Congratulations to all of the nominees for the 64th Grammy Awards! We’d like to highlight all the artists on our roster who were nominated this year for their incredible work.

32. Best Jazz Vocal Album
– SuperBlue, Kurt Elling & Charlie Hunter

33. Best Jazz Instrumental Album
– Side-Eye NYC (V1.IV), Pat Metheny

46. Best American Roots Performance
– “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free,” The Blind Boys of Alabama & Béla Fleck

49. Best Bluegrass Album
– My Bluegrass Heart, Béla Fleck
– A Tribute To Bill Monroe, The Infamous Stringdusters

50. Best Traditional Blues Album
– 100 Years Of Blues, Elvin Bishop & Charlie Musselwhite

“We played the Royal Albert Hall in 1964,” says Charles Lloyd, recollecting his first ever UK performance. “Packed it to the rafters.” He was 26, playing tenor saxophone in Cannonball Adderley’s majestic band and getting his first taste of a world beyond US jazz and blues clubs. “I’m looking forward to returning,” says Lloyd of this weekend’s appearance at the EFG London jazz festival.

Now 83, he speaks in a drawl that mixes jazz argot and spiritual entreaties – he says he spent the pandemic “building steps”, meaning to a higher plane rather than a DIY project – and is raring to re-engage with an audience. “I’ve been playing in front of audiences since I was nine. Been a professional musician since I was 12. It’s what I do.”

What Lloyd “does” is work alongside more giants of contemporary music than possibly anyone else alive. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, he grew up in a hotbed of jazz, blues and country music: Phineas Newborn and Booker Little, two Memphis jazz prodigies, were his closest teenage associates, but young Charles found playing blues paid best.

Read full interview on The Guardian

Charles Lloyd on TKA

Soul-jazz groove-machine Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio—or as it is sometimes referred to, DLO3—never would have happened without years and years of crummy gigs, and Delvon’s staunchly supportive wife, Amy Novo. 

The story goes that Hammond b3 organist Delvon would regularly lug his 400-pound instrument from venue to venue barely breaking even to play other people’s music, and Amy just got tired of it. She fiercely believed in Delvon’s talents, and, eventually, she made an offer he couldn’t refuse: If Delvon picked the musicians, she would take care of all the business surrounding it.  

“I was watching an amazing talent being marginalized. He would be getting paid like $75 a gig and be spending $60 in gas to cart around his instrument, sometimes even renting a U-Haul. It wasn’t fair,” says the self-made music mogul who may be the first person to legally own a band. “For years, Amy had been telling me to step out from being a sideman. This was a natural move. Now, I can just play music and not worry—it’s been a welcome relief,” Delvon says. 

Watch Full Performance on NPR

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio on TKA

Jazz pianist Bill Charlap opens his trio’s latest album with four bars of shifting quarter-note chords, the reliable pulse a compelling contrast to the unpredictable colors he creates.

The final tune settles into a slow, stalking rhythm, and after a closing contribution from Charlap’s left hand and a witty hesitation, the combo comes down hard on the final downbeat, sticking the landing with a satisfying splash.

From start to finish, Street of Dreams is a gem.

That’s no surprise: The trio of Charlap, bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington formed in 1997 and has become a sure thing, releasing a succession of excellent albums. The latest set consists of eight tunes from the American songbook and such jazz composers as Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck.

Read the full review on Bloomberg

Bill Charlap on TKA

Last year, in the thick of pandemic lockdown, an exalted jazz vocalist and an eminent groove guitarist forged a partnership from a distance. Kurt Elling, the singer, had been seeking fresh connection at a time of disorienting distance from the bandstand. He found it with Charlie Hunter, the hybrid guitarist, who brought in a couple of younger firebrands from the Richmond, Va. funk collective Butcher Brown.

What came out of this alignment was SuperBlue, an album on Edition Records — and also a band that has since found traction on tour. The album places Hunter’s dynamic and groove-fueled vitality in dialogue with drummer Corey Fonville and multi-instrumentalist DJ Harrison (who concentrates here on keyboards.) Those three musicians gathered as a pandemic pod in Richmond to flesh out new ideas and execute arrangements for Elling’s choice of cover songs. After trading suggestions and firming up structures, their final jams were adorned with his vocals at sessions in Champaign, Ill. The results are undeniably exciting, with a pocket so deep that it commands instant foot-tapping and head-nodding.

On this episode of Jazz United, we peer under the hood of SuperBlue, with a special attention to the mechanics of groove; reminisce about our separate relationships with Elling and Hunter’s music, going back to 1995; and hear from both artists about their collaboration. Greg also shares impressions from the first SuperBlue tour, which he caught at BRIC Jazzfest (with the jaw-dropping Nate Smith filling in for Fonville) — a performance that nudged Elling away from the precedent of Mark Murphy or Eddie Jefferson, and more toward the incendiary spirit of Johnny “Guitar” Watson and Sly Stone.

We’ve heard a lot of new music hatched during quarantine season. SuperBlue is one of the finest, and definitely the funkiest, to emerge so far. And it opens a new path for two of the most dynamic artists of our time.

Listen to the interview on WBGO

Kurt Elling on TKA

Jazz singer and composer Cécile McLorin Salvant, who won the MacArthur “genius” grant in 2020, has announced her new album Ghost Song. It’s her label debut for Nonesuch and it arrives March 4. Today, she’s shared the album’s title track with a new video. Watch it below.

“What if the love has gone, the love has left you and you have the emotions around that, and you’re still going through them, still engaging with the ghost of that love,” Salvant said in a statement. “Some songs are so painful to come out but this one came out pretty quickly. I’ve had some loss the last couple of years: my grandmother, the drummer in my band [Lawrence Leathers].”

The follow-up to 2018’s The Window, Ghost Song features seven original songs, in addition to interpretations of other works, including the opening cover of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights.” Every song on the album is themed around ghosts. “It’s unlike anything I’ve done before—it’s getting closer to reflecting my personality as an eclectic curator,” Salvant added. “I’m embracing my weirdness!”

Read full article on Pitchfork

Cécile McLorin Salvant on TKA