On June 14th, guitarist Pat Metheny will release What’s It All About, an all-acoustic album that’s about as far as you can get, technologically speaking, from last year’s Orchestrion. You May Also Like: Pat Metheny, May 16, 2019: Shows I’ll Never Forget Pat Metheny Discovered Bold New Machine-Aided Freedoms WithRead More

Vacation Part 3. OK, so I didn’t win the lottery. I didn’t buy a big house on the Maine coast. There was no affair with the real estate agent. But you could have probably guessed all of that. You May Also Like: Why You Should Give Pat Metheny’s ‘Rejoicing’ AnotherRead More

Vibraphonist Gary Burton’s entire career as a musician has been about thinking outside the box and exploring new frontiers in jazz music. You May Also Like: Pat Metheny, Gary Burton + Danny Gottlieb, “Hommage” (2015): One Track Mind Gary Burton in Nashville: 1960’s Tennessee Firebird was a fusion album likeRead More

Up until the year 2003, I had successfully avoided Kurt Elling. This wasn’t all that hard to do considering that male jazz vocals never really resonated with me. I do own a Coltrane/Hartman record, and of course some Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. Still, only a handful of albums? ItRead More

Author Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections, Freedom) was feeling sort of burned out and overexposed after spending several months book touring, with his personal history a constant subject. His solution was to travel to a remote island You May Also Like: Why You Should Give Pat Metheny’s ‘Rejoicing’ Another Listen ‘ElegantRead More

by Mark Saleski I’ve been reading bits and pieces of Henry Miller’s The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Miller’s collection of essays about his travels around the United States. The expatriate writer had wanted to see what his homeland had become, to get to the core of it all. As with all ofRead More

by Something Else Reviews Over the last few weeks, this merry band of music lovers has offered its varied take on the Year That Was. Now, we winnow it all down. First to go were the personal obsessions (Mark: Mary Halvorson; Pico: Greg Ward’s Fitted Shards), and other worthy entriesRead More

by Tom Johnson Every year I start out thinking that I have a feeling what album is going to ride high on my year end list, and more often than not I’m surprised by so many other things that the album in question may not even register. This year’s victimRead More

What kind of a year was it for music? It was so good that very often, I had a tough time figuring out what to listen to next. The proper cliché to be applied is “an embarrassment of riches.” Not only was it a great year for music, it wasRead More

by Mark Saleski, at Binghamton University, Vestal, N.Y. Oh dear, I was this close to feeling disappointed. I loved the Orchestrion concept and music so much that tickets were procured and a trip was planned (across southern New Hampshire, Vermont, and all the way out past Albany to Binghamton, NY)Read More