The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival took place at the New Orleans Fair Grounds over the span of two weekends from April 27-May 6, and JazzTimes was on the ground to cover the sights and sounds. Enjoy these photos, by Joel A. Siegel, of the festival’s second weekend, held May 5-7. Check back at JazzTimes.com for our…Read More
Weekend two of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is underway, and JazzTimes is on the scene covering this American institution. Enjoy these photos, by Mark Robbins, of the festival’s first weekend, held April 28-30 at the New Orleans Fair Grounds. For tickets and more information on this weekend’s events, visit www.nojazzfest.com.…Read More
It took a while for the electric bass to find its footing as a jazz instrument. Monk Montgomery adopted the ax while in Lionel Hampton’s band during the early to mid-1950s, and jazz-trained R&B players made groundbreaking popular music with it during the ’60s. But it wasn’t until the fusion and funk era of the…Read More
I received a few sharp emails in response to my January/February column, which opened with barbs directed at President Trump. That rhetoric has no business in a jazz rag, these incensed readers argued, before the obligatory threat of a subscription cancellation. In many ways I agree with the pushback: Here they were, trying to unwind…Read More
For those unfamiliar with the vocoder, a shorthand description of the instrument could simply be “the robot voice.” That might come off as dismissive to an artist like Casey Benjamin, who has emerged as a modern master of the vocoder through his work with the Robert Glasper Experiment, if not for the fact that this…Read More
Maybe it was the sight of Cecil Taylor, resplendent in shiny fabrics, at one end of a cavernous gallery at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Maybe it was the pointed whimsy of another pianist, Jason Moran, as he led his trio in a sculptural reconstruction of the old Three Deuces stage. Or maybe it…Read More
Each year, our March issue is one of change, transition and reflection. Mostly this has to do with the magazine’s centerpiece, our annual collection of artist-to-artist tributes celebrating the lives and music of those we lost during the previous year. But this month there are other reasons for contemplation, and for thinking about how the…Read More
When keyboardist Jason Lindner recalls some of his more memorable synth solos, the first to come to mind is a tempestuous passage on the Donny McCaslin track “Faceplant,” off the saxophonist’s newly released Beyond Now. Right on the heels of a blistering McCaslin sax solo, Lindner pushes his Dave Smith Instruments’ Prophet-6 to conjure a…Read More
Two-thousand-sixteen was a year filled with great promise and just recognition for deserving leaders. I’m discussing the year in jazz, of course; generally speaking, we suffered the devastating loss of several beloved cultural heroes and handed the reins of the free world to a human boardwalk caricature. But I digress. I’m tired of talking about…Read More
Al Jarreau is a master of rhythms from around the world. His bag of sounds and improvisations is informed by a host of influences—the music of the church and Africa and Brazil, for example—administered with a taste of funk. He can take you on a magic carpet ride, high above the maddening static of tweets,…Read More
