Straight No Chaser - A Jazz Show

It's always a pleasure to talk to a jazz artist who has just released their first recording as a bandleader or solo artist. There is a certain excitement in discovering something new, and the energy in our conversation is usually palpable. When you release your first recording as a leader when you have been a gigging musician for nearly thirty-five years and are no stranger to backing others in th...

Dave Shelton is something of a latecomer when it comes to playing jazz professionally. He excelled in both the clarinet and piano in high school, winning top honors in several state-wide competitions . At Washington University in St. Louis  he  multi-tasked, studying classical piano while playing on the varsity football team and getting both a BA and MBA.  While he began playing at local restauran...

More than 15 years after his last release as a leader, saxophonist Rick Margitza made his long-awaited return a few months back with the release of  Sacred Hearts , on Le Coq Records. There is a tinge of melancholy, and a sense of a composer dealing with the pains of loss and joys of everyday life in these newly recorded tunes. Sacred Hearts marks the recording debut of his Paris-based quartet - p...

In Podcast 815, saxophonist Vince Herring talked about his recent health struggles, and his enthusiastic new release on Smoke Sessions Records, entitled Preaching to the Choir .  At 56 years of age, he has a lengthy resume, including time with legendary jazz musicians like Lionel Hampton, Horace Silver, Art Blakey, Jack DeJohnette and especially Nat Adderley and Cedar Walton. With over twenty albu...

2020 was not kind to most of us. It was even more unkind to Vincent Herring. Returning to New York from a gig in Las Vegas, he contracted COVID on the flight. Despite the relatively minor effects of the virus, there would be more. A few weeks later he began feeling pain in his joints. A blood test later and his doctor told him he had developed rheumatoid arthritis as a result of his COVID exposure...

Saxophonist Tobias Meinhart has been living in New York for the past decade, often summering in his native Bavaria or in Berlin. That is, until the COVID-19 pandemic closed off the E.U. from overseas travelers, leaving him on the outside looking in. During the pandemic, he used his time to work on new compositions, and he shared his frustrations as to the state of his ever-smaller world on his Ins...

Podcast 813 completes my two-part conversation with pianist Bill Cunliffe, whose latest release, Trio features bassist  John Patitucci  and drummer  Vinnie Colaiuta joining him for a set of standards.  Bill had two master musicians as mentors during his formative years - drummer Buddy Rich, who became one of his first employers, and pianist Mary Lou Williams, his teacher at Duke University. I coul...

Sometimes the must exciting jazz recordings come from coincidence. Trio , the recent release on the new Le Coq Records imprint, is one of those coincidences. Veteran pianist Bill Cunliffe has been acting as something of a house arranger and musical director for many of the newly launched imprint's projects, and when he and the highly sought-after bassist  John Patitucci  and drummer  Vinnie Colaiu...

Fifteen years ago, French-born musician Yohan Giaume began to immerse himself in different foreign cultures mainly guided by his love for the music of the African diaspora. He explored Cuba, South America, Morocco, Europe and different places throughout the United States. Immersing himself in different musical traditions, he found a "home away from home" in New Orleans. There he made an unexpected...

Sammy Stein is a noted columnist, reviewer and author, writing about music, mostly jazz, but also other genres. She is the International Editor for the Jazz Journalists Association. Her books include Women In Jazz , which won the Jazz Times Distaff Award, made their Gearhead list and was Phace Magazines' Music Book of The Year. She has run a music festival and also worked on several radio shows, i...

Steve Slagle is certainly an artist up for meeting a challenge. The veteran saxophone/flute player had been set to record a new album in the early Summer of 2020, but the complete shut down of live and recorded music due to COVID-19 put a stop to that. However, always looking for a way to get his music heard, he found that in the Fall he was able to reserve the large Sear Sound, Studio A on 48th S...

Live performances have been at a premium these many pandemic-plagued months. A new live recording may be even rarer. But in October 2020, veteran saxophonist Jim Snidero found himself with an opportunity he couldn't pass up – a chance to play a live gig at the famed Deer Head Inn in Pennsylvania and record it for the Savant imprint. He put together a top quartet for the performance, including Orri...

Veronica Swift's second album has been hugely anticipated. Heck, she was on the cover of Downbeat in the November issue, months before her latest collection of tunes was ready for release. This Bitter Earth (Mack Avenue Records), takes on song-cycle characteristics as Swift tackles sexism ["How Lovely to Be a Woman"], domestic abuse ["He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)"], racism/ xenophobia ["You...

