#smooth-jazz

#smooth-jazz

"It's slow music, the lyrics transmit good feeling and it's moody," said frontman Gustavo Raya Garcia following the album's release on March 26.

Celebrated by the BBC as one of the city's top 8 literary destinations, The Urbane Arts Club is more than just a venue-it's a vibrant hub for culture and creativity. Through an eclectic mix of literary launches, musical showcases, and theatrical performances, it fosters an environment rich in conversation and artistic expression.

"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.

A trumpeter and composer of rare intuition and inspiration, Blanchard will perform Feb. 20 in Miami as part of the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts' acclaimed Jazz Roots series, returning to his iconic Malcolm X Jazz Suite with his band, The E-Collective, and two-time Grammy-winning Turtle Island Quartet. Created after he wrote the score for the 1992 Spike Lee biopic "Malcolm X," Blanchard has over the years updated and expanded the suite, performed here as part of the ongoing centennial celebration of the slain civil rights icon. Visit ArshtCenter.org.

January is the month where music is moving underneath the surface, feeling out the venues, plotting and planning for those great days under the sun, at a festival. If you are a globe-trotting DJ or band, January is the month you're finishing up those FaceTime calls with managers and bookers, and plotting out which month you'll be on the road playing the Empty Bottle in Chicago, the Iron Horse in Northampton, MA, or the Continental Club in Austin, TX.

Turns out every soul song with a lot of blank space in it just needs to be filled to the brim with Jersey club stomps and squeaks.