Wynton Marsalis plays the immortal jazz of Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong tonight  (Dec 29) 7:30 pm & 10:00 pm ET on Facebook and Livestream  live from Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola in Jazz at Lincoln Center, NYC. This is repertoire that the newly named CBS cultural correspondent relives better than anyone else, and it's great to hear material written for the Hot Peppers, Hot Fives  and Sevens in 2011, 80 to 90 years since it was the very newest music in the world. I highly recommend checking this out -- free, after all -- but … [Read more...]

Sam Rivers and Don Pullen performed together -- I had completely forgotten. "Capricorn Rising" is an 11-minute almost entirely duet track from a 1975 album of the same name. And in the ensemble Roots the two were joined by saxophonists Arthur Blythe, Chico Freeman and Nathan Davis, bassist Santi Debriano and drummer Idris Muhammad, recording the album Stablemates and captured on video, playing "Lester Leaps In" -- perfect example of stretching "jazz" while honoring it (name those quotes and allusions!). howardmandel.com Subscribe by … [Read more...]

December 26 is a birthday I share with some great musicians -- John Scofield and the late Quinn Wilson, for two. But yesterday I was thinking of a Christmas baby: pianist Don Pullen, 12/25/45- 4/22/95. A Don Pullen Arts Exhibit opens today in Roanoke, VA, his home town, produced by the Jefferson Center and Harrison Museum of African American Art, and that's a fine tribute. But I hate to think that Pullen's music may be falling out of consciousness or access. His very first records with drummer Milford Graves are extremely rare … [Read more...]

Sax and flutist Sam Rivers called me a few months back, out of the blue, from his home near Orlando. "This is Sam Rivers," he announced, Oklahoma-born voice at age 89 88 somewhat husky but energized -- like his horn sounds. "I want to say I've played jazz with everybody from T-Bone Walker to Dizzy Gillespie, and never had a grant or government funding or anything. That's all." A fair if woefully incomplete summation of a 60+ year musical career. Sam Rivers died yesterday (Dec. 26, 2011/b. 9/25/23), and below I point to some of his recorded … [Read more...]

I've recovered a vintage JBJ posting from the archive, December 2008 (hence the reference to waiting for the end of the Bush administration. Still waiting. . . )  Yuletide music in the U.S. hasn't gotten better since I first posted this, but it's not for lack of song programmers scraping the bottom of the barrel. Among seasonal kitsch in heavy rotation I've heard Burl Ives warbling "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas" enough to times to realize he's really quite glum -- maybe it was the blacklist, maybe the testifying to HUAC as a friendly witness … [Read more...]

I refrain from abject product endorsement -- but The Jazz Icons Series 5 is my no-fail recommendation for those favorite (weird?) aunts or uncles obsessed with "culture" -- for parents who space out listening to long, wordless music from their decades' back youth -- for snobs who should meet vernacular jazz in its noblest and most durable form -- best of all, for you yourself.  Six impeccably produced dvds of genuinely iconic -- nay, canonical -- performances by some of our most intensely compelling mid-20th Century American artists: John … [Read more...]

Wynton Marsalis has in one swoop become the world's most prominent jazz journalist. The 50-year-old trumpeter, composer, bandleader, winner of multiple Grammys in multiple categories, author of several books on jazz (all but one co-written), artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, world-traveling ambassador of the American experience, holder of uncountable awards, degrees and honors, an esteemed lecturer and educator, is the CBS network's new cultural correspondent. Marsalis has previously been a frequent guest on the CBS news … [Read more...]

Richard Bona introduces his Mandekan Cubano project at the Jazz Standard, Dec. 27 through New Year's Eve -- as I detail in my new CityArts-New York column. But from now through December 24 there's other strong, new music to check out in, especially at Roulette in Brooklyn. Tonight (Dec. 15) and tomorrow (Dec. 16), trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith celebrates his 70th birthday. First night with his Golden Quartet, his trio Mbira (which has put out the spare, penetrating album Dark Lady of the Sonnets) and String Quartet Plus with vocalist Thomas … [Read more...]

Lists of top projects of the year are expected from arts journalism - my apologies for being so late this year, but I needed to re-visit many of the the 1200 cds and dvds I received as promotional samples from Thanksgiving 2010 - TG 2011.  Here are some favorites -- top 10 I've liked best, and more (even at 30 more, far from exhaustive) -- Favorite New Releases, # 1 - 10 1) Sonny Rollins, Road Shows vol. 2- The grand master American saxophone improviser turned 80 with an inspired New York … [Read more...]

No label exists for the music of composer-guitarist-saxophonist Elliott Sharp, who performed with two of his Carbon concept ensembles at Roulette in Brooklyn last week. In both quartet (Sharp on 8-string guitarbass with electronic processing, curved soprano and tenor saxes, and musicians playing electric bass, prepared harp and drums) and septet (the quartet plus second electric bassist, pianist and percussionist) formations, vernacular rock rhythms anchored advanced explorations of texture and gesture. Repetition of brief motives slid upon and … [Read more...]