Jazz Articles
Christian McBride and Brad Mehldau at Presidio Theatre
by Steven Roby
Christian McBride & Brad Mehldau Presidio Theatre San Francisco, CA October 16, 2025 Listening became the real instrument onstage, a single invisible string stretched between Christian McBride and Brad Mehldau and humming all night. At the Presidio Theatre, they approached repertoire as conversation and memory as form, leafing through familiar tunes like a well-loved book, reading passages aloud, underlining new meanings, and showing how a lifetime of music speaks through them. The set ...
Continue ReadingNelson Devereaux: Three Lights in the Dark
by Scott Lichtman
Nelson Devereaux is a highly creative sax/woodwind player, singer, multi-instrumental sound manipulator and composer who fills the alt-jazz and alt-pop spaces with a unique brew of avant/free/ambient sound. Based in Minnesota, the artist has been both prolific and under-the-radar. He has played with Bon Iver, Lizzo and Miley Cyrus. His album, Three Lights in the Dark (Youngbloods, 2025), is the most jazz-imbued project of his ten-year recording career and bears multiple listens. Devereaux ably teams up here with ...
Continue ReadingRita Payés At Jazz à La Villette, In Paris
by Pierre Lavoie
On September 6, 2025, the Jazz à la Villette Festival in Paris presented Rita Payés, a 26-year-old Catalan singer, trombone player, composer, arranger, and lyricist, who has been on stage since her early teens. This performer is in a category of her own, pursuing her personal musical projects with a singularity that has become her signature. Born to a family of musicians, she sings and writes in Catalan, Castilian Spanish, and Portuguese--and sometimes in English, having spent her ...
Continue ReadingGregg Belisle-Chi: Slow Crawl: Performing the Music of Tim Berne
by Mark Corroto
Guitarist Gregg Belisle-Chi's story mirrors that of saxophonist Tim Berne, which makes Slow Crawl all the more compelling. Berne's own musical journey began when he was so moved by Julius Hemphill's Dogon A.D. (Mbari, 1972) that he relocated to New York to study directly with the master. Decades later, Belisle-Chi had a similar experience in Seattle when he first encountered Berne's Science Friction (Screwgun, 2002). The album altered his musical trajectory, prompting him to move to New York to study ...
Continue ReadingIsole Che Parlano 2025
by Luciano Rossetti
A collection of photos from the Isole Che Parlano festival in Palau, Sardinia, under the artistic direction of Nanni and Paolo Angeli, from September 11-14, 2025, featuring Sara Ardizzoni, Egle Sommacal, Perrate, Heavy Sound, Farah Fersi, Elana Sasson, Korhan Futaci, Matteo Carta and many others. ...
Continue ReadingLina Allemano Four: The Diptychs
by Troy Dostert
Maintaining its biennial release pattern going back to 2021's Vegetables (Lumo Records) and 2023's Pipe Dream (Lumo Records), The Lina Allemano Four once again strikes gold with The Diptychs, another of the group's ventures into its signature territory. With artful, multilayered themes that generate nuanced four-way dialogues, this is music born of the close collaboration that trumpeter Allemano has long championed, and her most accomplished working band is once again in top form. Built around six relatively compact ...
Continue ReadingGrant Stewart, Margherita Fava, Stevie Holland, Nat Adderley, Jr., Kelsey Mines, Affinity Trio & More
by Mary Foster Conklin
This broadcast includes new releases from Grant Stewart, Margherita Fava, Stevie Holland, Nat Adderley, Jr., Kelsey Mines and Affinity Trio, with birthday shoutouts to Thelonious Monk, Pam Fleming, Amy Cervini, Violeta Parra (Gracias A La Vida), Johnny O'Neal, Nancy Kelly, and Nona Hendryx, among others. Happy listening and please support the artists you hear--see them live, buy their music so they can continue to comfort, distract, provoke and remind the world that A Woman's Place is in the Groove. Many ...
Continue ReadingKinan Azmeh & CityBand at Stable Hall
by Katchie Cartwright
Kinan Azmeh & CityBAnd Stable Hall The New Season 2025/26 San Antonio October 12, 2025 The concert on October 12, 2025 was not Syrian-born Kinan Azmeh's first rodeo, you might say. He had performed in San Antonio a handful of times prior to the Stable Hall concert at the behest of Musical Bridges Around the World, which provides, as their website rightly proclaims, “free access to high quality global performing arts, with a ...
Continue ReadingPaul McCartney at Coors Field
by Geoff Anderson
Paul McCartney Coors Field Denver, CO October 11, 2025 A Paul McCartney concert, unlike most other musical events, is laden with cultural significance, bearing carts of baggage both good and bad; but mostly good. The weight of context complicates attempts at a dispassionate evaluation of the music. But it is music. It is inextricably intertwined with passion and emotion. Because of his longevity and cultural impact, McCartney's music just carries more of that ...
Continue ReadingChris Jonas: backwardsupwardsky
by Glenn Astarita
Few artists can translate geography into sound with the spatial clarity that Chris Jonas achieves on backwardsupwardsky. A saxophonist, composer and multimedia artist whose résumé includes collaborations with Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor and William Parker, Jonas has always favored creative risk. This two-LP set on Edgetone Records transforms desert solitude--specifically his winters camping on Arizona's Barry Goldwater Missile Range--into a sprawling, multi-ensemble work. The music captures both the intimacy of campfire sketches and the sheer scale of the landscapes that ...
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