Lisa Hilton and her longstanding band mates Rudy Royston (drums), Luques Curtis (bass) and JD Allen (tenor sax), had just finished the first half of their tour for their 2020 album, Chalkboard Destiny ,  when the corona virus forced a shutdown of the tour and sent Lisa back to her home in California. Using her creativity in new and different ways, she composed new material, and when there was a ch...

Listeners to the Straight No Chaser podcast know that there are a few styles and instrumental configurations of jazz recordings that always catch my ear. I'm a sucker for Brazilian jazz, for piano trios, groups led by bassists, and by organ players. In the last regard, I hadn't caught up with the music of Brian Charette as a band leader (but loved him as part of John Ellis' Double Wide group), and...

In Part Two of my conversation with Danish composer-guitarist Jakob Bro, we discuss the influence of saxophone great Lee Konitz on Jakob's music, and delve into his latest release on ECM, Uma Elmo . Musical selections from the new album include his tribute to Konitz "Music for Black Pigeons," and the melodic "Sound Flower." Bro also shares news of his coming recording projects, including plans for...

Danish guitarist-composer Jakob Bro continues to redefine the sound of the guitar in small ensembles with the release of Uma Elmo , his fifth album as a leader for ECM. For this release, he presents a new trio featuring Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen and Spanish drummer Jorge Rossy. While Jakob had played with Rossy in the past, the three musicians had never played together before their arriva...

Bobby Watson had been scheduled for another busy year in 2020, before it all fell apart in short order last winter. However, listeners are able to hear him on two exception releases last year. One was Keepin' It Real (Smoke Sessions) with a reconstituted version of his Horizon band, while the other was an epic blowing session with fellow sax giants Vincent Herring and Gary Bartz on Bird at 100. Ir...

"There's a good trumpet player in George Gruntz's band I heard at the Berlin Jazz Festival. He can play his ass off. If I was picking a trumpet player, I would pick him. He can play anything." - Miles Davis, talking about Franco Ambrosetti in 1987.  The ageless Franco Ambrosetti has kept himself very busy the past few years. In 2019, he put together his dream band - John Scofield on guitar, Scott...

In a recent podcast, we talked about jazz musicians who look forward by looking back. This podcast, featuring pianist Chris Pattishall shows another facet of that idea. Pattishall's debut CD, Zodiac , is his take on the legendary Mary Lou Williams' "Zodiac Suite." Pattishall became aware of Ms. Williams while living in Durham, North Carolina, where the Duke University Center for Black Studies is n...

We last left Eddie Henderson discussing his latest releases, both on his own ( Shuffle and Deal ) and with the super-group The Cookers. But there was no way I was going to end my conversation with Dr. Eddie at that. Not with his resume.  Much of Podcast 799 is a discussion of Eddie's development as a teenager and his membership in the groundbreaking electric jazz group Mwandishi. Although the grou...

"I want the audience to really feel the music and start moving. Jazz started as dance music in the first place, so I want to bring that element back into the music. The telltale common denominator when people are really enjoying themselves is when they feel like they want to get up and dance. Not the European concept of listening to music, just sitting still and static, shushing people and politel...

For Valentine's Day this year, I decided to do something different. Most year's I post an hour plus of music appropriate for the holiday, allowing you to download and enjoy the uninterrupted jazz as you celebrate with your valentine.  This year I asked myself - what if instead, I asked someone else to come up with a play list? In fact, what if I asked a jazz musician to make a list, and zero in on...

Vocalist Jacqui Naylor is best known for her ability to interpret a diverse repertoire, bringing together music from different genres and generations. On her new CD  The Long Game , she moves from jazz arrangements of rock classics from David Bowie, Peter Gabriel and Coldplay to Latin-tinged treatments of standards from Kurt Weill, Jimmy Van Heusen and Ray Henderson. Interwoven throughout are the...

Another one of my long overdue conversations took place last week when I finally got to chat with Orrin Evans. One of the most versatile and exciting musicians around today, Orrin is nominated for a second Grammy Award for his latest release with his powerful Captain Black Big Band, The Intangible Between . Evans has advanced his career shuffling between various musical entourages, from the Big Ba...