#avant-garde-jazz

#avant-garde-jazz

Her slowly shifting synthesizer compositions and quiet, meditative pieces for acoustic instruments continue to inspire a deep immersion in their audiences, and her recordings and writings have influenced multiple generations of musicians worldwide.

Alice Coltrane was integral to the radicalism of her husband's late, gamechanging period from the masterpiece A Love Supreme onwards. Not only did they create a sense of stability from 1963 in raising a family and marrying, post his quitting heroin, but they were partners in spiritual and musical exploration.

I connected a lot with his music and I had no idea that years later we would be collaborating! It was a total surprise that we started chatting on the internet about collaborating! We bounced ideas back and forth, all starting with a series of guitar solo stuff that Bill sent me.

For the first time ever, Brooklyn's premier professional orchestra, the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra, is dedicating a full program to jazz, featuring the work of the late Charlie Parker, "Charlie Parker with Strings," on Feb. 13 at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn Heights. It is also the first time in more than a decade that "Charlie Parker with Strings" will be heard live in New York.

Fujiwara's hustling brushes set up a churning guitar hook on the title track that sounds infectiously like a kind of highlife bebop, before Reid's superb pizzicato cello solo takes off with Halvorson comping the tune in the background. Her own seamlessly skimming improvisation is then followed by a spontaneous counter-melodic dance between the two of them.

Intense listening capabilities from these exquisite players which required, more than anything else, a great deal of trust. They posited about thematic structures, which somehow got agreed upon, live in the moment through a collective groupthink. Right there on stage. No words spoken, just an exchange of bizarrely intense looks. Ranging from 'we're almost there' to 'don't you dare.' That's trust, people.

Glass joined a growing list of performers and artists who have canceled shows and cut ties with the arts center since President Trump replaced its board with people who share his aversion to woke programming, and affixed his name to the facade without congressional or Kennedy family approval. The new board also named Trump as chairman, and, in an unprecedented move, the president hosted this year's Kennedy Center Honors, which garnered its lowest ratings ever when broadcast on CBS. Ticket sales have also tanked.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Laurie Spiegel for the site. As preparation for the interview, I spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks revisiting Spiegel's records, most notably The Expanding Universe, her 1980 masterpiece that blends synth experimentalism with early examples of what would eventually be called ambient music, and algorithmic composition techniques. It's a marvel that sounds both nostalgic and cutting-edge at the same time.

Two years ago, the annual Under the Radar festival (which showcases international, experimental and multidisciplinary theater) was unexpectedly canceled by the Public Theater, its longtime presenter, due to financial issues. In response, the festival was quickly reconceived as a citywide effort involving several other theater companies, allowing it to move forward. The festival, now in its 21st edition, returns this month with productions at theaters across the city from Jan. 7 to 25.

Michel Portal, a French pioneer of European modern jazz and a prolific writer of film music, has died aged 90, his agent said on Sunday. A multi-instrumentalist at home with the clarinet, saxophone, Argentine bandoneon and Hungarian taragot, Portal died on Thursday, said Marion Piras, one of his representatives. His 1965 album, Free Jazz, was considered a landmark in Europe's efforts to end American domination of the genre.

"Many found the music offensive, the dancing objectionable, and the popularity of both with young people verging on a mental health crisis." So writes music historian Susan C. Cook about ragtime, the heavily syncopated ancestor of jazz that arose in the late 1800s. Like all things, ragtime's subversiveness faded over time, and, a century later, the works of Scott Joplin and other practitioners had been relegated to carnivals and fairs, their jaunty piano melodies now evoking quaint notions of old-timey fun.

Flipping through the jazz section on a visit to his local record store a few years ago, artist Kye Potter found a battered tape by American pianist and composer Jessica Williams. It looked every bit the quintessential DIY release. The labels had come off the tape, he says. It was home-dubbed, with photocopied notes, a little bit of highlighter to accentuate the artwork, and released on her own label, Ear Art.

The 2026 edition of NYC Winter Jazzfest wrapped up on Tuesday (1/12) with a special reimagining of Miles Davis' classic 1970 album Bitches Brew at Le Poisson Rouge, to celebrate Davis' centennial year. The evening, which was also dedicated to the late Bob Weir, began with a discussion of the album between Adam O'Farrill and Lenny White, who drummed on the original recording at age 19. He mentioned how Davis liked to cook, and directed White to be the "salt."

If you like the intersection between jazz, heavy rock music, and the avant-garde, you may want to know that Colin Stetson, Greg Fox, and Trevor Dunn are releasing a collaborative album called Nethering on February 13 via Envision/Invada ( pre-order). The first taste of the LP is the noisy, hypnotic, album-opening title track, and you can hear that below. In case they need introductions,

At the turn of the 1960s, when free jazz was making its initial seismic impact, multi-instrumentalist Phil Cohran-he later added the name Kelan-was living in Chicago and playing trumpet for Sun Ra's Arkestra. He contributed to crucial recordings by the band during his tenure, including We Travel the Space Ways, but Cohran was a restless autodidact who never stuck with any one project for long.

Even if you're just a casual jazz fan, you probably recognize "Take the A Train," Duke Ellington's swinging theme song. Or you've heard the melancholy ballad "Lush Life" sung by Nat King Cole, by Linda Ronstadt during her Great American Songbook era, or by Lady Gaga on the album she recorded with Tony Bennett. Both of those - and many other tunes - were written by a gay man, musician, composer, and arranger Billy Strayhorn.

This album is five standing on the shoulders of legions. The healers, the alchemists, the rebels, the mothers and fathers who have fought and weaved and invented new ways of being, seeing, and balancing the frequencies of this planet towards trans-dimensional liberation and universal understanding. We assume our role in this music as messengers, continuing in the tradition's long march along the arc of the universe.