via NPR

In today’s session, we have a very special guest: one of jazz’s great ambassadors and, perhaps, the finest jazz pianist to hail from South Africa.

Abdullah Ibrahim, who was born in Cape Town in 1934, played with Hugh Masekela in The Jazz Epistles. Together, they became the first Black artists to record a jazz album in South Africa, under pressure from the apartheid government no less.

In the ’60s, Ibrahim left South Africa due to apartheid, and a chance connection with Duke Ellington launched his international career. He recorded under the stage name Dollar Brand for many years, before he converted to Islam and took on the name Abdullah Ibrahim.

Listen to the full interview on NPR World Cafe

Abdullah Ibrahim on TKA

via Variety Magazine

Stop-motion maestro Claude Barras will back “Ogresse,” a tragicomic musical directed by three-time Grammy winner Cecile McLorin Salvant and Belgian animator Lia Bertels.

Variety can share this first look.

Led by Miyu Productions – the studio behind last year’s Annecy Animation Festival top-winner “Chicken For Linda!” – the upcoming project adapts a stage show vocalist and MacArthur fellow Cecile McLorin Salvant has toured since 2019, marrying Salvant’s jazz stylings with 2D animation from Bertels and stop-motion interludes overseen by Barras’ Lausanne-based Helium Films.

Read Full Article on Variety

Cécile McLorin Salvant on TKA

via Variety Magazine

There was no official explanation offered for exactly why Silvana Estrada and Cécile McLorin Salvant were co-headlining a show at Walt Disney Concert Hall — and none was needed, for discerning L.A. audiences who know better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. These two have little in common, representing such different cultures, styles and even languages… and everything in common, too, being among the greatest vocalists of their generations. So, why ask ¿por qué? The idea of pairing them certainly could have been generated by the LA Phil organization, which has fruitfully hosted both performers on their own before. It could have come from one artist’s camp or the other, given the mutual admiration society they obviously share. Whoever thought to match them up, the magic of McLorin Salvant and Estrada coming together made for a throughly delightful “only in L.A.” moment. (Even if it’s theoretically possible that someone in New York would have been smart enough to book it.)

Read Full Article on Variety

Cécile McLorin Salvant on TKA

via PASTE

Paste Studio on The Road rambles on, this time to Wilkesboro, N.C., for the 36th annual MerleFest! The festival was founded in 1988 in memory of Doc Watson’s son Merle, and features “traditional plus” music, described by Doc Watson himself as, “the traditional music of the Appalachian region plus whatever other styles we were in the mood to play.” Watch Boston-based progressive bluegrassers Twisted Pine play under the influence of Jerry Douglas, the baddest dobro man in the land.

Read Full Article on PASTE

Twisted Pine on TKA

Full Session

Lonestar

via Blue Note Records

Meshell Ndegeocello has announced her second Blue Note album No More Water: The Gospel Of James Baldwin, a striking homage to the eminent writer and activist James Baldwin to be released on his Centennial: August 2, 2024. The visionary work is at once a musical experience, a church service, a celebration, a testimonial, and a call to action. With No More Water, Ndegeocello embarks on a prophetic musical odyssey that transcends boundaries and genres, delving headfirst into race, sexuality, religion, and other recurring themes explored in Baldwin’s canon. Following 2023’s The Omnichord Real Book, her acclaimed Blue Note debut which won the inaugural GRAMMY Award for Best Alternative Jazz Album, the multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and producer renders an immersive and palpable document that is as sagacious, unabashed, and introspective as Baldwin was in life.

Read Full Article on Blue Note

Meshell Ndegeocello on TKA

via Stereogum

Don Was has worked with practically every A-list musician of his generation — to name a few, Bob Dylan, Michael McDonald, Carly Simon, Ringo Starr, the Rolling Stones, Willie Nelson, Bob Seger, Iggy Pop, and Brian Wilson. He co-founded Was (Not Was), which made some of the most colorful and eclectic dance music of the 1980s. Later, he won multiple Grammys (including Album Of The Year for producing Bonnie Raitt’s 1989 career revamp Nick Of Time), a BAFTA (Best Original Score for Backbeat), and an Emmy (Outstanding Music Direction for The Beatles: The Night That Changed America). Since 2012, he’s been the president of the venerable Blue Note Records — and he also hosts a weekly radio show in his hometown of Detroit.

