After years as an essential band member in groups led by artists including trumpeter Terence Blanchard, keyboardist Robert Glasper, rapper Common, and R&B singers Jill Scott and Maxwell, the bassist and composer Derrick Hodge stepped out on his own in 2013 with the release of Live Today, his debut…
After dominating the jazz charts, winning a couple R&B Grammys, and recording with everyone from Erykah Badu to Norah Jones to Snoop Dogg, what’s next for a band like the Robert Glasper Experiment? When the group’s leader scores a Miles Davis film, plays keys all over albums from Kendrick…
Norah Jones first emerged on the world stage with the February 2002 release of Come Away With Me, her self-described “moody little record” that introduced a singular new voice and grew into a global phenomenon, sweeping the 2003 Grammy Awards and signaling a paradigm shift away from the prevailing…
José James is reborn as a powerful voice in contemporary R&B on Love in a Time of Madness. Even for an artist as creatively restless as James, Love in a Time of Madness is something new: an R&B focused foray into moody soul, electronic pop, and trap-addled beats, with…
Multiple GRAMMY-winning trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard has composed a sublime jazz score for The Comedian, the new movie starring Robert De Niro and Leslie Mann that was directed by Taylor Hackford and opens nationwide today. The album The Comedian (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) features the acclaimed trumpeter fronting a…
Trombone Shorty‘s new album opens with a dirge, but if you think the beloved bandleader, singer, songwriter and horn-blower born Troy Andrews came here to mourn, you got it all wrong. That bit of beautiful New Orleans soul—”Laveau Dirge No. 1,” named after one of the city’s most famous…
In 1956, a teenaged Louis Hayes journeyed from his hometown of Detroit to New York City on the recommendation of bassist Doug Watkins to play drums for legendary hard-bop pianist, composer and bandleader Horace Silver. It was a career-defining moment for Hayes because in November of that year he…
On Tony Allen’s EP A Tribute to Art Blakey, the legendary Nigerian drummer and Afrobeat pioneer best known for his work with Fela Kuti pays tribute to his longstanding idol, the American jazz drummer and Blue Note legend Art Blakey. The EP was recorded live in Allen’s current hometown of…
Hailed by NPR Music as “one of the most talked-about names in contemporary jazz,” 35-year-old trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire has proven himself an artist of rare ability and wide-ranging aesthetic interests on his previous Blue Note albums When the Heart Emerges Glistening (2011) and the imagined savior is far easier…
