Gerald Clayton: Before & After
“I live close to the ocean here in Los Angeles, so I’m surfing pretty much every day, and fortunately my family is close by—my folks, … Read More “Gerald Clayton: Before & After”
Ashley Kahn
Ashley Kahn is a Grammy-winning American music historian, journalist, producer, and professor. He teaches at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music, and has written books on two legendary recordings—Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane—as well as one book on a legendary record label: The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records. He also co-authored the Carlos Santana autobiography The Universal Tone, and edited Rolling Stone: The Seventies, a 70-essay overview of that pivotal decade.
Ashley Kahn on social media
Before & After with Dave Douglas
ln praise of Woody, Wynton and more
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Camille Thurman: Before & After
Camille Thurman blowing tenor with the Jazz at Lincoln Center big band behind her. Fronting the quartet co-led by drummer Darrell Green. Switching from saxophone … Read More “Camille Thurman: Before & After”
Warren Wolf: A Before & After Listening Session
After a year of lockdown, it’s getting hard to tell if someone is naturally gregarious, or if the need for conversation and interaction is driving … Read More “Warren Wolf: A Before & After Listening Session”
Wallace Roney: The Man with the Horn
Wallace Roney’s departure on the last day of March 2020 was a gut-punch in a year filled with far too many shocks. In the opening … Read More “Wallace Roney: The Man with the Horn”
Dafnis Prieto: Before & After
“We played the first week of March at the Jazz Standard with a sextet and went into the studio on the Monday and Tuesday right … Read More “Dafnis Prieto: Before & After”
Johnathan Blake: Before & After
When the world was in a more social way, the sight of Johnathan Blake behind the drum kit was a sign of maximum support, comfort, … Read More “Johnathan Blake: Before & After”
Charles Tolliver: Before & After
A few weeks before the release of Connect, Charles Tolliver’s first new recording in 13 years, the trumpeter and composer is home in New York … Read More “Charles Tolliver: Before & After”
Sullivan Fortner: Before & After
The weeks that preceded this online Before & After were sheer worldwide overload—murders and marches, more deaths and outrage, widening protests, all during a continuing … Read More “Sullivan Fortner: Before & After”
David Gilmore: A Before & After Listening Session
When this Before & After took place, the pandemic crisis was less than two months old. The music community had been upended, everyone scrambling to … Read More “David Gilmore: A Before & After Listening Session”
Archie Shepp: Memoirs of a Gunfighter
Archie Shepp will mark his 83rd year on May 24, and will surely have to delay celebrating it in proper style until the coronavirus crisis … Read More “Archie Shepp: Memoirs of a Gunfighter”
Shabaka Hutchings: Before & After
That American audiences rarely get to experience the full extent of jazz talent from other countries is no secret, and nothing new. The door into … Read More “Shabaka Hutchings: Before & After”
Dezron Douglas: Before & After
For Dezron Douglas, a musical career was a family legacy, and it began early. “I’ve been playing bass in church since I was seven or … Read More “Dezron Douglas: Before & After”
Before & After: Emmet Cohen
Jazz is always busy writing its own history, sharing stories that lead to other stories. Take the documentary Keep on Keepin’ On, in which trumpeter … Read More “Before & After: Emmet Cohen”
Ted Dunbar: Teacher Man to Nile Rodgers, Kevin Eubanks, and Many Others
The full legacy of some musicians can be gauged as much by tracing their impact on those they trained as by their own performances. Guitarist Ted Dunbar (1937-1998) is the perfect example, remembered today with reverence by the numerous guitarists who studied with him. Their collective résumé is an impressive swath of experiences and success: … Read More “Ted Dunbar: Teacher Man to Nile Rodgers, Kevin Eubanks, and Many Others”
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Nile Rodgers: From Jazz Roots
There’s a story Nile Rodgers likes to share, an early career lesson. It was at the onset of the 1970s; the precocious guitarist—still a teenager yet already with years of classical and jazz training under his belt—was starting to get calls for gigs. “$15 was the going rate for pickup gigs back then,” he relates. … Read More “Nile Rodgers: From Jazz Roots”
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Before & After: Dayna Stephens
There’s a tune called “Clouds” on Gratitude—saxophonist Dayna Stephens’ ninth and latest album, from 2017—that captures his personality well. Serene on the surface, it opens with a breathy tenor line that soon digs deeper, achieving a high level of complexity with juxtaposed layers of synthesizer as Eric Harland’s brushes chatter and comment. When the tune … Read More “Before & After: Dayna Stephens”
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Before & After: Lewis Porter
