Interview
From emerging talents to today's brightest stars, we interview musicians from around the globe.
Shuffle Demons: They Are for Real... Really
by Dean Nardi
On the Shuffle Demons' Are You Really Real (Alma Records 2025), the uncategorizable Toronto band knits together traditional jazz, modern funk playfulness, blues, rap and the sensuality of Prince. For an ensemble that has been a going concern for 40 years, they maintain an optimistic, let's-go-for-something-new outlook, reflected in their flamboyant retro clothing that resembles that worn by harmonizing quartets with 1950s haircuts, looking so sharp they could pierce the heart of a bureaucrat. Born out of busking on Toronto's ...
Continue ReadingZlatko Kaučič: The Discipline of Freedom
by Neri Pollastri
Fresh from the release of the four-CD box set Inklings (Fundacja Sluchaj, 2024) and on the eve of the 15th edition of the Brda Contemporary Music Festival--which he founded and still directs--drummer, percussionist, composer and educator Zlatko Kaučič continues a career spanning over four decades, marked by collaborations with many of Europe's greatest improvisers. A passionate musician and a frank, thoughtful person attuned to the issues of our time, Kaučič spoke to us with the same openness that characterizes his ...
Continue ReadingFranck Amsallem: A Jazz Life From New York To Paris
by Frank Housh
Franck Amsallem is a Paris-based pianist, singer, and composer educated in the United States. His debut recording, Out A Day (OMD, 1992) with Gary Peacock and Bill Stewart was recently reissued and remastered (streaming only), and his most recent album The Summer Knows (Un été 42) was released May 10, 2025. The Summer Knows (David Wong, bass and Kush Abadey, drums) includes song the theme song from the 1971 movie “The Summer of '42" composed by French composer ...
Continue ReadingGary Bartz Is Nobody's Jazz Musician
by Bridget A. Arnwine
Gary Bartz is nobody's jazz musician. What he has built and created as an artist with a career that spans six decades defies labels, especially ones that have storied racist connotations and otherwise derogatory origins like the word jazz. He is a composer of the finest order and as gifted as the most revered names in classical music. Defining his work as improvised music is too simple a term to fully capture the essence of what Bartz and “jazz" musicians ...
Continue ReadingMichala Østergaard-Nielsen: The Poetic Vibrations of Drumming
by Dean Nardi
Michala Østergaard-Nielsen is a jazz drummer from Denmark, a country with a rich tradition of women playing drums. Once during a lesson with Gerald Cleaver, she was told you could either play drums upon sound or upon a pattern. “That really opened the doors for me to not think just the technical things, but listen to it as a sound," she said, looking back on what she gained from these lessons. Østergaard-Nielsen had classical training on the piano ...
Continue ReadingLinda May Han Oh: Music In The Moment
by Frank Housh
Linda May Han Oh is one of jazz music's most innovative artists. I first encountered her in 2015 when she played The Art of Jazz with the Dave Douglas Quintet at Buffalo's Albright Knox Art Gallery. In the decade following she has released four albums for Biophilia Records and worked with luminaries such as art hirahara, Vijay Iyer, and Pat Metheny. Strange Heavens features Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpet) and Tyshawn Sorey (drums) from Akinmusire's Honey From A Winter Stone ...
Continue ReadingKahlil Childs and Jacob Hart: Two Young Stars Rise From Detroit
by Paul Rauch
The Detroit Jazz Festival is a huge draw. For fans, it is the largest free jazz event in the world, removing financial barriers and accommodating over 300,000 attendees over Labor Day weekend annually. Over four days, four stages present the best the jazz world has to offer and in the process, celebrates the great jazz history in Detroit by booking the best of the local scene and giving them ample time on the festival's main stages. A very unique aspect ...
Continue ReadingKenneth Dahl Knudsen: Beyond 'Sound American' – Crafting a Nordic Jazz Identity
by Ieva Pakalniskyte
What does finding an authentic musical voice in a genre so deeply connected to history and geography mean? The answer for Danish double bassist, composer, and educator Kenneth Dahl Knudsen is to transcend limitation and let identity shape the sound. A restless presence on the European jazz scene, Knudsen has resisted the pressure to “sound American" and instead draws from his Scandinavian roots, folk song, church music and rock energy, while taking influences from collaborators worldwide.
Continue ReadingDave Redmond: The Next In Line
by Ian Patterson
Ireland probably has more good jazz bassists than at any time before but ask who the most in-demand bassist in the country is and the answer is most likely Dave Redmond. The Dubliner has been a key player on the Irish jazz scene since the early 2000s, playing with Irish guitar greats Louis Stewart and Tommy Halferty. He has forged an enduring musical partnership with Kevin Brady in the drummer's piano trio as well as his electric quartet. Redmond and ...
Continue ReadingJamie Baum: These Are Her Times
by Dean Nardi
Jamie Baum is a world-class composer as well as flutist, who smoothly balances woodwinds with horns, guitar, bass, piano and drums so that they are equals. Her compositions can remind you of a Gil Evans arrangement with several decades of development added to create a thoroughly modern milieu. She mixes high-energy with ballads and Western foundations with South Asian colors; the music so charged it practically has a visible aura around the score. You can hear it on Bridges (Sunnyside, ...
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