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Ron Carter: A Clew of Worms

by Jim Worsley
So the saying goes, the early bird gets the worm. Occasionally, if one is so fortunate, you can get a whole lot more. From the beginning just knowing that I was going to have the opportunity to see and hear Ron Carter play was about seeing a legend. Of course you hope to hear ...
Mark Turner: Grounded in a Spiritual World

by Kurt Rosenwinkel
This article first appeared in issue no 8 of Music & Literature Magazine. I remember being at Berklee and listening to Mark in the practice room. A lot of people used to gather outside his practice room at various times and just listen to him. He would be in there ten hours a day, ...
Courtney Pine: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

by David Burke
Courtney Pine didn't pick up his beloved tenor saxophone for more than a decade, until an album exploring the black British experience demanded it. The multi-instrumentalist eschewed the horn on the likes of Europa, House of Legends and Song (The Ballad Book), his two-hander with pianist Zoe Rahman. I spoke to Sonny Rollins about ...
Denys Baptiste: Making the Late Trane Accessible

by David Burke
Even the most avowed John Coltrane disciples among us would admit to grappling with some of the albums he released in the couple of years before his death--the likes of Ascension, Sun Ship and Om. And we weren't alone. His long-time drummer, Elvin Jones, told Downbeat magazine, At times I couldn't hear what I was doing--matter ...
Alex Han: Embracing The Spirit

by Liz Goodwin
With a bold, invigorating, and adventurous sound, alto/soprano saxophonist and composer Alex Han is a sonic force on his debut CD, Spirit. The project was produced by none other than the 2009 Berklee College of Music graduate's longtime employer and friend, the incomparable Grammy-Award winning electric bassist/bass clarinetist/producer/composer Marcus Miller for Miller's own label, ...
Mônica Vasconcelos: Brazil Songs of Resistance

by Duncan Heining
A tanned, beautiful young woman in a skimpy bikini walks through the lapping sea waters on the edge of a sun-soaked beach. Soft music plays, its shifting beat following her footsteps. It's a cliché, of course, but a powerful one when it comes to thoughts (male, mainly) of Brazil and its music. UK-based Brazilian ...
Mike Stern: What A Trip

by Jim Worsley
"I never trip. I just don't. But then, it just happened." This is how Mike Stern began his story as he explained to my wife and I how it happened. If you somehow missed it, it" refers to the tumble Stern took in July of 2016. This accidental fall resulting in both shoulders being ...
BassDrumBone and the New Haven Jazz Renaissance

by Daniel Barbiero
When they first began playing together in New Haven, Connecticut in 1977, the trio BassDrumBone--bassist Mark Helias, percussionist Gerry Hemingway and trombonist Ray Anderson--were called OAHSPE. The name, which Anderson recalls having heard in Seattle from a source he understood to be Native American, is supposed to mean sky earth and spirit." It is coincidentally also ...
Glen Campbell: 1936-2017

by C. Michael Bailey
Well, that moment has come that we have known was an inevitable certainty and yet stings like a sudden catastrophe. Let the world note that a great American influence on pop music, the American Beatle, the secret link between so many artists and records that we can only marvel, has passed and cannot be replaced -my ...
Soweto Kinch: A Singular Jazz Odyssey

by David Burke
Soweto Kinch was a curious teenager when an encounter with Wynton Marsalis impelled him on his own jazz odyssey. An odyssey characterised by the creation of dynamic new soundscapes in the spirit of the music's great innovators, on landmark albums such as A Life in the Day of B19: Tales of the Tower Block, The Legend ...