Jazz
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The Contemplative Jazz of Colin Vallon March 17, 2025
I wasn’t sure how to write about Colin Vallon. The brilliant Swiss jazz pianist is one of my favorite musicians, and his new album Samares is ravishing. I wanted to describe the atmospherics, lovely melodies and deep space of Vallon and his trio. Yet...
2 Books for Jazz Age Enthusiasts March 03, 2025
Dear readers,The Museum of the City of New York recently unveiled the refurbished Stettheimer Dollhouse, the decades-long creation of Carrie Stettheimer — who, with her sisters Florine (a painter) and Ettie (a writer), hosted notable salons for the 1...
Quincy Jones Should Be Remembered Jazz November 11, 2024
Quincy Jones, who died on November 3 aged 91, was the last major musician whose working life spanned the arc of 20th-century American music. Jones was born in 1933, only six years after Louis Armstrong recorded "Struttin’ With Some Barbeque," one of ...
Is the Femininomenon Still Happening? November 11, 2024
Scrolling through the 2025 Grammy nominations this morning, I encountered the expected candidates: Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX. At the very least, I recognized the names of almost every artist listed; I laughed seeing Khruang...
When Heroin Hit Jazz September 17, 2024
In postwar America, an epidemic of heroin addiction swept the world of jazz. Greats who developed a habit included John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker. Nowadays, jazz has an ambivalent reputation as “America’s classical music.”...
The Great American Malaise September 11, 2024
An observation. There are few interesting and new political ideas, and few innovative works of imaginative literature. Politics and literature are both on a decline; political and literary genius are increasingly rare. American politics and literatur...
When Jazz Struck a Chord April 08, 2024
Miles Davis's 1959 album Kind of Blue is the best-selling instrumental jazz album of all time. As the music-buying public is rightly suspicious of jazz, that makes Kind of Blue the kind of jazz that people who don't like jazz can stand. This was not ...
Netflix’s Moody Fresh Take on Patricia Highsmith April 05, 2024
It’s an ebullient and passionate world of religious and artistic fervor and when Matt Damon’s Tom Ripley begins to kill to secure his place in that world, he does so with the improvisational flair of the Blue Note jazz albums he studied to help him a...
Miles Davis and the Recording of a Jazz Masterpiece February 27, 2024
Jazz was at the apex of its artistic power and commercial popularity when, in 1959, some of the music's greatest innovators gathered to record in New York City. In this excerpt from the new book 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evan...
In Search of Dupree Bolton February 07, 2024
Sometimes a music researcher needs to play the role of private detective. That happened to me when I tried to solve the mystery of the great missing jazz trumpeter Dupree Bolton.I only told that story once. But the article never appeared in print—and...
The Devaluation of Skills in Our Current Culture January 19, 2024
It was very early in 2020 when I first discovered the Youtube channel NewJazz. I’d just been fired again and faced yet another months-long bout of job-searching. With all the unclaimed minutes and hours I now had, why not sit down and actually try to...
College Football's Death March January 09, 2024
As a kid, I remember thinking it was pathetic. Why did diehard sports fans stick with their teams through thick and thin, despite years of disappointment and grief? Those grizzled, grim-faced Cubs or Red Sox fans tugged at my heartstrings a bit, but ...
Joseph Sings the Blues January 01, 2024
Albert Murray was an icon in the music industry. Though not a musician himself, he was a Black author whose writings shaped the genres of jazz and the blues. Between 1970 and 2005, he wrote a dozen books, including The Hero and the Blues (1973), Stom...
