Nouveau Jazz Showcase

August 19, 2019. It would’ve been more than understandable for pianist George Cables to call it quits; retirement almost certainly would’ve been the prudent, pragmatic course for the 74-year-old pianist after losing most of his left leg to a deathly serious health scare.

August 12, 2019. Eyal Vilner grew up in Tel Aviv, loving the music of the swing era. But he didn’t fully appreciate what it meant to swing until he started swing dancing himself. Now, fully indoctrinated, his 16-piece big band is a driving force behind New York City’s surprisingly robust Lindy hop scene. Their latest, Swing Out!, provides a dozen very clear reasons why.

August 5, 2019. There are talented composers and talented instrumentalists, and then there's Victor Gould who happens to be both. On Thoughts Become Things, his third album as a leader, Gould presents complex arrangements written for horns and string quartets and multiple percussionists that display his compositional sophistication. Ultimately, though, it's Gould's own piano playing that is most affecting.

July 15, 2019. Drummer Vince Ector is a grown-up. He lives in New York City, the epicenter of unadulterated ambition. He teaches at Princeton, not really the type of place that evokes the inner child in us all. He plays with the Mingus Big Band and Orrin Evans’s Captain Black Big Band, serious ensembles for the mature and sophisticated plier of one’s craft.

June 24, 2019. Legendary for his gifts of vocal improvisation—and for putting lyrics to Oliver Nelson’s “Stolen Moments” and Freddie Hubbard’s “Red Clay”—the late vocalist Mark Murphy, who died in 2015, had a profound impact on the kind of jazz singer Nancy Kelly has become.

June 17, 2019. Pianist Larry Fuller is a guy who’s truly just happy to be here. This is not to suggest complacency—quite the opposite, actually. It suggests perspective. Taking nothing for granted and treating the opportunity to play music for a living as a privilege—that’s what comes through with the utmost force when learning about Larry Fuller and listening to his music.

June 10, 2019. Drummer Akira Tana and his quartet, Otonowa (Sound Circle), are doing for Japanese standards what jazz musicians have been doing for American standards for years: respecting their past and infusing them with cool. And that’s exactly what they’ve done with Ai San San (Love’s Radiance), their third album dedicated to aiding those devastated by 2011’s earthquake and tsunami in the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan.

June 3, 2019. Sometimes in music, especially jazz, we call a particularly ambitious new album “a project,” especially when the music is something more, the perfect vehicle to deliver an impactful story. With 400: An African American Musical Portrait, bassist Avery Sharpe hasn’t just released a new album—he’s unveiled a serious project.