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Jaimie Branch: 7 Steps To Heaven
by Chris May
Following the 2024 re-election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, and his subsequent ratification as President-for-Life, the US Constitution was suspended. Jaimie Branch, who had passed in 2022, was one of many musicians, film makers, writers and visual artists whose work, no longer protected by the First Amendment, was declared Un-American and its ...
The Most Exciting Jazz Albums Since 1969: 1969-1983
by Robert Middleton
As a teenager of 18 in 1970, I was heavily into rock music, The Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead. I subscribed to Rolling Stone Magazine and really enjoyed the record reviews. One fateful day in May 1970, I read their review (by Langdon Winner) of Miles Davis's Bitches Brew. I may have ...
Bill Evans: Ten Essential Sideman Albums
by Chris May
Bill Evans attracts a special sort of fan. Clinically obsessive is a reasonable description. While far from undiscerning, we find something, usually plenty, to enjoy in every record Evans played on. And we want them all in our collection. Evans' hardcore fans include practically every musician who played with him. Eddie Gomez, his ...
Wayne Shorter: An Essential Top Ten Albums
by Chris May
At the start of September 2021, trumpeter Terence Blanchard released Absence (Blue Note), dedicated to saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, who for health reasons had recently been obliged to retire from performing, at least temporarily. Some people celebrating their eighty-eighth birthday, as Shorter did the previous month, might not welcome being the dedicatee of an album ...
The Best of Basie
by Bob Bernotas
In 1935, pianist William “Count" Basie (born August 21, 1904), a fixture on the Kansas City jazz scene since the late 1920s, organized his own rocking, riffing, blues-based big band. The following year this freewheeling unit came east and took New York by storm. For the next decade and a half, Basie's stellar cast--which included such ...
The Best of Tony Bennett
by Chris M. Slawecki
"Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business, the best exponent of a song," Frank Sinatra once said. “He's the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more. There's a feeling in back of it." Tony Bennett began his career as a singing waiter in his ...
Celebrating Don Sebesky, Part 1
by Dan McClenaghan
The passing of composer/arranger Don Sebesky in April 2023, invites a revisitation of his artistry. A Manhattan School of Music-trained trombonist, Sebesky played in the big bands of Kai Winding, Claude Thornhill, Tommy Dorsey and Maynard Ferguson. But by 1960, he found that his true passion was arranging and conducting. For this, he was nominated for ...
Ron Miles: The Best Of The Denver Jazz Doyen
by Ian Patterson
Ron Miles left the planet all too soon, but the Denver cornetist and trumpeter has left a lasting mark, both in terms of the music he made and in the people whose lives he touched. This list, a guide to ten of Miles' most significant recordings as both leader and as a sideman, reflects his playing ...
Influential John Zorn
by DIG 9000
John Zorn is a highly influential American composer and musician who has released over 200 recordings spanning a wide range of genres, including jazz, rock, classical, and experimental music. His work is highly regarded for its innovation, eclecticism, and improvisation. It's difficult to pinpoint a single “most important" album by John Zorn, as his ...
Michel Legrand: Hollywood Hitmaker And Jazz Genius
by Chris May
For many jazz fans, Michel Legrand is celebrated, if he is celebrated at all, for one album only: the masterpiece Legrand Jazz (Columbia, 1958). But Legrand's jazz legacy is more extensive than that, including other historic recordings, with large and small ensembles, under his own name and by Stan Getz and Phil Woods, whose Images (RCA, ...
