[contextly_auto_sidebar] ONE of the great hidden figures in musical history is Billy Strayhorn, who seems to be a bit less invisible every year. When I was getting hard into jazz in the early '90s, haunting record stores and hoarding Coltrane and Mingus records right after college, Joe Henderson's Lush Life album came out and electrified the jazz world: One of the greatest saxophonists of the … [Read more...]
Julian Lage at the Bootleg Theater
[contextly_auto_sidebar] LAST night's show by the young Santa Rosa native was one of the greatest jazz gigs your humber blogger has ever seen. Even knowing a few of his records and having seen him play a delicate, restrained, kind of perfect show with pianist Fred Hersch a few years back, I was knocked out by how fleet his playing was, and how well-matched to a more assertive style. Lage, a … [Read more...]
LA saxophonist Danny Janklow at The Blue Whale
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR the last few years, much of the attention to the resurgent Los Angeles jazz scene has gone to Kamasi Washington, a titan of a tenor saxophonist who I had the pleasure to see at the Hollywood Bowl over the summer. His communal, late-Coltrane, South Central approach to the jazz tradition is for real, powerful, even -- a word I try to avoid -- inspiring. But there … [Read more...]
Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile at the Ace Hotel/ LA
[contextly_auto_sidebar] IN some ways, this pairing makes absolutely no sense -- a jazz pianist and a bluegrass mandolinist, playing together? But in another, it's nearly inevitable. And, the other night, not just a natural union but often a spectacular one. Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile are not just universally well-regarded musicians but also virtually parallel figures. Both are (still) … [Read more...]
Bryan Ferry, Art, and Roxy Music
[contextly_auto_sidebar] EVEN a decade after their heyday, when I first heard them in the mid-'80s, there was nothing like Roxy Music. The sleek, almost alien sound, with its world-weary vocals, European touches, and deep, if bruised, romanticism, was among the most bracing things a suburban teenager could put on his turntable. It struck me then, and still does, as some of the first and most … [Read more...]
Jazz Singer Cecile McLorin Salvant
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR some reasons, I typically have trouble with jazz singers after, oh, Sarah Vaughan or Abbey Lincoln. There may have been some great ones over the last two decades, but most of the time I'd rather listen to a pianist or horn player. But when the debut LP from a young woman from Miami -- then still in her early 20s -- arrived in the mail to me a few years ago, it … [Read more...]
Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis
[contextly_auto_sidebar] MY interest in Herbie Hancock's music has ranged over the years, but it has not so much gone up and down as much as side to side. I first heard, and loved, the funky stuff. Later I discovered his years with Miles, and then, still later, his Bill Evans-y solo records like Speak Like a Child and Empyrean Isles. My sense of his best and most enduring music varies, but … [Read more...]
Pianist Vijay Iyer and the Ojai Music Festival
[contextly_auto_sidebar] This year sees an unlikely but, I suspect, fortuitous paring: Pianist Vijay Iyer — one of the most inventive figures in jazz today — is curating the Ojai Music Festival, a friendly, mellow outdoor gathering dedicated to new, challenging, and rarely performed classical music. (The festival starts Thursday and runs through Sunday.) Part of Iyer’s emphasis is presenting … [Read more...]
Jeff Parker and Jazz Guitar
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR months now, one of the most intriguing instrumentalists in Los Angeles has been unspooling his style for the price of a drink in a small bar in Highland Park. Jeff Parker, longtime guitarist for the Chicago "post-rock" band Tortoise, has lived in Los Angeles for a few years now, and alongside playing with members of Spain and in drummer Matt Mayhall's trio, Parker … [Read more...]
Jazz and “La La Land”
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR weeks now I've been meaning to write about the poorly named film La La Land, which has drawn acclaim but also divided audiences, and produced a decidedly split response within the jazz world. Hoping to get to that today. I really loved the movie, for what it's worth. A lot of people I trust disliked or hated it. But starting today it becomes very cool/ … [Read more...]