Ever since guitarist John McLaughlin formed the 4th Dimension—his first electric fusion band in a decade—fans have been hoping he’d dig a little further into his back catalog. The wait is over with The Boston Record, a live album recorded in 2013 at Boston’s Berklee College of Music.
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John McLaughlin on TKA
“It’s a project. It’s not a band,” González says of his group. “I bring together really great musicians from different generations. I rehearse for about 15 days, and then we go on tour.” While the All Stars employ elements of jazz and occasional rock guitar solos, the Cuban danzón style that began developing during the late 19th century remains at the core of their sound. “What I do,” González says, “is play to the future by standing on the roots.”
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Afro-Cuban All Stars on TKA
Blues legend Taj Mahal doesn’t use the word “genius” lightly. But that’s the title he gave Bassekou Kouyaté, the Malian virtuoso of the ngoni lute. And he earns it every time he takes the stage, and with each release by his band, Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba. His vision and prowess keeps growing, and it reaches fresh electric heights with the group’s new release, Ba Power (Glitterbeat Records; release: May 12, 2015), which will be followed by a North American tour.
“In Bambara, ‘ba’ means strong or great, but it also means group,” Kouyaté explains. “This album is called Ba Power because the messages on it are important and strong. My ancestors played ngoni, I play ngoni, my son plays ngoni. That’s my family’s mission.”
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Bassekou Kouyate on TKA
One afternoon some years back, I found myself looking over a printout of events presented by Jazz at Lincoln Center. This would have been just a routine bit of research, except for the fact that I was standing in the elegant Manhattan apartment of the organization’s artistic director, Wynton Marsalis, who’d brandished the document to prove a point.
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JLCO on TKA
Wynton Marsalis on TKA
Bassekou Kouyate‘s new album “Ba Power” is a highlight of 2015. Here, he talks to Richie Troughton about family, collaboration, the difficult situation in Mali and the ngoni, one of the world’s most ancient instruments.
Bassekou Kouyaté’s innovation in expanding the possibilities of what can be done with the ngoni, a form of west African lute, cannot be underestimated. With his group Ngoni Ba he has developed a, literally as the name translates, “powerful” sound for the instrument, with lead, rhythm and bass roles in the style of a traditional rock band with guitars. Kouyaté comes from a lineage of ngoni players and griot musicians in his family that dates back hundreds of years.
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Bassekou Kouyaté on TKA
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has shelves upon shelves of recordings from concerts it has presented since its founding in 1987. Now, that organization, together with Sony Music Entertainment, is bringing that archive, as well as new studio and live recordings, to the public through the creation of its own label, Blue Engine Records.
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Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on TKA
Charles Lloyd led New Orleans Jazz Fest through an hour-long version of his 77-year musical pilgrimage, offering an impassioned, lyrical performance on Saturday (May 2). A native of Memphis, the tenor saxophone legend has the delta blues in his bones. But he went way beyond that at Jazz Fest, reminding a breathless crowd of acolytes that he also knew Central Avenue when it was the bop mecca of Los Angeles, that he played with West Coast pop stars in the psychedelic 60s – and made his own million-selling jazz recordings in that same milieu.
The jazz eminence Charles Lloyd has been many things since his rocketlike emergence in the 1960s: a breakout talent, a phenomenon, a recluse, a searcher, a rumor. On April 20 Mr. Lloyd, a tenor saxophonist and flutist, will be inducted as a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, the most prestigious honor for living jazz musicians. Still there persists something of the outsider about him, not least in his own mind.
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Charles Lloyd on TKA
Long before he became a Latin jazz legend, before he toured alongside the great Cal Tjader, Poncho Sanchez was another kid in Griffith Park carrying a conga drum and looking for someplace to play.
The foundations of Sanchez’s sound can be found in Los Angeles in the 1960s, where Latin jazz mixed easily with the Motown and soul sounds of the day.
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Poncho Sanchez on TKA
What’s a kid to do when caught between the world’s of psychedelic rock, surf music, bebop, rhythm and blues, and Cha Cha?
If you’re Poncho Sanchez, you combine them in giant soul stew on the way to becoming the leading purveyor of funky, grooving music with a deeply soulful edge. Many call it Latin jazz or Cubano bebop. Sanchez doesn’t think it really needs a name (beyond having a place to shelve it in stores).
Read the full article on THE PHOENIX NEWS TIMES
PONCHO SANCHEZ ON TKA