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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Painter of the Invisible is Jaleel Shaw's first full-band album in more than a dozen years. But it's not as if Shaw, an alto and soprano saxophonist from Philadelphia, has been slacking; as he explains in this revealing episode of The Late Set, the pause had more to do with high standards and pure convictions. -
In Moment's Notice this week: free shows by Keyon Harrold and Brian Betz, an ambient set from Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer and more. -
Impulse! Records has announced the fall release of two landmarks by saxophonist John Coltrane, in special vinyl editions: 'A Love Supreme: Mono Edition' and 'The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings.' Here's what that means. -
Jaleel Shaw's elegy "Tamir" is vividly rendered in this exclusive live performance at Solar Myth, available exclusively on The Late Set. -
Chick Corea composed "The Visitors" on a commission for the classical piano phenom Kirill Gerstein and a mutual friend, the jazz vibraphone legend Gary Burton. Its release on ECM honors some fond personal history, as Gerstein and Burton recently explained in an interview with WRTI. -
Bobby Bradford and Andrew Cyrille join Karl Evangelista at Solar Myth, Arturo O'Farrill brings the Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble to Atlantic City, and V. Shayne Frederick headlines the Lancaster Avenue Jazz & Arts Festival — all in this week's edition of Moment's Notice, our weekly guide to live jazz in the Philly area. -
Louis Armstrong belonged to the world. But for more than half of his illustrious career, he made his home in Corona, Queens — where we recently paid a visit to the Louis Armstrong House Museum. There we sat down with Ricky Riccardi — the museum's Director of Research Collections, and a celebrated Armstrong biographer — to discuss Satchmo's life and career.
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This week's Moment's Notice features performances from Nicole Henry, Kim Waters with Gerald Veasley, Pete Malinverni and more. -
Watch an exclusive in-studio video for "Queen King," the first single from Trio of Bloom, featuring guitarist Nels Cline, keyboardist Craig Taborn, and drummer Marcus Gilmore. Their debut album arrives on Sept. 26. -
High summer and the Fourth of July weekend have conspired to make this a quieter stretch on the calendar — but there are a few gigs to know about, including a free outdoor concert by a jazz-guitar great.
