Articles by Adam Beaudoin
Adam Beaudoin's 15 Favorite Albums of 2025
by Adam Beaudoin
Year-end lists are a strange creature, as conceptually absurd as they are genuinely useful. They contend to distill a year's worth of recorded music into “the very best," a laughably conceited claim for any one listener or editorial board, no matter how erudite and steeped in the music, to make. For jazz, the situation is even more ridiculous, as this art form we call a genre has developed so laterally in recent decades that it encompasses musics so stylistically varied ...
Continue ReadingCécile McLorin Salvant's Ogresse At Carnegie Hall
by Adam Beaudoin
Cécile McLorin Salvant Carnegie Hall Ogresse New York, NY May 21, 2025 The relationship between jazz and classical music has a long, complicated history. Musicians themselves tend to care more about the music than concepts of genre, and you only need to listen to the echoes of French Impressionism in the opening moments of miles Davis' Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959), or to Art Farmer and Jim Hall's adaptation of Ravel's “Pavane for ...
Continue ReadingWinter Jazzfest 2025: The Once and Future Music
by Adam Beaudoin
Winter JazzfestNew York, NYJanuary 9-15, 2025 Impressions of A Love Supreme We are standing in a line outside the venue, waiting in the January chill to listen to nearly two dozen musicians perform and pay tribute to John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, 60 years to the month after its release. People on the line are catching up, are meeting for the first time, are talking about this music we love. One heard the Sun Ra ...
Continue ReadingRadical Community: Sara Serpa at The Stone
by Adam Beaudoin
Sara Serpa The Stone New York, NYSeptember 18-21, 2024 The set opened with a half-hour of uninterrupted sound: sections and songs segued organically; the audience sat rapt in intent silence, not applauding even for the most intricate, moving solos. Applause finally came, when the musicians eventually paused, in a spontaneous collective release, as if we had all been unconsciously holding our breath. So began Sara Serpa's September residency at The Stone, John Zorn's ...
Continue Reading
