Jazz

Jazz a la Mode premiered 29 years ago this month, and one of my first birthday features was on Benny Carter, who turned 77 on August 8 of that year. The show was 90 minutes long back then, and I devoted...

Benny Carter’s been a favorite of mine ever since I bought his Jazz Giant album around 1970. Carter’s alto is always bright and affirmative, and after 45 years, I still find him one of the...

There’s a memorable scene in the documentary A Great Day in Harlem between Benny Golson and Horace Silver. Golson is recalling the many nights in which a good tune has come to him in...

There’s a memorable scene in the documentary A Great Day in Harlem  between Benny Golson and Horace Silver.  Golson tells Silver about the many nights in which a good tune has come to him in a dream, but...

For the Record The Bill Charlap Trio will be at the Regatta Bar in Cambridge on March 21-22 and the Iron Horse in Northampton on the 23rd.  This is mildly reassuring, but how is it that this genius...

New England Public Radio will enjoy the good fortune of Bill Cosby’s performance at Springfield Symphony Hall on Saturday.  The great comedian is appearing in a benefit for the...

Four years ago this summer, I was one of the speakers invited to the Lenox Public Library to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue.  Bill Evans, of course, was the...

Sweden, Belgium, Denmark Tonight’s Jazz à la Mode album feature is the Bill Evans Trio recording, Portrait in Jazz. The 1959 Riverside session was the first by the legendary Evans trio with Scott...

Bill Frisell – Interview with Tom Reney Bill Frisell, the musical polymath whose wide-ranging soundscape readily qualifies him for membership in my personal pantheon of artists who are, to borrow...

Ben Webster (l) and Billie Holiday, 1935 Billie Holiday and Ben Webster were lovers for a brief stretch in the mid-’30s. A classic photograph taken by the Danish jazz fan Timme Rosenkrantz behind the...