenny Garrett and Kamas...

Podcast 823 is the second of my two-part conversation with pianist Todd Cochran, who has ended an 8 year hiatus to release Then and Again, Here & Now by the TC3. That group, led by Cochran on piano, features his long-time collaborators John Leftwich on bass and Michael Carvin on drums. Composed mostly of jazz standards, it is a deeply spiritual take on songs we all know so well, performed at a hig...

Todd Cochran's lengthy career has taken him from work with masters like Bobby Hutcherson and Freddie Hubbard, through groundbreaking electric and jazz-soul sounds under his name and under this Afrocentric name Bayeté, to backing rock acts from Santana to Peter Gabriel to Joan Armatrading. He has continued his first love of composing classical music, and has successfully scored films and television...

Sixty-plus years ago, J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding released Jay and Kai , an album that set the standard for twin trombone jazz (to be fair, the pair did not appear on all the tracks - Wayne Andre and Carl Fontana filled in for J.J. on one track). There have not been a plethora of two trombone bands since those sessions, so its a pleasure to hear Road Trip , the latest from Slide Attack, a band fr...

Podcast 820 is a little different from some previous postings. I'm happy to bring you a conversation with a noted jazz musician, but rather than talk to him about his latest release, we'll be talking about his Podcast. Noted bassist Todd Coolman has recently jumped into the world of podcasting with " The Cool Toddcast ," where he converses with jazz notables and shares his thoughts on all things j...