Jon Garelick
Terri Lyne Carrington, on her home turf (she’s a native Bostonian and holds several positions at Berklee, including being founder and artistic director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice), augmented her six-piece band with three guests.
Jason Moran, as virtuoso pianist and bandleader, enacted all of jazz history at the keyboard, from ragtime to no time, as the saying goes.
To hear free music so beautifully contained and expressed in such inventive forms isn’t unheard of (Henry Threadgill? Vijay Iyer? Wadada Leo Smith?). But bassist Michael Formanek has his own way.
Such a beautiful evening of music — two relatively concise sets, one an hour long, another a little less — adding up to an integral whole.
We’d returned to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. We’d ridden a paddle-wheeler on the Mississippi River. It was good to be back, and why we’ll go back every chance we get: to life.
Solo performance is still a way ahead for jazz pianists, judging from four CDs released in 2021.
The sum total of George Wein’s career was a successful wedding of art and commerce.
I’m still not sure I heard what’s revolutionary about Charlie Parker’s recordings — they’re very old news by now. But I warm to the expressions of unique genius, a beauty that in itself is radical.
By digging deep into Thomas McKeller, the Gardner Museum has not only resurrected a lost figure (and lost music, and “lost” art) but revealed and contributed to an ongoing history.
Culture Commentary: World War II Was a Race War, and It Isn’t Over
It isn’t exactly news that the genocide of Native Americans was a model for Hitler, but it hit with fresh force in The U.S. and the Holocaust.
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