On Wednesday, July 31st, Dee Dee Bridgewater will be opening the CNN broadcast of the next Democratic debates from the Fox Theatre in Detroit, MI. With Darnell Ishmel and Flint, Michigan’s City Wide Choir, Dee Dee will perform a special arrangement of “America The Beautiful”.
Robert Crawford for Rolling Stone — Backed by brass, B3 organ and the barroom jazz of a well-tested road band, Davina Sowers creates her own Americana mishmash — a little Amy Winehouse-worthy neo-soul here, a little Great American Songbook-influenced songcraft there….
“I Can’t Believe I Let You Go” is the second track off the Vagabonds’ new album and Red House Records debut Sugar Drops, which hits stores and platforms everywhere on August 2, 2019.
Congratulations to Cécile McLorin Salvant, Fred Hersch, Joey DeFrancesco and Kurt Elling, all winners of this year’s Downbeat Critics Poll!
And a big shoutout to all our published nominees!
Congratulations to Béla Fleck and Sam Bush on their nomination in the category of Instrumental Recording Of The Year. “Sunrise”, a tribute to John Duffey, was released on June 22, 2018 on Smithsonian Folkways Records. A 2019 win would make Fleck a seven-time IBMA award winner!
Abigail Jones for Vanity Fair — The musicians [of Artemis] offer proof of the innovation and leadership coming from an unprecedented number of women in the field, a snapshot of the freshest faces of 21st-century jazz: women instrumentalists who have sizzle right now….Those assembled here are among the most in-demand jazz musicians in the business.
Artemis features Renee Rosnes as music director and pianist, Cécile McLorin Salvant as vocalist, Anat Cohen on Clarinet, Ingrid Jensen on Trumpet, Melissa Aldana on saxophone, Noriko Ueda on bass, and Allison Miller on drums.
In Rosnes’ own words: I’m hoping for a future when people don’t look at it like a novelty act, and people will laugh at articles like this and wonder, ‘Can you imagine? They had to write like that about women in jazz?’ Imagine that.
Jazz meets the Gullah culture of the Carolina coast in the exuberant music of Ranky Tanky, which has come a long way in a few short years. The band, a five-piece, just released its second album, Good Time — an aptly titled clutch of songs that proudly show their roots, evoking a Lowcountry blend of deep spirituals, West African folk songs, rustic country, and creolized soul.
As with Ranky Tanky’s self-titled debut album, which was released to high acclaim in 2017, Good Time puts Quiana Parler’s commanding voice front and center, to strong effect. But this is a group that also touts its supporting players: the rubbery groove of drummer Quentin Baxter and bassist Kevin Hamilton, the smart trumpet work of Charlton Singleton. And this album draws a bit more focus on Clay Ross, both as a guitarist and a singer.
Queen Sugar is Ava DuVernay’s new television series on the OWN network. DuVernay, a fan of Ndegeocello’s critically acclaimed 2000 album, “Bitter,” approached her about working together, and the two came up with a sound for the show through a series of conversations about color.
Ndegeocello will play for four nights at the Blue Note — July 25 through July 28 — performing music from her latest album, Ventriloquism, as well as music from a collaborative project inspired by the writing of James Baldwin.
“It’s just a vehicle for people to come together and talk,” she said. “It just allows people to create space — not ranting and raving, but we can sit with each other and use ritual to deal with these questions and discomfort.”
On July 15, 2019, the Rolling Stones kicked off their ‘No Filter’ tour through the southern United States with a sold-out show at Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. The legendary rock band invited some rising local talent to join them on stage: The Soul Rebels and Dumpstaphunk.
Watch The Soul Rebels sit in with Dumpstaphunk for a Dr. John Tribute
Over a four decade career, Memphis-born Dee Dee Bridgewater has earned three Grammy awards including Best Jazz Vocal Album and her double-Grammy winning tribute album to Ella Fitzgerald. She’s performed with such jazz greats as Max Roach and Dizzie Gillespie. On the New York stage, she received a “Best Actress” Lawrence Olivier nomination for her lead role as Billy Holiday, and won a Tony Award as Glinda in The Wiz.
Hank Shteamer for Rolling Stone – “It’s self-explanatory,” Wynton Marsalis says, pointing toward the papers in front of him. “Basically, if you look at what I wrote, that says everything you need to know.”
The trumpeter had entered only about 30 seconds before, walking into a small conference room at the New York offices of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Impeccably dressed in a gray suit, he leaned in for a quick hug by way of a greeting. If Marsalis seemed a tad impatient, he had a point: The document he’d prepped did in fact speak for itself.
It was a two-page list of essential jazz recordings, containing 50 entries. Marsalis had assembled his choices in conjunction with new biopic Bolden, out Friday, which tells the story of Buddy Bolden, the legendary unrecorded first hero of New Orleans jazz, and which Marsalis both executive-produced and contributed music to. Preparing for his meeting with Rolling Stone, he went deep, listing not simply artists and titles, but also characteristics explaining why he’d picked each one: “Insightful integration of the blues with disparate elements,” “Making a horn sound exactly like someone singing” and so on. Marsalis made it clear that his list was an inventory of “recordings” rather than albums, since so many of the early masterpieces of jazz arrived before the LP era.