by Nick DeRiso Jazz guitarist Al Di Meola, the former teen prodigy in Return to Forever, accomplishes an uncommon thing here, making something out of a cover attempt at the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever.” You May Also Like: ‘Danny Says: A Documentary on the Life and Times of Danny Fields’Read More

by Nick DeRiso Forgive me if I thought this was going to be trumpeter Nicholas Payton’s further ruminations on the turbulent brilliance of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. Instead, Payton really means it. You May Also Like: Nicholas Payton – ‘Smoke Sessions’ (2021)

Posi-Tone Records, the label that has done more than anyone else lately in putting out records by the brightest new talent in mainstream and modern jazz, introduced the pianist and composer Noah Haidu to the world last week. Slipstream went on sale March 22, a debut that doesn’t present mereRead More

Yesterday, Atlanta, GA bassist Michael Feinberg put out his second album, With Many Hands, a part of a quiet revolution taking place in jazz today. The twenty-somethings like Feinberg and his band who are plying their trade in this hallowed American institution of jazz didn’t grow up listening to onlyRead More

Photo by Tom Marcello A new reissue series focusing on turn-of-the-1980s sides by the underappreciated Woody Shaw doesn’t consistently illustrate why he’s sometimes considered the last of the true innovators at the trumpet. But United certainly does. You May Also Like: Woody Shaw – ‘Love Dance’ (1976, 2026 reissue) Pre-FameRead More

by Nick DeRiso Turns out, it actually does mean a thing, even if it ain’t got that swing. For something like 80 years now, that old Duke Ellington cliche worked as the clarion call of big band music, but its mantra has also become its curse. You May Also Like:Read More

by S. Victor Aaron Kingston, Jamaica’s own Monty Alexander looms as large a figure in Jamaica’s jazz world as Bob Marley does for its homegrown reggae. A virtuosic pianist in the Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson tradition, Alexander often melds Tatum and Peterson with the dancehall, calypso and reggae idiomsRead More

by Mark Saleski Back in the late 1980s, there was a backlash of sorts against the new traditionalist tendencies in mainstream jazz. Wynton Marsalis and his cohorts had come along to celebrate (and honestly, expand upon) the early strengths of bop and, as usual, the major labels started releasing likeRead More

Yet another product from Moppa Elliot’s Hot Cup Records, which already says a lot about a record that shares the same label as Bryan And The Haggards, Puttin’ On The Ritz, and Mostly Other People Do The Killing. But we were already saying things — nice things — about Lundbom’sRead More

by Mark Saleski Jazz fans have always been sort of coy with the word ‘fusion.’ We like to make jokes about it, even applying a nickname of sorts — The F-Word — because we’d hate to admit that we’re ever serious about the genre. Yeah, fusion seems to get theRead More