Featured Jazz Articles
A Waltz for Ludwig
by Blue Note Portal
There are rare sacred moments when music stops being sound and becomes light. A perfect note hangs in the air, silence breathes, and for the space of a heartbeat, the veil thins--revealing a place where music lives, along with pure thought, beyond time, space and language. There is only harmonic resonance: the silent conversation between souls who listen deeper than time. Sometimes the opening swings wider, and the Blue Note Portal opens. Ludwig van Beethoven's Journal Entry--A Letter ...
Continue ReadingLara Somogyi: Finding Her Muse in the Desert
by Dean Nardi
When one is making a pilgrimage to Joshua Tree in California--even by Zoom call--you must be careful about protecting your eyes from the blinding sunlight and keep your cap on to cover your brain. Listening to the music of Lara Somogyi from her album désert (Mercury KX 2025), one's brain is constantly heated by thoughts of striking it rich musically, thoughts that do not fade much with the late afternoon sun going down over the horizon. You may need some ...
Continue ReadingBest of the Best: Jazz From Detroit
by Paul Rauch
Best of the Best: Jazz From DetroitMagic Circle Productions LLC2025 The history of jazz music is told in hundreds of cities from coast to coast in America. From the cradle in New Orleans and the Mississippi River delta, the great migration of Black Americans northward spread the sounds that we know as the blues and jazz across the country. Millions headed to northern urban centers to escape the ravages of segregation and racial discrimination experienced ...
Continue ReadingJohn Hadfield: An Open Concept
by Katchie Cartwright
John Hadfield's sound is instantly recognizable, due in part to his unique drum kit, which reflects the musics he has studied and with which he continues to engage. Hadfield's formal degrees are in jazz (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) and Western classical music (University of Missouri, Kansas City), but he also studied frame drumming and world percussion extensively with Jamey Haddad at The New School in New York. He trained in South Asian classical percussion with Ganesh Kumar and Subash ...
Continue ReadingJoni Jazz, Part 2
by Chuck Lenatti
Part 1 | Part 2 As a young woman growing up in Canada, Joni Mitchell was fond of American popular music and bought records whenever she could afford them. She would sometimes swap painting jobs for jazz albums. Among her favorite jazz artists were Duke Ellington and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. She later recorded “Twisted" by Annie Ross and Wardell Gray and “Centerpiece" by Jon Hendricks and Harry Edison. She was also fascinated ...
Continue ReadingFate Marable’s Mississippi River Conservatory
by Karl Ackermann
In 2020, I published A Map of Jazz: Crossroads of Music and Human Rights (WS Publishing), a book that looks at the culture of jazz on a timeline with cultures of the world. At more than 500 pages, the book is incomplete by necessity; there is no well-marked path, and the history is sometimes nebulous. However, as a map of events and the chronology of jazz music, it leads to unfamiliar places. The series Backstories dives deeper into people and ...
Continue ReadingBaku Jazz Festival 2025: Part 2
by Ian Patterson
Part 1 | Part 2 Baku Jazz Festival Various Venues 20th edition, Days 5-8 Baku, Azerbaijan October 24-31, 2025 Driving around Baku the brightly colored dayglow signs advertising Baku Jazz Festival 2025 catch the eye at every turn. So do posters for COP 29, the international climate conference held in traffic-choked Baku in 2024. Baku nestles on the western edge of the Caspian Sea. The shoreline ...
Continue ReadingVilnius Jazz Festival 2025
by Ieva Pakalniskyte
Vilnius Jazz Festival 2025 Old Theatre of Vilnius Vilnius, Lithuania October 13-21, 2025 This report covers five days from October 15-19. The thirty-eighth edition of the Vilnius Jazz Festival opened with the assurance of an event that has spent decades refining both its aesthetic and its purpose. As one of Vilnius's most enduring festivals--shaped for almost four decades by producer Antanas Gustys--it continues to articulate a distinctive philosophy at a moment when many ...
Continue ReadingBaku Jazz Festival 2025: Part 1
by Ian Patterson
Part 1 | Part 2 Baku Jazz Festival 2025 Various venues 20th Edition Baku, Azerbaijan October 24-31, 2025 For any jazz festival to clock up 20 years is a notable achievement. But in Azerbaijan, where jazz is often met with indifference, this landmark is of particular merit. The birth, growth and survival of Baku Jazz Festival is down to the vision, faith and tireless efforts of its founder and Artistic Director, ...
Continue ReadingJoni Jazz, Part 1
by Chuck Lenatti
Part 1 | Part 2 Born Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7, 1943, child of the Canadian Prairie, Joni Mitchell showed signs of becoming an artist at a young age. In Joni Mitchell in Her Own Words (ECW Press, 2014), a collection of conversations recorded over the years, musician and reporter Malka Marom wondered what inspired her friend's early urge to draw and paint. Mitchell said her obsession with art was triggered by watching ...
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