Featured Jazz Articles

Live Review

Detroit Jazz Festival 2026: A Gathering in a Great Jazz City

by Paul Rauch
September 15, 2026

Detroit Jazz Festival 2026 Hart Plaza Detroit, MI September 4-7, 2026 Thursday evening is when artists, media and event staffers begin to file into the Detroit Marriott, arriving from points around the globe. The common purpose is the 47th annual Detroit Jazz Festival, an annual tradition on Labor Day weekend. The largest free jazz festival in the world is four days of music, fellowship, celebration and counting one's blessings. In 2026, Mother Nature decided to ...

Building a Jazz Library

Ronnie Cuber: Baritone Boss

by Mark McKergow
September 14, 2026

Ronnie Cuber (1941-2022) made his mark on the jazz world as a versatile and muscular baritone saxophonist. Born in New York on Christmas Day 1941, he started on tenor saxophone but switched to baritone at 17, attracted by the vacant chair in Marshall Brown's Newport Jazz Youth Band (which also featured lifelong colleagues Eddie Gomez and Michael Abene). He grew from sideman to leader to icon over half a century of hard-blowing hard work. Cuber always gave full value ...

Chats with Cats

Mark Gross: Jazz for Teens

by B.D. Lenz
September 8, 2026

For many young musicians, learning jazz is about much more than learning how to play an instrument. It's about developing confidence, learning to listen, finding your own voice, and discovering how to work with others.Few people understand that better than Mark Gross. As Director of Jazz Instruction at NJPAC, Gross has spent years helping shape the next generation of jazz musicians through programs like TD Jazz for Teens, while also drawing on his own experience as a performer ...

History of Jazz

John Coltrane in Detroit: A Brief History

by Paul Rauch
September 8, 2026

When the calendar turned to 2026, a spirit of celebration was sparked in the jazz community. It marked one hundred years from the birth dates of two jazz titans in John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Coltrane departed us in 1967 from cancer, a life of barely more than forty years that changed the course of jazz. He had forged his approach to playing as a member of Davis' groundbreaking, mid-1950s sextet. Davis, after a brief hiatus in the mid 1970s, ...

Reanimating Conversations Past

Charlie Haden: Anatomy of a Jazz Classic

by John Ephland
August 31, 2026

It was a phoner from the suburban Chicago offices of DownBeat to bassist Charlie Haden in L.A. Our talk, which was held on September 15, 1991, was periodically interrupted by his needing to say, “Hold on one second." The occasion? The 30th anniversary of the release of saxophonist Ornette Coleman's groundbreaking LP Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. To this day, though, I do not recall this interview ever being published at the magazine. And to think that I talked with ...

Interview

Lou Marini: A Solo Career Starting At The Age Of 80

by Mark McKergow
August 29, 2026

Saxophonist “Blue" Lou Marini came to the fore in the 1970s as a member of the Saturday Night Live Band and with The Blues Brothers on film, albums and stage. After a lifetime as an in-demand sideman (notably 26 years and counting with James Taylor), Lou has finally started to release albums under his own name, including Playtime (Hip Pickles, 2026) by Lou Marini and the Italian Groovers. Lou was in Rimini, Italy at the end of a short Italian tour during the ...

Live Review

The Tension Is Where the Music Lives: Miles Davis at 100, Part 3

by Kofi Adjepong-Boateng
August 26, 2026

Herbie Hancock Celebrates Miles Davis Hollywood Bowl Los Angeles, CA August 19, 2026 The Hollywood Bowl began as a picnic ground called Daisy Dell, a canyon chosen for its acoustics, willed into being largely by women, chief among them Artie Mason Carter, a music teacher who believed music was for everyone and priced every seat at a quarter. It opened in 1922 and still seats around 17,500 under the open sky; the audience still arrives ...

Chats with Cats

Michael Ricci: Still Building a Home for Jazz

by B.D. Lenz
August 19, 2026

This is a very special installment of Chats with Cats. Normally, I interview people from different corners of the jazz world. This time, I turned the microphone toward the person who made this conversation possible--the cat, if you will. As the founder and publisher of All About Jazz, Michael Ricci has spent decades building one of the most respected destinations for jazz journalism, discovery, and conversation. What began as a passion project grew into a global resource connecting ...

Groove Orbit

How John Coltrane Changed Rock Music: Santana

by Kyle Simpler
August 18, 2026

When the Santana band first started in the San Francisco area in the late 60s, hardly anyone outside of the Bay Area was familiar with the group. This changed after their performance at the Woodstock festival in 1969. Seemingly overnight, everyone knew about Santana, and the band, under the leadership of its namesake, Carlos Santana has since maintained a strong presence in rock music. Of course, many people familiar with Santana's work know that he has a strong affinity ...

Catching Up With

New York's Hottest New Club Has Arrived

by Mark Robbins
August 14, 2026

Martin Porter's life has revolved around jazz from an early age. Growing up playing jazz piano and listening to the greats, he eventually found himself living out a dream--working at the Jazz Standard, one of the city's premier jazz clubs. The closing of the Standard left a void in New York's jazz community--one that Martin Porter was determined to help fill. Along with his partner, he did just that with the opening of their new club, The Pocket. During the Newport ...