Catching Up With

Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.

Less formal than our standard interviews with a focus on an artist's recent recording project or tour.

CATCHING UP WITH October 14, 2020

Tigran Hamasyan: Music and Arts Have a Purpose to Elevate People Spiritually

Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan is a composer who has built his career on defying expectations, taking chances, exploring and pushing the boundaries between genres and geographies. His albums serve as a testament to his diverse musical tastes where any combination of musical possibilities can emerge. In a sense, he has managed to find a way to make all of these sounds and influences work seamlessly and imaginatively, resulting in series of groundbreaking albums. Each of these records has its own ...

CATCHING UP WITH September 14, 2020

Marc Urselli: Between Bolan and Willner, tradition and innovation

By Emmanuel Di Tommaso

The wait is over. The much anticipated Angelheaded Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan & T-Rex has been released by BMG after a number of vicissitudes, not least the COVID-19 pandemic, which took the album's producer Hal Willner, on April 7, 2020, one day after his 64th birthday. Angelheaded Hipster was his swan song. In true Hal Willner fashion, this tribute project features countless Marc Bolan classics covered by a motley crew of artists, ranging from household names ...

CATCHING UP WITH August 27, 2020

Barak Weiss: The Inaugural Polish JazzFest in Tel Aviv

By Scott Krane

Jerusalem-based attorney, Barak Weiss, is the Artistic Director of the annual Tel Aviv Jazz Festival which takes places at the Tel Aviv Cinemateque in the center of the city. This year, he helped to spearhead a new project: The Polish Jazz Festival in Tel Aviv which runs from August 27 through September 20, 2020. Weiss, who I've had the honor to interview, worked in concert on this exciting new project with Raz Sekeles and Yair Spiegel. All About ...

CATCHING UP WITH July 18, 2020

Zara McFarlane: Ancestral Tongues

By Serena Antinucci

Songs of An Unknown Tongue is the fourth album by multi-award winning English singer Zara Mcfarlane, released on July 17 on Brownswood Recordings. Three years on from Arise!, also on the Brownswood label, the singer performs a more personal, in-depth exploration of her musical and cultural roots. After a journey in Jamaica, her ancestral motherland, McFarlane opens jazz to the influences of the Caribbean tradition, to ancient rhythms that dialogue with contemporary sounds and beats, in a network that intensifies ...

CATCHING UP WITH July 4, 2020

Bill Stewart Interview

By Mike Brannon

From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in May 2002. Upon joining The John Scofield group in the mid '80s it seemed like drummer Bill Stewart just appeared out of nowhere. They of course did a number of tours and studio dates together while word got around about Stewart's unique sound and approach to the kit and music. More recently an extensive, high profile tour with Pat Metheny's trio project brought his name ...

CATCHING UP WITH June 19, 2020

Dave Stryker: The Positive Force Of Blue Soul

By Kyle Simpler

Dave Stryker is passionate about music and its positive energy. From his time working with Jack McDuff and Stanley Turrentine to his years as a solo artist, Stryker has established himself as one of the foremost jazz guitarists around. He also teaches at Indiana University, Montclair State University, Rutgers University, and has an online instructional workshop at ArtistWorks. With the album, Blue Soul (Strikezone Records, 2020), Stryker teams up with Bob Mintzer and the WDR Big Band from Cologne, Germany. ...

CATCHING UP WITH May 27, 2020

Ryan Porter: Coming to you Live from Paris

By Aaron Paschal

Los Angeles trombonist, Ryan Porter is set to release his first West Coast Get Down live album entitled Live in Paris at New Morning. In this interview, Porter talks about his experience performing on his first European tour, recording the live album, his relationship with Roy Hargrove and the importance of Social Ambassadors. New Morning This live album was recorded at the world- famous New Morning Jazz Club in Paris, France on October 17, 2019 during my very ...