Hanging with Lewis Porter brings an exciting promise of discovery—some unknown fact about a jazz hero or some new insight into an historic recording. It should be that way, given his reputation as a researcher with few equals: author of the definitive John Coltrane biography (John Coltrane: His Life and Music, 1998) as well as … Read More “Before & After: Lewis Porter”
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Adam Nussbaum: Groove Waves, Lead Belly, and a Plethora of Puns
One of the most impressive things about Adam Nussbaum is the stylistic range of the music he’s made. He played with James Moody for many years, with George Gruntz and Michael Brecker each for a few, and continues to work in various different groups led by Dave Liebman. He’s been with Gil Evans, John Scofield … Read More “Adam Nussbaum: Groove Waves, Lead Belly, and a Plethora of Puns”
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Ashley Kahn: Meet the Professor
These days, the name for what I teach is either Non-Performance Studies or Emergent Media. When I started teaching, only 15 years ago, it was simply Music History and Criticism. A big part of the challenge and the fun—if one cares to look at it that way—of being a music instructor is riding the waves … Read More “Ashley Kahn: Meet the Professor”
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Robin Eubanks: Representing the Trombone Community
Just back from touring summertime Europe with the Mingus Big Band, Robin Eubanks has driven in from his home in northern New Jersey to meet for his first Before & After. We’re in a studio at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music, and for a man whose schedule book is full to … Read More “Robin Eubanks: Representing the Trombone Community”
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A Conversation with Michael League and Terrace Martin
Every now and then at Holland’s annual North Sea Jazz Festival, the Jazz Café—the small room that hosts the festival’s talk events—fills to capacity. People spill out into the hall, even while 12 other venues in the Rotterdam Ahoy complex are pumping out live music. During the fest’s most recent edition, in July 2017, at … Read More “A Conversation with Michael League and Terrace Martin”
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Johnny O’Neal: Pianist, Singer, Storyteller
If you haven’t caught Johnny O’Neal lately, you really should. The Detroit-born pianist and vocalist, whose fabled history includes a stint as a Jazz Messenger in the ’80s and an appearance as Art Tatum in the 2004 movie Ray, and whose personal health battles appear to be mostly behind him, is hale and confident. Onstage, … Read More “Johnny O’Neal: Pianist, Singer, Storyteller”
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Mark Guiliana: Searching for a Special Feeling
For audiences, a jazz festival “artist-in-residence” gig offers a special chance to hear a leading musician stretch out in various contexts, over the course of a few days. One set will usually show off the player’s more traditional, straight-ahead side; the next might demonstrate a more challenging, newer aspect; and then, perhaps, there will be … Read More “Mark Guiliana: Searching for a Special Feeling”
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Review: Oslo Jazz Festival 2017
To the jaundiced American eye, downtown Oslo—particularly along the walking street Karl Johans gate—is refreshingly neat and clean, with a healthy balance of older and modern architecture, and unfortunately, too many familiar retail outlets. Walk just a block or two away from this central path however and the more traditional Norwegian feel of the city … Read More “Review: Oslo Jazz Festival 2017”
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Alice Coltrane: “The Gifts God Gave Him”
Twenty-seventeen marks a number of anniversaries of solemn significance for the Coltrane family. It’s been 50 years since John died and 10 since Alice Coltrane left her body, as members of her spiritual flock in Agoura Hills, Calif., refer to her passing. Were she alive, she’d be celebrating her 80th birthday this year, and this … Read More “Alice Coltrane: “The Gifts God Gave Him””
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After Hours: New York’s Jazz Joints
Many of the legendary Manhattan nightspots where jazz musicians got their start are long gone but certainly not forgotten. It’s hard to imagine the careers of Duke Ellington, Miles Davis or Dizzy Gillespie without the Cotton Club, the Royal Roost or the Five Spot. Ashley Kahn makes a decade-by-decade selection of the city’s defining clubs.
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Before & After: Andy Bey
A listener, and storyteller, for the ages
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Before & After With Snarky Puppy’s Michael League
Lots of insight, on little sleep
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Roundtable: Kamasi Washington & Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah
On civil rights, and jazz as protest
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