Jazz : Not Jazz

(Above: KUCI’s Jazz Director Hobart Taylor and JALC’s Wynton Marsalis)   Represent. That’s what I did for KUCI and our listeners at the Jazz Congress January 7 and 8 held at New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center and later that week at NYC’s Winter JazzFest. Jazz Congress is a series of meetings,seminars, and presentations, bringing […]

Aaron Shragge & Ben Monder – This world of Dew – (Human Resource Records) This suite composed by Shragge who plays the dragon mouth trumpet, flugelhorn, and shakuhachi is based on inspiration by various poets, Issa, Basho, Li Po, Son, and Bukowski. Electric guitarist Monder, noted for his atmospheric and liquid style echoes Shragge’s evocation […]

John Petrucelli – Presence – (Self Released) Ambitious and astounding is this 2 CD suite by composer/saxophonist Petrucelli. Working in a variety of formats and voicings from solo sax to quintet with a string section, this relentlessly melodic composition with spiritually referenced titles , (“Field of Heaven”,”Summon the Spirit”), was recorded at a live performance […]

Makaya McRaven – Universal Beings – (International Anthem) There is jazzy music and there is something else. I choose to call it “jazz itself”. Jazz itself may or may not be music. It can be painting, conversation, a way of walking, a way of dreaming, a way of coughing. If it is music, it may […]

Xavier Davis – Rise Up Detroit – (Detroit Music Factory) Dave McMurray – Music Is Life – (Blue Note) Few cities have been as denigrated as Detroit. The stigma attached to the city by riots over half a century ago, the white flight that so severely decimated the city that whole swathes of the landscape […]

Rachel Barton Pine – Blues Dialogues – (Cedille Records) This is an essential document for our times. In this period of transition and re-assessment about race, culture, and gender in our social and political worlds, it is critical to have a genuine appreciation for the nuanced complexity of the diverse currents in the artistic world […]