Articles by Katchie Cartwright

Radio & Podcasts

Walking Down the Freedom Road: Oscar Brown Jr. at 100

by Katchie Cartwright
October 18, 2026

October 10, 2026 was the 100th birthday of the great Chicago-born-and-bred singer, songwriter, poet, playwright, and civil rights activist Oscar Brown Jr.. Caminhos do Jazz joined the celebration, focusing on Brown's pathbreaking debut, Sin & Soul (Columbia Records, 1961 [recorded in 1960]), and pulling in choice cuts from Los Angeles-based jazz vocalist Amber Weekes' beautiful 2026 album, To Oscar With Love (Amber Inn), which was released to coincide with his centennial. Brown stands as a genius worthy of the widest ...

Album Review

Ami Molinelli, Duo Violão Plus One: Raízes do Choro e Samba (Roots of Choro and Samba)

Read "Raízes do Choro e Samba (Roots of Choro and Samba)" reviewed by Katchie Cartwright

by Katchie Cartwright
September 30, 2026

For the better part of two decades, Ami Molinelli has been a stalwart of the San Francisco Bay Area's Brazilian music scene. Her undergraduate work in Conservation and Resource Studies at University of California at Berkeley led her to spend nine months in Salvador da Bahia, learning about Afro-Brazilian culture and performing with a group of women drummers. “Seeing music used as a community-building tool and social justice mechanism resonated with my conservation studies," she explained. “I began to see ...

Radio & Podcasts

September Songs

by Katchie Cartwright
September 27, 2026

September songs mark the end of a long summer season and the beginning of one that promises to be shorter and cooler. Familiar compositions by the likes of Weill, Lins and Strayhorn stand with newer musings, performed by the composers and others. That's the long and short of it here in San Antonio, Texas, where the autumnal equinox brings swimming weather and Hermeto Pascoal's 366-piece song cycle, Calendário do Som (Itau Cultural/Editora Senac, 1996/1997), provides a whimsical throughline.

Album Review

Stephanie Borgani: Mímica: Música para Quatro Instrumentos

Read "Mímica: Música para Quatro Instrumentos" reviewed by Katchie Cartwright

by Katchie Cartwright
September 24, 2026

For a jazz singer to debut with a quartet of unaccompanied voices and saxophones in a program of new music is an audacious move. But on Mímica: Música para Quatro Instrumentos (Mimicry: Music for Four Instruments), Stephanie Borgani wraps her artistic assertiveness in the subtle sounds of her ensemble, with timbres and textures that are transparent and light, creating a refreshing contrast to the typical lead-plus-rhythm jazz quartet. There is a comparable aesthetic duality in the work of ...

Album Review

Denny Zeitlin: Odyssey

Read "Odyssey" reviewed by Katchie Cartwright

by Katchie Cartwright
September 18, 2026

"Don't count stars or you might stumble," the lyric warns. The song is about falling in love, but Denny Zeitlin zooms in on the cosmos at the outset of his live journey into “It Could Happen to You" on Odyssey. He flashes around the piano's twinkling top end with whole-tone swirls and crystalline dissonances, like Tinkerbell or maybe a firefly, with drummer George Marsh at his side, articulating icy stick figures on the ride cymbal, while bassist Mel Graves stays ...

Album Review

L'Abîme: L'Abîme II

Read "L'Abîme II" reviewed by Katchie Cartwright

by Katchie Cartwright
August 4, 2026

Montreal-based composer and pianist Jonathan Turgeon, double-bassist Hugo Blouin, and drummer Jean-Philippe Godbout have been together as a rhythm section since 2015, performing, recording, and following in the footsteps of musical heroes as diverse as Herbie Hancock, Olivier Messiaen, and Radiohead. L'Abîme II is their second release as the ensemble L'Abîme (The Abyss), following L'Abîme I (Multiple Chord Music, 2021). L'Abîme's “earlier incarnation" released two recordings as Trio Jonathan Turgeon: Au Fil des Feuilles que Craquent (Self-Produced, 2015) ...

Album Review

Ari & Cecil Alexander: Kaleidoscope

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by Katchie Cartwright
July 29, 2026

A breezy virtuosity pervades Kaleidoscope from the opening title cut. “I run for the train with you on my mind," vocalist-pianist Ari Alexander sings, “watching the town kaleidoscope by..." She and guitarist Cecil Alexander call their style “rhythmic post-bop," citing Herbie Hancock, Joe Henderson and Betty Carter as influences, but you can also hear a bit of Bob Dorough, Dave Frishberg and Blossom Dearie in their original compositions, pieces like Dorough and Frishberg's “I'm Hip," which Dearie premiered in 1966 ...

Album Review

Antonio Adolfo: Balaios

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by Katchie Cartwright
July 20, 2026

Antonio Adolfo draws a parallel between balaios, the baskets that African Brazilian women have carried on their heads for centuries, and musical albums. “Each piece is placed carefully inside, shaped by the moment in which it was born, yet carried into the present with renewed meaning," he says. He speaks of Balaios as a gathering of “what he has cultivated over time--ideas, memories, and melodies." The project, a retrospective of sorts, has a particular focus on the composer-pianist's long association ...

Album Review

Stephen Guerra: Um Violão na Cidade Maravilhosa

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by Katchie Cartwright
July 19, 2026

Buffalo-based guitarist-songwriter and professor Stephen Guerra's notation has developed a slight Brazilian accent. You notice it in small things like a major chord symbol with a capital “M." Who is reading these charts? Musicians in several choro communities around the globe, as it turns out. Take “Um Negocinho pro Tito," (track 9). Guerra first released it on his self-produced 2025 album No Balanço do Choro-Samba, which featured Rogério Souza on 7-string guitar, Eduardo Neves on flute and Thiago ...

Album Review

Ella & The Bossa Beat: Amare

Read "Amare" reviewed by Katchie Cartwright

by Katchie Cartwright
July 11, 2026

Need an escape from the gloom and doom of global politics? How about a hit of Brazilian world-jazz of the “sal, sol, sul" variety? Ella & The Bossa Beat's Amare might be the ticket. For an idea of the ethos, consider a few of the titles: “Mais que um Verão" (More than a Summer), “Areia" (Sand), “Amanhecer" (Dawning), “Summer Rain," “Amare." Salt, sun, south, and of course, love...On their fourth project together, the father-daughter songwriting team of Orlando-based ...