Jazz
Newport Jazz sold out all three days in advance for the second year in a row, which made scheduling the primary acts across three stages prone to occasional mismatches between space and demand. But it’s still a golden ticket.
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I am grateful that Al Jardine (at 82, he’s showing signs of age) and Brian Wilson’s band are still bringing Wilson’s brilliant legacy to audiences.
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Two very influential and brilliant Cuban musicians, Albita Rodríguez and Chucho Valdés, join together to make a fine album; Chilean guitarist/vocalist/composer Camila Meza serves up a potent mixture of jazz and lyrics concerned with social justice.
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So what am I saying? That the system is imperfect, corrupted by bad voters like me (there must be a few others who didn’t listen to even close to everything on this list — show of hands?)
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A particular guttural sequence of phrases from accordionist Ted Reichman suggested a musical cadence, and I felt myself respond with the jazz fan’s involuntary noise of appreciation: “Unh!”
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The planned variety of sounds and rhythms is the adroit work of a composer dedicated to both freedom and his own version of continuity.
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This year marks the 60th anniversary of the release of John Coltrane’s magisterial album “A Love Supreme,” which has meant so much to so many.
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Allen Lowe is a saxophonist, composer, and historian of early jazz and roots music who doesn’t think he’s getting a fair shake from jazz’s gatekeepers.
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The whole band demonstrated an expressive variety of mark-making, as visual artists like to say: lines and squiggles and blotches, graceful or rude.
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The Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll — Sharing What We Know at Mid-Year
We are all part of a community with a deep commitment to this extraordinary but way-too-often unappreciated musical art, and the late critic Francis Davis believed we should work together and share what we know. His poll was one important way to do just that
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