Larry Blumenfeld

A woman's leg extends from a limousine. A man looks though a telescope on a tripod in the middle of Sixth Avenue. Jazz legend Thelonious Monk leans back from his piano bench-arms extended, fingers on keys, cigarette dangling from lips--as arranger-composer Hall Overton stands beside seated musicians, sheet music on their stands. The original black-and white photography of W. … [Read more...] about up in the jazz loft

Dee Dee Bridgewater has long been among the top rank of jazz singers. But something clicked--a door was opened--when she recorded Red Earth, her last CD, for which she immersed herself in the music of Mali. The effects of that experience, not to mention a bit of Malian musical style, spilled into her latest recording, a tribute to Billie Holiday... here's my recent Wall Street … [Read more...] about dee dee does billie

[the following is a Blu Notes column in the Spring issue of Jazziz Magazine]  I remember Robin D. G. Kelley as the guy with the best show-and-tell in class. It was 2001. Kelley had been appointed to a professorial chair endowed in Louis Armstrong's name through Columbia University's Center for Jazz Studies, and I was at Columbia on a one-year arts-journalism fellowship. When I … [Read more...] about monk, not myth