Tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffery’s music education didn’t begin on the instrument that would earn him a Grammy as part of the Mingus Big Band. It began with the historic Trinity Choir of Men and Boys in New Haven, Connecticut, a stone’s throw from Yale University, where his mother worked. (Read more…)

On his first two albums as a leader— Waking Dreams (self-produced) and The Subliminal and the Sublime (Inner Arts Initiative)—vibraphonist Chris Dingman worked within ambient, classical, and jazz idioms to turn out meditative, inner-directed soundscapes for sextet. (Read more…)

Twenty-five years ago, vocalist Kurt Elling released a debut album that immediately begged comparisons between the newcomer and jazz luminary Mark Murphy. That album, Close Your Eyes, on Blue Note Records, earned Elling his first of 14 Grammy nomination to date. (Read more…)

Pianist Aruán Ortiz recalls the cacaphony of ritmas that pervaded his everyday life growing up in Santiago de Cuba on Inside the Rhythmic Falls. Joining with master drummer Andrew Cyrille and percussionist Mauricio Herrera, Ortiz descends into a deeply feeling state on these 10 tracks, each one the personalization of some aspect of his musical life. (Read more…)

When it comes to vocal albums, Blue Note Records doesn’t always color within the lines. The label, with its relatively undiluted roster of jazz instrumentalists, will otherwise often promote singer-songwriters from the pop, soul, and country arenas. This year, two new Blue Note releases enhance the label’s eclectic vocal palette even further. (Read more…)

Saxophonist Dayna Stephens dubbed his latest album Liberty for several reasons. He wanted to play around with implied harmonies, but he also wanted to make a broad statement about the inter-relatedness of humanity. Most personally, though, he wanted to celebrate his personal delivery from the burdens of thrice-weekly dialysis. (Read more…)

Vocal doyen Nona Hendryx commanded the stage at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on Feb. 29, bedecked in a silver, winged spacesuit and dark helmet. “Welcome to this Afrofuturistic-cala-fragilistic evening,” she told the crowd that assembled for Nona Hendryx and Disciples of Sun Ra in the Temple. “We are here to honor Sun Ra.” (Read more…)

For a while now, singer/composer Fay Victor has had a residency at 55 Bar, the spunky, stalwart jazz club in Greenwich Village, a relaxed room perfectly suited to her avant-garde songwriting and experimental vocalizations. Victor developed the seven songs for her latest release, Barn Songs, under its roof. (Read more…)

Singer-songwriter Michael Doucet doesn’t want you to think that his new band, Michael Doucet avec Lâcher Prise, plays Cajun music. Instead, call it Southwestern Louisiana music, he says. (Read more…)

Kurt Elling’s work as a vocalist and poet-cum-lyricist always has exerted depth; vocal frippery isn’t his style. So, it comes as a surprise that he digs even deeper into eloquence on Secrets Are The Best Stories, a new disc set for release on April 3. (Read more…)

When saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin finished the fourth song of her set, “Pursuance: The Music of the Coltranes,” at Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan on Jan. 11, a techie gave her a time warning. The amped-up crowd expressed dismay. “Don’t tempt me,” she quipped into the mic. “Any woman who made a Coltrane album will play all night.” (Read more…)

A few years ago, actress Glenn Close and saxophonist Ted Nash started to toss around ideas for a new collaborative project. They were fresh off the success of Nash’s Grammy-winning recording, Presidential Suite: Eight Variations On Freedom , which had featured Close’s spoken word, and Nash had just received a commission from Jazz at Lincoln Center for another such inspired work. (Read more…)

Trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis’s new release as leader of the 16-piece Uptown Jazz Orchestra, Jazz Party opens with New Orleans singer Tonya Boyd-Cannon asserting a salty blues riff on the title tune. Boyd-Cannon, a top-20 finalist on the popular TV show The Voice, has one of those instruments that can do most anything, it’s so powerful. (Read more…)

Dominican operatic tenor Francisco Casanova, recognized for his ringing, bel canto vocal style, died on 26 September 2019, in Providence, Rhode Island, at the age of 61. He had been undergoing treatment for gallbladder and liver cancer for several months before his death from complications related to this illness. (Read more…)

In 1997 Seattle musicians Matt Jorgensen and John Bishop birthed Origin Records, an independent label “run by musicians for musicians.” An instrumentalist-led jazz label was a daring concept 23 years ago, when players had few recording options aside from those that the majors provided. But Origin was nothing if not daring. (Read more…)

On the first day of recording From This Place, guitarist Pat Metheny’s new album on Nonesuch, the 20-time Grammy-winner heard something that wasn’t there. “It was on the second take of the first tune,” he recalled in a recent interview in midtown Manhattan. “I thought, ‘Oh, I know what to do with this.’” (Read more…)

Bronx-native Samara McLendon, a vocal jazz student at SUNY-Purchase, claimed first place in the eighth annual Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition on Nov. 24. The competition, held at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center on Sarah Vaughan Way in Newark, N.J., throws a spotlight on talented up-and-coming vocalists from around the globe, helping them to advance their developing musical careers. (Read more…)

The ambient melodiousness of singer Theo Bleckmann’s 2019 release with keyboardist Joseph Branciforte, LP1 serves as a catalyst for probing introspection. On the album’s four improvised tracks, the co-composers stack barely voiced tones, subtle clicks, and oozing looped sounds to create a supernal mood—a mood that only barely obscures the album’s substrata of deep emotion. (Read more…)

Jazz horn quartets—wind ensembles that work without a rhythm section—are tricky. They flout accepted rhythmic and harmonic conventions. They don’t have much of their own repertoire. They’re latecomers to jazz, relatively speaking, and don’t conjure up a readily identifiable sound in listeners’ imaginations.

Clear vinyl. Artful designs. A shiny, luxe collector’s box. No question, Newvelle albums are beautiful to the eye. The story could end there, with these records sitting as vanities on a shelf somewhere. But you’ll want to take them down. They sound as gorgeous as they look.