Nate Chinen
Editorial DirectorNate Chinen has been writing about music for more than 25 years. He spent a dozen of them working as a critic for The New York Times, and helmed a long-running column for JazzTimes. As Editorial Director at WRTI, he oversees a range of classical and jazz coverage, and contributes regularly to NPR.
A 13-time winner of the Helen Dance–Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in Writing, presented by the Jazz Journalists Association, Nate is the author of Playing Changes: Jazz For the New Century, recognized as one of the best books of 2018 by NPR, GQ, Billboard and JazzTimes. He is also coauthor of Myself Among Others: A Life in Music, the award-winning 2003 autobiography of festival impresario and producer George Wein.
Nate maintains a newsletter, The Gig, at Substack. His work also appears in Best Music Writing 2011, Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music in the Shadow of Doubt (Duke University Press, 2012), and Miles Davis: The Complete Illustrated History (Voyageur Press, 2012).
Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Nate started his career as a music critic in 1996, at the Philadelphia City Paper. There he covered one of the great jazz cities at ground level, writing a steady stream of reviews and features, along with a biweekly column.
He moved to New York City in 1998, and began writing for a range of publications, including DownBeat, Blender, and Vibe. For several years he was the jazz critic for Weekend America, a syndicated radio program. He covered jazz for the Village Voice from 2003 through 2005, when he became a regular contributor to The New York Times. Around the same time, he started his monthly JazzTimes column, The Gig, which ran in 125 consecutive installments.
From 2017 until August 2022, Nate was Director of Editorial Content at Newark Public Radio — managing the full spectrum of editorial coverage at wbgo.org, and serving as a consulting producer for Jazz Night in America, a multimedia program hosted by Christian McBride. He also joined radio veteran Greg Bryant there as co-creator and co-host of Jazz United, which won the JJA’s award for Podcast of the Year in each of its two seasons.
Nate lives in Wynnewood, PA with his wife and two daughters.
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Moment's Notice this week features two shows as part of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians' 60th anniversary, a unique jazz-cabaret take on 1930s Harlem, a double bill to close out the 2025 Philly Music Fest and more. -
A counterpart to The Gilmore Artist Award for classical pianists, the Larry J. Bell Jazz Artist Award honors an exceptional jazz pianist. Its first recipient is Sullivan Fortner, who accepted at a ceremony in New York on Wednesday night. -
Saxophonist-composer Ted Nash spent more than 25 years with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, where he earned considerable renown. His new chapter involves the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple. “I don’t think there’s a better program in the States,” he tells WRTI. -
Moment's Notice chronicles another busy week on the scene, including a belated birthday tribute to John Coltrane, separate hits by the drummers Nate Smith and Tom Skinner, and guitarist-composer Rafiq Bhatia. -
Terence Blanchard's career has brought him to many posts, including the executive artistic director of SFJAZZ and the first Black composer at The Metropolitan opera. To each of these and beyond, he's carried his perspectives on culture and how it operates. Just before his performance at the Exit Zero Jazz Fest, Blanchard sat down with The Late Set to discuss how culture flows, and what it means to lead from a place of service. -
Playing in the Philadelphia area this week are Makaya McCraven, Julian Lage, and the Terell Stafford Quintet — read about them and more in this week's Moment's Notice. -
Branford Marsalis plays Jarrett, Bobby Zankel plays Coltrane, and Anthony Tidd presents Quite Sane. All this and more, in this week's edition of Moment's Notice. -
A beguiling new art space on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway celebrates the sculptural forms of Alexander Calder — presenting them in a way that subtly evokes the experience of music. -
Originally from Osaka, Japan, Akiko Tsuruga became a world-class jazz organist, touted by soul-jazz originals like Lou Donaldson. She died on Sept. 13, after a short terminal illness. -
Kassa Overall's smart new album, CREAM, is a celebration of 1990s hip-hop and its classic source material within the framework of small-group acoustic jazz. He joined Nate and WRTI Evening Jazz host Nicole Sweeney to talk about it before a front-to-back performance at Solar Myth.