Stereogum caught up with Was as he was prepping this show and getting into the mindset of The Pan-Detroit Ensemble’s first tour. “This band — it’s not good enough to be good,” he says. “It’s got to be great. We’ve got to achieve greatness. And we’ll have three days of rehearsal, and then we hit the road. [Laughs.] I’ve picked a whole bunch of songs and people are learning them now. I’m not worried about it. I’m making sure that my plan is up to snuff. I’m coming home and practicing. I’m playing every night for hours.”

Read Full Article on Stereogum

Don Was and The Pan Detroit Ensemble on TKA

via Jazz Journalists Association

Winners of the Jazz Journalists Association’s 29th annual Jazz Awards have been announced on JJAJazzAwards.org. Among the honorees are Cécile McLorin Salvant for Female Vocalist of the Year, Artemis for Mid-sized Ensemble of the Year, and Béla Fleck for Player of Rare Instruments in Jazz. TKA congratulates all the winners and nominees of the 2024 JJA Awards.

You can find the full list of winners on JJAJazzAwards.org.

<WINNERS>
Female Vocalist of the Year
– Cécile McLorin Salvant
Mid-sized Ensemble of the Year
– Artemis
Player of Instruments Rare in Jazz
– Béla Fleck

<NOMINEES>
Jazz Musician of the Year
– Cécile McLorin Salvant

Record of the Year
– The Omnichord Real Book — Meshell Ndegeocello (Blue Note Records)
– Melusine  — Cécile McLorin Salvant (Nonesuch Records)

Recordings Producer of the Year
– Don Was

Female Vocalist of the Year
– Veronica Swift

Trumpeter of the Year
– Wynton Marsalis

Flutist of the Year
– Charles Lloyd

Guitarist of the Year
– Pat Metheny

via The Blues Foundation

Bobby Rush celebrated double victories at The Blues Foundation Presents The 45th Annual Blues Music Awards held in Memphis on May 9, 2024. The legendary artist and the Blues Hall of Famer clinched the B.B. King Entertainer of the Year Award, along with the Soul Blues Album Award for his recent album “All My Love for You.” Rush’s triumphs underscore his enduring influence within the blues music community, marking another milestone in his illustrious career.

Bobby Rush on TKA

via DOWNBEAT

Over the course of his remarkably eclectic, multiple-Grammy-winning career — one that stretches across four decades — banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck has boldly, almost defiantly, taken his five-stringed instrument where no banjo player has gone before. Consider this globe-trotting itinerary: 2023’s Grammy-winning As We Speak (India), 2020’s The Ripple Effect (Africa), 2009’s Grammy-winning Throw Down Your Heart (Africa) and 1996’s Tabula Rasa (India and China).

Add in his contemporary jazz excursions with his Flecktones and love of old-timey Appalachian music, which he performs in duets with wife Abigail Washburn, his various one-on-one encounters with Chick Corea, his deep immersion into the classical canon on 2001’s Perpetual Motion (which won a Grammy for Best Classical Crossover Album) and two banjo concertos that he’s written and performed with symphony orchestras, and you get a sense of the sheer breadth of his musical range.

Read Full Article on DOWNBEAT

Béla Fleck on TKA

via The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Terence Blanchard graced the stage on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday evening, April 15, 2024, delivering a stunning performance that included his own composition “Breathless.”

Béla Fleck made a separate appearance on the show on Tuesday night, April 30, 2024, joining the house band. He showcased his tunes “Big Country” and “Stomping Grounds,” along with “Unidentified Piece for Banjo” and “Rhapsody in Blue” from his recent album tribute to George Gershwin, titled “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Terence Blanchard on TKA

Béla Fleck on TKA