Marietta McCarty joins Jazz Messenger Brian Keena in the WTJU studio, two longtime friends talking together about putting to good use—right now—the lessons found in the book, “Leaving 1203.” Let’s feast on main courses of generosity, courage, and sacrifice as we relish desserts of relaxation, joy, and simple pleasures. Yes, holidays—any day—can be shared with […]
Jazz
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Hour 17 Little Big Bands – Cory Weeds, Dave Holland, Todd Marcus, Jamie Baum, Steve Coleman, Charlie Haden, Anat Cohen
Dave Holland Between the standard small jazz ensembles of quartets, quintets and sextets and the powerhouse big bands is a world of ensembles with eight, nine, ten or eleven players. Famously, The 1949 Birth of the Cool sessions were from a nonet assembled by Miles Davis, with arrangements by Gerry Mulligan, Gil Evans and John […]
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Hour 16 New Organ Combos – Dr. Lonnie Smith, Organissimo, Deep Blue Organ Trio, William Parker, Swallow Quintet, Joey DeFrancesco
Dr. Lonnie Smith In 1956, Jimmy Smith created the organ trio of organ, guitar and drums. Soon thereafter, his quartets with Lou Donaldson and Stanley Turrentine defined the organ – saxophone quartet sound. Today, these traditions live on and, although the instrumentation may vary slightly, the debt to Jimmy Smith’s pioneering soul jazz trios and […]
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Hour 15 The Rhythm Bombers of Manassas High – Charles Lloyd, George Coleman, Harold Mabern
The Rhythm Bombers – Harold Mabern & Charles Lloyd On September 20, 2019, tenor giant Charles Lloyd wrote, “I am quite at a loss to express the acute pain I feel learning about the departure of my brother and long time friend, Harold Mabern. This hits very close to home – we go back to […]
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Hour 14 The Diverse Musical Settings of Vijay Iyer – Solo, Duo, Trio & Sextet
Vijay Iyer The last decade was one of immense consequence and productivity for pianist/composer Vijay Iyer. In 2012 alone, in the DownBeat International Jazz Critics Poll he was voted Artist of the Year, Pianist of the Year, Small Group of the Year (the Vijay Iyer Trio), Album of the Year (Accelerando), and Rising Star Composer of […]
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Hour 13 West Coast Get Down – Kamasi Washington, Cameron Graves, Throttle Elevator Music
Kamasi Washington In the past several years, a suite of players have emerged from Los Angeles, many of whom grew up together, loosely connected by the name West Coast Get Down. The most visible player in this scene is Kamasi Washington from a jazz perspective, but Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner and Miles Mosley have made significant […]
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Hour 12 Big Band Suites – Maria Schneider, Jim McNeely, Rufus Reid, Darcy James Argue, Brian Krock
Maria Schnieder Duke Ellington envisioned long-form jazz compositions before the technology was created to support them. Initially limited to around six minutes on two sides of a 78 RPM disc, the advent of the 12’ Long-Playing record liberated Ellington and other jazz composers to conceive and record extended compositions. Several contemporary composers are continuing to […]
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Hour 11: Hard Bop Still Cookin’ – Terell Stafford, Jack Kilby and the Front Line, The Cookers, Aaron Diehl, Chano Dominguez, Poncho Sanchez, Bobby Sanabria, Antonio Adolpho
Terell Stafford Since the 1950s, there have consistently been players who found in Hard Bop a comfortable place to return to even as the focus of the music ebbed and flowed. Perhaps this is because so many heroes of modern jazz created the music that defined the term – players like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, […]
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Hour 10: Israeli Ex-Patriots in New York – Omer Avital, Anat Cohen, Avishai Cohen, Yonathan Avishai, Gilad Hekselman and Idan Morim
Anat Cohen Fueled by the arrival of Israeli ex-patriot guitarist Roni Ben-Hur in 1985 and bassists Omer Avital and Avishai Cohen in late nineties, a network of Israeli musicians have steadily filtered into New York over the past twenty years. Several have risen to the highest levels of acclaim. A dozen years ago, Andrew Gilbert […]