Results for "Jon Hassell"

Jon Hassell

Born: March 22, 1937

COMPOSER/TRUMPETER Jon Hassell is the visionary creator of a style of music he describes as Fourth World, a mysterious, unique hybrid of music both ancient and digital, composed and improvised, Eastern and Western.

After composition studies and university degrees in the USA, he went to Europe to study electronic and serial music with Karlheinz Stockhausen. Several years later, he returned to New York where his first recordings were made with minimalist masters LaMonte Young and Terry Riley, through whom he met the Hindustani raga master, Pandit Pran Nath, and embarked on a lifelong quest to transmute his teacher's Kirana vocal mastery into a new trumpet sound and style.

In the last two decades, he has recorded 11 highly influential, category-defying solo albums which have, over the years, become so widely appropriated that many of their innovations have become woven anonymously into the texture of contemporary music high and low.

While the liner notes for his 1983 record Aka-Darbari-Java/Magic Realism describe a technology-tradition balance resulting in a "'coffee-colored' classical music of the future", it was innovators in the field of pop such as Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel who—after collaborations with Hassell—steered the Fourth World idea into the avant-pop sphere where it has since evolved into myriad forms of "electronica", "new age", and "world music."

Notable concert appearances have included The Next Wave at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Serious Fun at Lincoln Center, La Foret Museum in Tokyo, the Berlin Jazz Festival, the Paris Biennale, a Japan tour with Farafina, a traditional group of drummers and dancers from Burkina Faso and a spectacular appearance with eight Moroccan tribal groups at Expo 92 in Seville to celebrate Moroccan Independence Day

Music Is Invisible

By Jon Hassell

Label: Ndeya Records
Released: 2026
Track listing: Blue Ba-Ya: Club Gris-Gris; Broadway Boogie-Woogie; Electric Forest.

Music Is Invisible (Pentimento Volume Three)

By Jon Hassell

Label: Ndeya
Released: 2026
Track listing: Blue Ba-Ya; Club Gris-Gris; Broadway Boogie-Woogie; Electric Forest.

Voo Voo Runs the Voodoo Down

by Maciej Stasiowski
August 1, 2026

Voo Voo is the faux-phonetic transcription of how Wojciech Waglewski's initials should be pronounced in English--instead of the default “double U" times two. By no mere coincidence, it is also the name of a group he has been running since 1985. Having secured his band this way for sailing on international waters already at the outset, ...

Vilnius Mama Jazz 2026

by Ian Patterson
June 11, 2026

Vilnius Mama Jazz Lithuanian National Drama Theatre25th Edition Vilnius. LithuaniaMay 22-24, 2026 Vilnius Mama Jazz turned 25. In festival terms that is early middle age. When you consider that 25 years is roughly a quarter of the entire history of jazz, the significance of the milestone assumes greater meaning.

Yazz Ahmed: Bridging Worlds Through Sound

by Marco Iacoboni
May 22, 2026

Yazz Ahmed is one of the most compelling and innovative voices in contemporary jazz, an Anglo-Bahraini trumpeter and composer acclaimed for her fusion of jazz, avant-garde electronics and Middle Eastern musical traditions. Her music creates soundscapes that feel at once ancient and futuristic, deeply rooted yet constantly searching for new directions. Rather than using ...

Sheldon Agwu, Nabou, I Hold the Lion's Paw, SML, TL;DR, Kalia Vandever

by Ludovico Granvassu
February 21, 2026

This playlist explores electro-acoustic projects shaped by atmosphere, texture, and studio-driven imagination, many of them drawing from the muddy, ambient legacy of Jon Hassell's “Fourth World." The journey then shifts focus to the next generation, closing with two emerging trombonists.Happy listening!Playlist Ben Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" ...

Billie Davies: 2455 (Music for the Future)

by Max Kutner
February 3, 2026

2455: Music for the Future features the telekinetic duo of drummer/percussionist Billie Davies and trumpeter Branden James Lewis presenting a series of dreamlike improvisations united under Davies' concept of No Boundaries, Music for the 24th Century. Davies' vision and designs allow the music to shape-shift and wander at whim between dub, ambient, free jazz, musique concrète, ...

Yazz Ahmed: un suono che unisce mondi

by Marco Iacoboni
December 8, 2025

La compositrice e trombettista anglo-bahreinita Yazz Ahmed è una delle voci più affascinanti e innovative del jazz contemporaneo, acclamata per la sua efficace fusione di jazz, elettronica d'avanguardia e tradizioni musicali del Medio Oriente, creatrice di paesaggi sonori allo stesso tempo ancestrali e futuristici. Attraverso la sua musica, Yazz Ahmed non cerca solo di ...

William Carn's Choices: The Unburdening

by Dan McClenaghan
August 7, 2025

The Covid pandemic allowed Canadian trombonist William Carn to push toward electronics, to move in the direction of going remote with his fellow players for the process of putting a set of sounds together. His debut album, 2023's self-produced Choices (review here) started the process. He doubles down (a much-heard phrase in the 2020s, thanks to ...