You could go to many European cities when a jazz festival was in town and never know it. Big cities like Belgrade, Serbia and even medium-sized towns like Bolzano, Italy absorb their festivals with barely a ripple on the surface of daily urban life. But you would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind to…Read More

Despite a record-breaking heatwave over the Canada Day holiday weekend, the 10-day music marathon that was the 39th Montreal International Jazz Festival (June 28-July 8) proceeded in fine fashion, with a smorgasbord of high-caliber performances rooted in jazz, blues, pop, world music, and other genres. Hundreds of thousands of concertgoers flooded onto the streets around…Read More

Grant Green’s Evolution of Funk, which closed out a four-night stint at Jazz Standard in Manhattan on Sunday, July 1, is an unabashed tribute act. The quintet is fronted by Grant Green Jr., whose late father (1935-1979) remains one of jazz’s sleeper icons. In Blue Note Records’ fertile early-to-mid-’60s, Green the elder was an integral…Read More

“These are all my teachers up here,” Bill Frisell said on Thursday night (June 21) at Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. He was referring to four of his fellow guitarists—Brandon Ross, Matt Munisteri, Julian Lage, and Marvin Sewell—who share his reverent yet open-ended attitude toward the jazz-guitar tradition, and who’d joined him for…Read More

The DC Jazz Festival encompasses every quadrant of the nation’s capital. Between June 8 and 17 of this year, it presented more than 125 performances in over 40 venues throughout the district. There were also “Meet the Artist” interviews and all-star tribute concerts to honor recently deceased Washingtonians Geri Allen and Keter Betts, as well…Read More

Two years ago, there was a changing of the guard in Charleston, S.C, as Spoleto Festival USA brought jazz to the forefront of its 40th-anniversary celebrations. With Wells Fargo jazz director Michael Grofsorean replaced by jazz advisor Larry Blumenfeld, the lineup turned noticeably toward domestic and New World performers, a trend that’s continued since. Blumenfeld’s…Read More

The Playboy Jazz Festival celebrated its 40th anniversary at the Hollywood Bowl this year, and since its inauguration, much has changed. The lineup in 1979, as listed in the Los Angeles Times on June 2 of that year, included Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Williams, Harold Land, and a special tribute to Charles Mingus…Read More

If the contemporary concert experience offered by most famous baby-boomer guitar heroes evokes an upscale sports bar—you know the place: Budweiser in those strange aluminum bottles, flat-screen TVs like wallpaper—then Ry Cooder’s current tour is more like a family-run coffeehouse. Hopefully you’ve been there too, with its farm-to-table snacks, old upholstered furniture, and interesting books…Read More

Fifty years ago, pianist Dave Burrell first announced his presence as a leader on disc with High Won-High Two. The album revealed an artist whose training at the University of Hawaii, Berklee College of Music and in the bands of Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders and Marion Brown had already made him the consummate “inside/outside” player,…Read More

At an event before the 49th New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, producer Quint Davis announced that Jazz Fest would not be focusing on a particular country as part of its booking theme this year. In honor of the city’s tricentennial, he said, “New Orleans is the country we’re celebrating.” Given the obsessively self-referential culture…Read More