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New York City Jazz Performance Preview: Fall 2026
by Paul Reynolds
New York season includes the first fall programs from two recently opened midtown clubs--The Pocket and Jazzcultural and higher-profile shows for fine emerging performers such as singer Ekep Nkwelle and pianist/arranger Joe Block. The preeminent departure is that of Wynton Marsalis who, after 30 years in the job, will lead his last season as the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Consequently, 2026-27 sees The House That Jazz Built programming an even bigger dose of Marsalisiana than ...
Continue ReadingLaura Macdonald Quartet at Caol Ila Islay Jazz Festival
by Mark McKergow
Laura Macdonald QuartetCaol Ila Islay Jazz Festival Islay, Scotland September 12, 2026 Ayrshire-born and Berklee-educated saxophonist, composer and educator Laura Macdonald has been a central figure in Scottish jazz for a quarter century. She first performed at the Islay festival in 2000, has released four albums and was named Best Scottish Jazz Performer in 2021. In 2022, she became the first female saxophone lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and later stepped into the role ...
Continue ReadingAn Uplifting Tragedy: Everybody Digs Bill Evans
by Peter Jones
In July 1961, 25-year-old bassist Scott LaFaro was killed in a car accident in upstate New York. Four days earlier he had accompanied Stan Getz at the Newport Jazz Festival, and a few days before that, he had made the legendary Village Vanguard live recordings with the Bill Evans Trio Trio that were released as Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby. Both albums are acknowledged classics of the jazz trio genre. On learning of Scott's ...
Continue ReadingRich Halley 4: A Distant Land
by Dan McClenaghan
Saxophonist Rich Halley's music has, from the very beginning, exuded a steroid-like vibe. The sounds he makes may be able to move the Earth. It may incite a landslide. His tenor sax is as brawny as Sonny Rollins' sound, or Dexter Gordon's. And when he brings powerhouse trombonist reformist Michael Vlatkovich into the fold--a group tagged as the Rich Halley 4--the level of seismic output rises a few notches. A Distant Land, the group's eighth recording, stays in ...
Continue ReadingBenny Green: Renovation
by Pierre Giroux
There are pianists who play solo because they have something to prove, and then there are pianists like Benny Green, who have nothing to prove and regard the absence of a rhythm section as an invitation. On Renovation, his first live solo recording, Green seems to be enjoying himself. Most of these 13 performances were recorded before an audience at Dizzy's Club in New York City and have the immediacy of an artist thinking out loud, taking a musical idea ...
Continue ReadingFranklin Kiermyer: Scatter The Atoms That Remain
by Mike Jurkovic
Scatter The Atoms That Remain is a harrowing, yet affirming statement from drummer/composer Franklin Kiermyer. With a fine, fit, and hale conglomerate creating alongside him--drummer Ra Kalam Bob Moses, pianists Aaron Parks and Davis Whitfield, trumpeter Keyon Harrold, saxophonists Isaiah Collier and the ever-present Linda Sikhakhane, vocalists Jeff Bhasker, Jasbir Jassi, Melanie Charles and the Temitope Momorebe Gospel Singers, percussionist Carlos Niño, guitar synthesist Nate Mercereaux, and bassists Geraud Portal and Otto Gardner--Scatter The Atoms That Remain carries the free jazz ...
Continue ReadingSullivan Fortner: The Music Tells You Where to Go
by Leo Sidran
It is hard to overstate the exuberance and awe expressed by other musicians when talking about Sullivan Fortner. At under 40 years old, he is one of a small handful of pianists who have moved the instrument and its potential forward. And by doing so, he's demonstrated that innovation can happen from within the tradition of what came before rather than reinventing it outright. To those who know, he is both a living reality and, as a jazz ...
Continue ReadingBranford Marsalis Quartet and Dianne Reeves, Ekep Nkwelle, Somi, George Garzone, Caroline Davis and Azar Lawrence
by Hobart Taylor
Mick Goodrick and Fred Hersch 1988 recordings unearthed at ECM, Music from Sweden's Goran Kajfeš Subtropic Arkestra with Amanda Werne, and France's LeBeque sisters interpret Bill Evans.Playlist Host Speaks 00:00 Caleb Wheeler Curtis /Jason Moran “ That Which Cannot Be Replaced" from Incantation (Imani) 00:07 Caroline Davis/Grey Mcmurray/Qasim Naqvi “Out of the Way of It" from Trappings of Sleep (Red Hook) 05:04 Host Speaks 09:05 George Garzone “Ripty-Boom" fromThemes for Good Friends(Jojo) 10:02 Nicki Adams/Michael Eaton/ Francisco Mela ...
Continue ReadingDetroit Jazz Festival 2026: A Gathering in a Great Jazz City
by Paul Rauch
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 ...
Continue ReadingTwo Views Of A Masterpiece
by John Chacona
As a jazz composer is it better to be a hedgehog or a fox, to write music that is so irreducibly singular that there is only one way to perform it or do be so embracingly universal that one's genius spreads like pollinator bees? Arguably Wayne Shorter, fairly unanimously embraced as the greatest jazz composer of the immediate past, has been seen as a hedgehog, the composer of brilliantly idiosyncratic music that has failed to escape the shadow of his ...
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