August 10, 2020. When legendary saxophonist Jimmy Heath passed away on January 19th, Philadelphia lost one of our upper-echelon of jazz—a high priest, if…

Augut 3, 2020. Instead of telling people about the benefits of ethnic and cultural diversity, sometimes it’s more effective to just show them. And then,…

July 27, 2020. Guitarist Dave Stryker has had massive success in the jazz world, with numerous albums as a leader, and a fun approach to playing jazz. Bob…

July 20, 2020. Turns out Winnipeg, the capital and largest city of the Canadian province of Manitoba, is more than just a cold, forbidding outpost that…

July 13, 2020. Back in 2007, the Philly jazz scene was excited for the young homegrown bassist who was on Terence Blanchard’s Grammy-nominated album A…

July 6, 2020. Trained in jazz and forged in funk, alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin grew up hooked on Coltrane—Alice Coltrane. A friend introduced her to…

[Originally published in June, 2019] Sometimes in music, especially jazz, we call a particularly ambitious new album “a project,” especially when the…

June 22, 2020. Inspired by the protest music of the '60s that helped dismantle the codified racism of that era, bassist Marlene Rosenberg’s latest album,…

June 15, 2020. In 1998, bassist and bandleader Christian McBride composed The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons as part of a musical…

June 8, 2020. From founding the Captain Black Big Band in 2009 to replacing Ethan Iverson as The Bad Plus’s pianist in 2018, Philadelphia native Orrin…