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Article: Building a Jazz Library

Lift Every Voice And Sing: Twenty #BlackLives Albums That Matter

by Chris May
July 23, 2020

Jazz has been inextricably linked with social and political protest since at least the late 1930s, when Billie Holiday made famous the leftist songwriter and poet Abel Meeropol's “Strange Fruit." The song, which has a power to move that is undiminished by familiarity, likens the bodies of lynched African Americans to fruit hanging in trees.

Article: Interview

Charles Tolliver: Blowing Down The Walls Of Trump’s Jericho

by Chris May
July 21, 2020

Charles Tolliver has played with practically every major African American jazz stylist of his generation, and composed for some of them, too. In addition, he is the co-founder of Strata-East, the most influential label at the intersection of hard bop and spiritual jazz during the 1970s. Tolliver's long and distinguished career continues to flourish, with a ...

Article: Live Review

4th Zbigniew Seifert International Jazz Violin Competition

by Ian Patterson
July 19, 2020

4th Zbigniew Seifert International Jazz Violin Competition Cricoteka Museum, Kraków, Poland/Various international locations on-line July 8-10, 2020 When the fanfare and drum roll had died down the big moment arrived. After three days of on-line competition, the six finalists waited anxiously in front of their screens, in Israel, The USA, Austria, ...

Article: From the Inside Out

Places in Space, in Time

by Chris M. Slawecki
July 17, 2020

Abraham Inc. Together We Stand Table Pounding Music 2019 “Ever since I formed Klezmer Madness! in the mid 1990's I've been exploring the possibilities of adding funk, jazz, and lately hip-hop influences to klezmer," explains David Krakauer, an expert clarinet voice in jazz, klezmer and classical ...

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Atlantic Records: More Giant Steps: An Alternative Top 20 Albums

by Chris May
July 13, 2020

Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun's Atlantic Records differs in one key respect from Prestige, Riverside, Impulse!, Strata-East and Flying Dutchman, the most prominent labels covered so far in this Building A Jazz Library series. Those labels' discographies consist almost exclusively of jazz. Atlantic had parallel interests in soul and rhythm-and-blues and, later, rock. This had consequences, as ...

Article: Album Review

Anson Wright: Only Love

Read "Only Love" reviewed by Geannine Reid

by Geannine Reid
July 12, 2020

The young Anson Wright began his thirst for knowledge at Princeton and left post-graduate studies at Columbia to quench a different thirst, his musical creativity. Living in New York City's East Village, Wright was able to absorb performances by Charles Mingus at the Five Spot, which ignited his passion for improvisation. Wright is a gifted fingerstyle ...

Article: The Jazz Life

My Early Years with Bill Evans, Part 2

by Chuck Israels
July 10, 2020

Bassist and composer Chuck Israels was raised in a musical family. He studied the cello and played guitar in junior high school. Later musical training took place at Indian Hill, a summer workshop in the arts directed by his parents, and at the High School of Performing Arts in New York City. A year at Massachusetts ...

Article: Interview

Medeski, Martin and Wood: A Retro Phenomenon for the New Millenium

by Mike Brannon
July 3, 2020

From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in April 1999. No, they're not a law firm, and though they're not yet a household word either, MMW is a trio of formidable sonic integrity and groove. 'Fronted' by Hammond B-3 organist John Medeski, the trio has been described as everything ...

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Impulse! Records: An Alternative Top 20 Zeitgeist Seizing Albums

by Chris May
July 2, 2020

There can be little argument that a jazz label ever captured a zeitgeist more completely than Impulse! did during its original 1960s incarnation. In the US, the fight back against white racism was cresting, opposition to the Vietnam war was growing, outrage over the assassinations of figures of hope such as President Kennedy, Martin Luther King ...

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Jazz & Film: An Alternative Top 20 Soundtrack Albums

by Chris May
June 24, 2020

Jazz and the movies have a shared history stretching back almost a hundred years. The relationship came into its own in the US in the mid twentieth century. Elia Kazan's 1950 movie Panic In The Streets is an early example of how film makers used jazz-based soundtracks to enhance drama and atmosphere and create ambiances of ...