An artist whose music is at once timeless yet utterly of its time, Gregory Porter solidifies his standing as his generation’s most soulful jazz singer-songwriter with Take Me to the Alley, the much-anticipated follow-up to his sensational 2013 Blue Note debut Liquid Spirit. Yet in his remarkable career, Porter…

Every so often a new singer emerges who’s able to assimilate multiple musical touchstones and still come off sounding remarkably fresh and unburdened by the past. Kandace Springs is one of those artists. The 27-year-old, Nashville-based singer, songwriter and pianist counts such stylists as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina…

Nels Cline has been living with Lovers for a long time. “I first thought of it in the ‘80s,” he says. “I would sit on airplanes and make lists of songs, add things and cross things out and make arrows. I always wanted the record to be a somewhat…

Joe Lovano adds the 25th album to his remarkable Blue Note catalog with the release of Classic! Live At Newport, which the Grammy-winning saxophonist has dedicated to the memory of both the legendary pianist Hank Jones and longtime Blue Note president Bruce Lundvall. Recorded on August 14, 2005 at the…

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…

This long-lost Lee Morgan session was not released for the first time until it was discovered in the Blue Note vaults by Michael Cuscuna in 1984; it has still not been reissued on CD. Originals by Cal Massey, Duke Pearson (“Is That So”) and Walter Davis, in addition to…

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…