By Evan Haga For as long as she’s been a recording artist, the Chilean-born tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana has wanted to make a ballads record. With archetypes like John Coltrane’s classic 1963 LP Ballads as her North Star, Aldana saw a slow-tempo project as a way to advance her lifelong quest for sound. Not volume, or technical flash, or even advanced harmonic exploration, but sound: the way the... read more

By Joshua Myers In describing the Black music tradition, Pharoah Sanders once remarked to Bernice Johnson Reagon “to me, it’s all spiritual music.” The musical journey from blues to gospel and “jazz” and back is more natural than these categorical separations can ever be. Like the great practitioners of the blues and gospel, Joel Ross is interested in the story, in the way that it can reveal the divine... read more

By Grayson Haver Currin In the waning days of 2024, Julian Lage began what he calls a writing sprint. Lage has long been prolific: In the three decades since the documentary Jules at Eight identified him as a prodigy, Lage has made a dozen records with his own bands and duos, and three times that many with leading lights of his artistic orbit, like John Zorn, Gary Burton, and Charles Lloyd. But Lage was preparing... read more

In the jazz world, 1959 was a year where titans reigned, where nearly every name you could think of put out recordings that would define their eras, their careers, or in a few lucky cases, their entire field. Along with the likes of alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, pianist Horace Silver and trumpeter Donald Byrd, guitarist Kenny Burrell was one of a host of artists who had emerged in the mid ’50s and would... read more

By John Murph I LOVE LIFE even when I’m hurting, the title of the new album from saxophonist and composer Dave McMurray, is an affirmation of his indomitable spirit. It’s also a celebration of the love that he has for his hometown of Detroit, and for the many musicians with which he’s collaborated. McMurray conceived of the title after having a deep discussion about the death of a friend who had been... read more