Here’s writing I worked hard on last year, published in slightly different form as a “Global Ear” column in The Wire (UK) December 2019. Rafael Arriaga’s photos (unless credited otherwise) are a fit complement, as is Jazzamoart’s painting, “El Bop de los Alebrijes.” The Harmonipan players, khaki-uniformed men and women grinding away for spare change […]
Last glance 2010: great performances and best beyond jazz
There’s not much time left, so here are three of my best memories of live music over this crazy year, and a couple handfuls of favorite recordings that promise to be listenable for quite a while forward —
Miles’ beyond jazz, today and tomorrow
Miles Davis is still at it — in Prospect Park, the Highline Ballroom, (le) Poisson Rouge, Carefusion Jazz Festival’s Carnegie Hall concerts, also overflowing the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, as per my City Arts – New York column and enriching the glorious Festival International de Jazz de Montreal (June 25 – July 5). Though he died of […]
Live in New York, it’s jazz beyond jazz
Presentations of jazz that break all sorts of bounds, pushing far beyond stale conventions — jazz beyond jazz — are so prevalent in Manhattan that the energy expended just being on the scene can leave me too drained to report on the good stuff. Five shows in the past month –Â Dee Dee Bridgewater’s Mali project […]
Jazz time-out of the year?
A major international jazz festival right now in Washington D.C.? How odd: Is it the End of Times? Are we fiddlin’ while Rome burns? Or could it be a new beginning? Ignore the credit crisis, the vp debates, end-game positioning by the One and the Other, Rosh Hashanah and Eid, Cubs and White Sox both […]