Kevin Whitehead is the longtime jazz critic for NPR’s “Fresh Air” and author of Why Jazz? A Concise Guide (2011), New Dutch Swing (about improvised music in Amsterdam), and Instant Composers Pool Orchestra: You Have to See It (with photographer Ton Mijs). He has written about jazz for umpteen publications, and his essays have appeared in such collections as Traveling the Spaceways: Sun Ra, the Astro-Black and Other Solar Myths and The Cartoon Music Book.
Masabumi Kikuchi is one of the oddest modern jazz pianists. As the Bad Pl… more »
There was always more to Impulse than John Coltrane. As part of the label… more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-… more »
Sam Rivers, who died at 88 the day after Christmas 2011, covered so much … more »
Saxophonist Tim Berne writes some of the slinkiest lines around, lyrical … more »
It says something about the timeless state of modern jazz that one of 201… more »
Bill Frisell, the singular and much admired/emulated jazz guitarist, is a… more »
Most jazz fans recognize Benny Golson's tunes, even if they don't know wh… more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-… more »
After Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn!, the Byrds amped up their … more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-… more »
Growing up in New York City, Sonny Rollins was addicted to cowboy movies.… more »
Growing up in New York City, Sonny Rollins was addicted to cowboy movies.… more »
In a more perfect world, Julius Hemphill (1938-95) would be better rememb… more »
As bop piano goes, Thelonious Monk had the ideas and tunes, but Bud Powel… more »
By 1960, "soul jazz" was a big trend — music to eat green… more »
Pianist Horace Silver always had the knack for writing funky tunes that g… more »
Jazz is co-operative music: Everyone pulls together, in a little model so… more »
Years before Lee Morgan's jazz boogaloo "The Sidewinder" ma… more »
On this 2002 solo recital, the great younger pianist shows off his range,… more »
Drummer Art Blakey to the audience at Birdland, one night in 1954: "… more »
No Blue Note musician personified the home of hard bop's response to … more »
When mainstream jazz roared back after 1980, a few distinguished elders f… more »
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