Jazz
The Curtis Brothers performance was a display of the mentoring system at its best.
Three jazz singers go outside of the Great American Songbook — with entrancing results.
Brian Blade is not only a skillfully discreet: he can be as powerful as any drummer since Elvin Jones.
The late Roswell Rudd tried every sound a trombone could make, all of his efforts marked with a natural musicality.
This documentary about John Coltrane serves up skillful, sensitive storytelling and an appropriate sense of reverence.
You could sometimes be halfway into a Bad Plus show before hearing anything like a jazz chord from pianist Ethan Iverson.
Toninho Horta’s musical signature is distinctive: complex harmonies, subtle but masterful guitar work, and gentle, plaintive vocals.
Chase’s iconoclastic genre-crossing oratorio proceeds from dark to light, and wins its struggle for transcendence.
Commentary: Best Jazz (and Other) Recordings of 2017
The range of recordings issued this year was remarkable, both in terms of their instrumentation and their artistic inspiration.
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