Home » Search Center » Results: AAJ Staff
Results for "AAJ Staff"
Take Five with Saxophonist Zishi Liu
by AAJ Staff
Meet Zishi LiuZishi Liu is a Boston-based saxophonist and music curator originally from China. He made history as the first Chinese artist to play at Boston's famed Regattabar in collaboration with Blue Note Jazz Club in 2025. His work has been featured by WGBH, contributing to the broader narrative of Asian representation in jazz.
Backgrounder: Hank Mobley Quartet (1955)
Tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley began recording in New York in 1953 as part of the Max Roach Sextette. The session was for Debut, a label founded a year earlier by Roach, bassist Charles Mingus and Mingus's then wife Celia. Mobley's first recording session for Blue Note came a year later as a sideman on The Horace ...
YouTubers Dig Bill Evans (Guitarists)
I love watching videos of musicians covering songs made famous by jazz legends. I've posted quite a few of these as part of my YouTubers Dig series. Today, I thought I'd share 10 clips with you of guitarists covering songs recorded by Bill Evans: Here's Waltz for Debby... Here's Two Lonely People... Here's Time Remembered... Here's ...
Documentary: Melvin Sparks
Melvin Sparks was one of the finest and most important guitarists during the jazz-funk movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. For the Prestige label, Sparks recorded with Lou Donaldson, Sonny Stitt, Leon Spencer Jr., Johnny Hammond Smith, Caesar Frazier and many others. He was known for his Houston shuffle rhythm guitar and funky jazz ...
Backgrounder: Herbie Nichols Trio - Master Takes
Pianist Herbie Nichols has long been considered a Thelonious Monk disciple. In truth, Nichols had his own modernist bag that combined bebop's jagged attack and Dixieland's hard syncopation. A fascinating artist who was largely ignored during his lifetime (1919-1963), Nichols is perhaps best known for penning the jazz standard Lady Sings the Blues. Nichols began recording ...
Interview: Artie Shaw Takes the Gloves Off
I've long known that Artie Shaw was outspoken, mercurial and blunt. As a boy wonder in the band business in the 1930s, Shaw was also temperamental and didn't tolerate boredom or repetition for long. But I didn't realize how outspoken he was until I heard a lengthy interview with Shaw that surfaced last week. Pete Neighbour, ...
Take Five with Saxophonist Noah Peterson
by AAJ Staff
Meet Noah Peterson While his troubadour days are behind him, Noah continues to have musical adventures. From his many bands and explorations of different genres of music Noah always has his fingers in something. His latest adventure includes his brand new quartet recording of all original music Coming Home To You and the rebirth of The ...
Dave Stryker: Goes to the Movies (2024)
Jazz artists have been recording “at the movies" albums since 1962, when arranger-conductor Manny Albam recorded Jazz Goes to the Movies for Impulse. Jerome Richardson, Eddie Harris, Erroll Garner and even Bill Evans recorded Hollywood compilation LPs along with dozens of other jazz artists. Prior, there were Broadway, movie and TV show soundtracks centered on one ...
Cootie Williams: Jumping in the 1940s
In 1943, the country was coping with a recording ban launched by the American Federation of Musicians in mid-1942. With live music under assault by new technology ranging from records and radio to the jukebox, the union decided to pull the plug on members making records until record companies agreed to pay into a fund to ...
Backgrounder: Jack Sheldon - Jack's Groove (1959)
Given the misery in Los Angeles, I thought today's Backgrounder would cause us to take a moment and reflect on a period when the city and county were just coming into their own and to hope for the region's speedy return to its former glory. Los Angeles was, is and will always be the world's epicenter ...
Showcase
Giveaway
