JazzTimes December 2021

I don’t mean to sound like a complainer, or to rehash the complaints that countless others have already expressed before me, but wasn’t 2021 supposed to be better than 2020? Or was that just a grand delusion under which we all were suffering? You could argue, justifiably, that the jazz world has seen some major signs of improvement this year. COVID vaccines are here, and they generally work. Clubs are open again. Festivals actually took place this summer and fall. Colleges, universities, and conservatories are back to holding in-person classes, with educators in the same room as their students. This is indeed progress. And yet, as I compiled this issue’s Farewells page, taking note of the names within it and the number of those names, I have to confess that I felt…

Exclusive Content Michael J. West lists 10 essential tracks from the Swing Era in our latest JazzTimes 10; Thomas Conrad reports on the Earshot festival in Seattle; plus an Alan Nahigian photo gallery from Brooklyn’s BRIC JazzFest, album and book reviews, obituaries, and much more. JT News Kris Davis, Wayne Shorter, and Danilo Pérez have been selected to receive the 2021 Doris Duke Artist Awards for jazz. This unique annual award, the largest in the United States given to individuals in the performing arts, provides artists in theater, dance, and jazz with $275,000 intended as an investment in their artistic potential and celebration of their ongoing contributions in their respective fields. Audio & Video Check out new tracks by guitarist Stéphane Wrembel, alto saxophonist Pierrick Pédron, and pianist Uri Caine in the New Jazz Now…

It’s a hot August mid-morning in Manhattan, and Danny Bennett is zooming along. He’s been moving at top speed pretty much all the time ever since taking on the business of being his father Tony Bennett’s manager in 1986: first reuniting Tony with his former label (Columbia), his onetime pianist (Ralph Sharon), and the charts (The Art of Excellence was Bennett’s first album to reach the charts since 1972), then turning him into an elder statesman of cool in the ’90s with appearances on Letterman, MTV, and alterna-rock radio concerts (“in between PJ Harvey and Nine Inch Nails,” Danny recalls). Following his wildly popular MTV Unplugged showcase of 1994 (whose recorded version won a Grammy for Album of the Year), Danny’s managerial savvy steered Tony toward fellow hip icons such as…

Jazz enthusiasts typically think of Michael Brecker as the powerhouse tenor saxophonist who played iconic solos in both funky jazz and sophisticated pop settings, and with his band the Brecker Brothers, during the 1970s and ’80s. But he also (belatedly) established a solo career, which was cut heartbreakingly short by myelodysplastic syndrome in 2007: nine recordings that confirmed his unparalleled instrumental capabilities and growing compositional prowess. From 1987’s Michael Brecker to 2007’s Pilgrimage, Brecker gave his entire being to his music. Writer Bill Milkowski’s new biography Ode to a Tenor Titan: The Life and Times and Music of Michael Brecker recites the success story we know so well (with enormous detail and insight), then goes deeper, drawing a comprehensive portrait of a gifted musician who gave back, time and time again.…

Since her arrival on the jazz scene in the early 1990s, vocalist Kate McGarry has carved out a unique niche, respected by her fellow singers as someone who can take on rock, folk, and pop songs and make them her own. Her latest album, What to Wear in the Dark—for which she shares billing with her partner in music and life, guitarist Keith Ganz—takes on compositions from classic rock and singer/songwriters of the early ’70s, including the Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, Leonard Cohen, Steely Dan, and the Eagles. In choosing the material, McGarry was inspired by two very different sources: the music she heard growing up in the ’70s on Cape Cod (thanks in large part to her six sisters and three brothers) and the vision of…

For those interested in going to school on Eric Dolphy, Out Here, an album by vocalist Mary LaRose featuring arrangements by her longtime partner Jeff Lederer, presents a bounty of surprises. Dolphy’s dominant identity stems from the jagged, incandescent passages he played on a vast array of woodwind instruments alongside Coltrane, Mingus, and Oliver Nelson and in his own catalog, topped by his magnum opus, Out to Lunch. While cherishing this fiery Dolphy, LaRose and Lederer combine thorough scholarship and idiosyncratic artistry to concoct nine songs, including a half-dozen Dolphy originals, that broaden and enhance his legacy. In the summer of 2019, the pair spent two days poring through Dolphy’s archives at the Library of Congress. They discovered that he scored a lot of his music for chamber ensemble, and had a…