I'm interested in the jazz beyond "jazz" --  a genre very subjectively defined as exciting, enticing, sooo real recorded music to my ears. This list of "Best of 2013" follows from the format critic Francis Davis designed for the NPR Music Jazz Critics' Poll, with one significant difference.  Francis asks, reasonably enough, that contributors to his poll refrain from voting for albums on which they've labored in some professional capacity. But I'd be remiss not to say I think two of last year's best records were Organ Monk's American … [Read more...]

I'll never forget (I hope) Yusef Lateef's flute wafting out from the stage of  the 1973 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival . . . Or his head-shaved, suited image on the cover of the boldly-named album 1984 (released in 1965, and not as dark as I'd expected) . . . Or his galvanizing spontaneous duet with percussionist Adam Rudolph at the 2010 NEA Jazz Masters concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center . . . Indeed, Dr. Yusef Lateef enjoyed and shared with all who'd listen a fabulously creative, accomplished life to age 93, ending 12/23/13. He'd made … [Read more...]

In the past 6 weeks I've heard a lot of live music  -- though just a patch on what I'd like to have gotten to. In reverse chronological order: Sunday night 11/24: Adam Rudolph improvisationally conducting five flutists from his Go: Organic Orchestra at The Stone, then adding in his Moving Pictures septet. Earlier in the eve: trombonist Roswell Rudd blowing "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill" over a chorus of union member singers, as well as with the cast of his Trombone For Lovers cd (Cajun fiddler Michael Doucet, guitarists Gary Lucas and Rolf … [Read more...]

Two celebratory benefit jazz concerts in New York City this weekend: tonight (11/22) a tribute to alto saxophonist Arthur Blythe featuring his fellow altoist Oliver Lake, poet/cultural critic Amiri Baraka, tubaist Bob Stewart and guitarists Kelvyn Bell and Vernon Reid, among others at Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn; Sunday (11/24) starting at 4 pm a 78th birthday show for trombonist Roswell Rudd at (le) Poisson Rouge, where keyboardist John Medeski, slide-trumpeter Steven Bernstein, singers Bob Dorough and Fay Victor, guitarists Gary … [Read more...]

Boston -- historically stuffy but blue-blood liberal, devoted to higher education, high finance and professional sports -- is now doubling down on itself as a world-class jazz city. Berklee College of Music, nearly 4500 students strong and  an economic engine onto itself, is generating energy that enlivens Boston's  neighborhoods, drawing in general audiences with such outreach events as the Beantown Jazz Festival, the free street fair held last weekend. JazzBoston, a non-profit grassroots  organization, has announced that its 2014 … [Read more...]

"People don't know the blues," guitarist/singer/songwriter Buddy Guy, who turned 77 today, told a packed house at Iridium Jazz Club  in NYC last night. The show was video-taped, presumably for a PBS showing next fall. "They say the blues is sad, but when B.B. King sings 'I got a sweet little angel, I love the way she spreads her wings,' I don't know what's sad about that." Guy's own set, featuring his tight quintet, two backup singers and guest guitarists Quinn Sullivan (his amazing 14-year-old protege) and Gary Clark Jr., featured songs … [Read more...]

Last night I improvised a profile of Cecil Taylor for BBC Newshour (June 21, "Severe Flooding in India"), on the announcement that the great pianist/composer/improviser has been honored with the prestigious, $500,000 Kyoto Award. My triptych Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz, of course, includes a lot of my writing/thinking on Cecil -- who I aver is and will be known widely for a long time by that one name alone --  but I get fresh enthusiasm and ideas about music (not only his music, but certainly that) whenever I listen to or even just … [Read more...]

Cecil Taylor, whose intense, lengthy and complex piano improvisations have redefined jazz and redesigned his instrument, has been awarded the 2013 Kyoto Prize for "Arts and Philosophy: Music." Former recipients include Olivier Messiaen, John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, György Ligeti, Pierre Boulez, Witold Lutoslawski and Nikolaus Harnoncourt -- all musicians/composers of Western European classical lineage. Prizes for individuals who have "contributed significantly to the progress of science, the advancement of civilization, and the enrichment and … [Read more...]

Some places news still travels slowly: Photographer Sánta István Csaba, based in Budapest, just learned of the untimely death on May 29 of  pianist and educator Mulgrew Miller, and sent three portraits of the highly regarded, largely beloved man that Mulgrew's people will want to see:                 Santá explains: Just came back from Transylvania and usually I'm isolated from all the news when I'm there. In January I met Mulgrew two times, once in the Dizzy's … [Read more...]

Congrats to Bob Koester, indie owner and producer of Chicago's Delmark Records, on the label's 60th anniversary, which it celebrated over the weekend -- and lucky are listeners to jazz beyond jazz for the broad yet niche-like taste that has informed his Quixotic efforts from the start. Not that I was there in 1953. No -- I discovered Koester's Jazz Record Mart (the old location on Grand Ave.) the day after Christmas 1967, becoming quickly, completely absorbed in the vast, vivid, unexpected worlds of music and culture the tiny shop seemed to … [Read more...]

I'm just thrilled UNESCO partnered with the Monk Institute to produce the second International Jazz Day, April 30 -- the culmination of Jazz Appreciation Month (so designated by the Smithsonian Institute) and what the Jazz Journalists Assoc., over which I preside, called JazzApril. The rest of this post might be considered self-promoting, 'cause I'm going to kvell over how the JJA celebrated the localization of this global event and why I think it's important. So read on only if you're interested in Louis Armstrong, trumpet music, Jazz Heroes, … [Read more...]