This is the grave of Max Roach. Born in 1924 in Newland, North Carolina, Roach's family moved to Brooklyn in 1928. Roach became a musician from a very young age, his mother being a gospel singer. He took up the drums as his primary instrument...
jazz
You need Sunday School today. Specifically, to listen to Professor Sun Ra lecture in his course he gave in 1971 at UC-Berkeley titled "The Black Man in the Cosmos." The.
I was lucky enough to see Satoko Fujii's quarter Tobira, starring my college roommate Todd Nicholson on bass, at Firehouse 12 in New Haven this evening. This is a clip.
The other day I was listening to an album by the great Irving Fields, the brilliant pianist who merged jazz, the sort of Jewish-American popular music I associate with Catskills resorts in the 1950s, and Latin music in the 1950s, making legendary albums like Bagels...
I realized that some of you have probably never seen any of the Sun Ra films. Allow me to alleviate this serious problem in your life.
Ornette Coleman, one of the greatest jazz musicians to ever live and quite possibly the greatest jazz musician living in 2015, has died at the age of 85. I guess.
Last night, I was fortunate enough to see a band headed by the drummer Ches Smith that also included the pianist Craig Taborn and the viola player Mat Maneri at Firehouse 12 in New Haven. They are all such fantastic players and it was just...
Have a peaceful and quiet evening with Akira Sakata.
I spent my Halloween evening in New Haven, seeing the legendary saxophonist Joe McPhee play with drummer Chris Corsano and cellist Daniel Levin at Firehouse 12. This was amazing and.
I was unaware of the Dizzy Gillespie for president campaign in 1964. His idea for Miles Davis as head of the CIA certainly would have made for a funkier agency by the late 60s. And who could oppose that?
In 1939, a promotional film in English was made for Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli and the Hot Club of France. It's unclear why, probably for a tour of Britain the.
I certainly don't care about the fate of most record labels, but streaming services increasingly make it difficult for musicians in less popular genres like jazz or classical to survive..