by Mark Saleski The music of jazz composer/pianist Matthew Shipp isn’t fairly described as “avant garde,” mostly because to a great many people, that categorization can be read as “I don’t understand this music, can we please leave now?” This wouldn’t be fair to Shipp because over the course ofRead More

Delfeayo Marsalis doesn’t just rediscover Duke Ellington. He reanimates Ellington as a living breathing thing, a collaborative voice.

The King has been dead for nearly a half century. Not that you’d know it with all the reissues, television specials and creepy rip offs from Nat Cole’s daughter over the last pair of decades. He’s funny that way. Cole has had more output over that period than many livingRead More

by Something Else Reviews Composer/producer Ryan Truesdell on Wednesday launched the Gil Evans Centennial Project at GilEvansProject.com. There’s news: Truesdell, the first person outside of the Evans family to have full access to his musical archives, has uncovered a series of rare compositions, from before and after Evans’ celebrated collaborationsRead More

Photo of Ingrid Jensen from http://www.ingridjensen.com by S. Victor Aaron Nordic Connect is a grouping of musicians from Canada (Ingrid Jensen, trumpet; Ingrid’s sister Christine Jensen, alto and soprano saxes), U.S.A. (Ingrid’s husband Jon Wikan, drums), and Sweden (Maggie Olin (piano, Fender Rhodes; Mattias Welin, acoustic bass). The name pointsRead More

by Mark Saleski One of the markers of high-level instrumental interplay is the perception of intimacy. We see this again & again in review language — that the musicians seemed as though they were “of one mind,” that their communication was “telepathic.” There are plenty of recorded examples that comeRead More

George Shearing, the sightless bebop-influenced pianist best known for the 1952 jazz standard “Lullaby of Birdland,” died today of congestive heart failure at age 91. Here’s a look back at a favorite Shearing release, done alongside singer Nancy Wilson … by Nick DeRiso One of the smartest things Nancy WilsonRead More

Checking in with our thoughts on a few of tonight’s winners from the 2011 Grammy Awards, including the Black Keys — the top-rated Something Else! Reviews record from last year — as well as Buddy Guy, Neil Young, Stanley Clarke, Paul McCartney and Mavis Staples, among others. Click through theRead More

Photo by Jim Eigo by Nick DeRiso People think of clarinets as this sound from a different era, and the guys who play them as having done so in black and white. The late Alvin Batiste, who initially found his muse in Charlie Parker’s “Now’s the Time,” was never thatRead More

Photo from www.Jonathan-Parker.com by S. Victor Aaron Many up and coming jazz artists we’ve covered here typically come from just about every corner of the U.S.A., attend a prestigious music school and, perhaps after some intermediate stop at a regional jazz hub, eventually end up in the intensely competitive butRead More