via The Blues Foundation

We are delighted to announce that Bobby Rush and Cedric Burnside have been nominated for The 45th Blues Music Awards by The Blues Foundation.

The Blues Music Awards brings together Blues performers, industry representatives, and fans from all over the world to celebrate the best in Blues recordings and performances from the previous year.

The BMAs are generally recognized as the highest honor given to blues musicians and are awarded by vote of Blues Foundation members.

The 45th Blues Music Awards will take place at the Renasant Convention Center in Downtown Memphis on Thursday, May 9, 2024.

B.B. King Entertainer

Bobby Rush

Soul Blues Album

Bobby Rush – All My Love for You

Traditional Blues Male Artist

Cedric Burnside

View the Complete List of Nominees on The Blues Foundation

Bobby Rush on TKA

Cedric Burnside on TKA

via NPR MUSIC

The Story: Meshell Ndegeocello, the uncompromising singer-songwriter and electric bass magus often credited as an early catalyst for neo-soul, was apprehensive about making a jazz album. She still doesn’t claim to have made one, exactly. But her slow-burn Blue Note debut as a leader — inspired by the memory of her parents, as well as her first Real Book, bequeathed by her father a lifetime ago — does feature visiting jazz dignitaries like harpist Brandee Younger and guitarist Jeff Parker. With them, Ndegeocello pursues a synthesis of searching interiority and improvisatory communion that abides by the spirit of jazz, whatever you choose to call it.

The Music: I hailed The Omnichord Real Book as “a coolly transfixing album” in my NPR Music review, and that description held fast through two live encounters with Ndegeocello and her band this year. There’s rarely a moment of evident exertion here, but you’ll find masterly composure all over the place, especially in the calibration that brings various points of the Black-music cosmology — P-Funk, Sun Ra, Fela, Prince and more — into alignment as a glowing new constellation. Ndegeocello isn’t seeking to knock anyone out with musical fireworks; what she’s after is intrigue, which always leaves something to the imagination, prompting a listener to go deeper. As she urges on “Perceptions,” a hymn grounded by Jason Moran’s bittersweet pianism: “Don’t let the outside world / Distract you from your inner world.”

Read Full Article on NPR Music

Meshell Ndegeocello on TKA

via The Times UK

Harold López-Nussa‘s album, “Timba a la Americana,” has garnered significant acclaim as one of the best jazz albums of 2023, according to The Times. This recognition follows a previous 5-star review by the publication, where Harold was praised as “the future of Latin jazz.” The recent recognition emphasizes the album’s contribution to the evolution of Afro-Cuban jazz, noting that the Cuban pianist has skillfully liberated the clave tradition through a fusion of modern song structures and vibrant post-bop elements. The Times commends Harold for ushering Afro-Cuban jazz into an exciting new era, where his dazzling artistry and innovative approach have left a lasting impact on the genre.

Read the Full Article in The Times

Harold López-Nussa on TKA

via Downbeat

As Los Angeles Times jazz critic Don Heckman wrote in a May 1, 2000, review of a Nicholas Payton concert: “It was appropriate that Payton was leading a seven-piece ensemble in a program billed as “The Nicholas Payton Armstrong Centennial Celebration.’ In addition to his extraordinary mastery of the Armstrong trumpet style, he actually bears considerable physical resemblance to the great jazz innovator.” Though some, including the iconic 91-year-old trumpeter Doc Cheatham, maintained that Payton more favored King Oliver.

His appearance alongside Cheatham on a 1997 Verve album of jazz standards, recorded when Payton was 23, earned the rising star trumpeter a Best Solo Jazz Performance Grammy for “Stardust.” And as the elder statesman said of his mentee at the time: “He’s the greatest of the New Orleans-style players that I’ve ever heard. He’s pure, he’s not fooling around. He’s gonna scare all the trumpet players. I haven’t heard anybody like him since Louis Armstrong.”

Read Full Article on Downbeat January 2024

Nicholas Payton on TKA

via Belafleck.com

Béla Fleck on Rhapsody in Blue

I first became aware of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue as a youngster growing up in New York City. My Uncle Steve loved to take me and my big brother, Louie, to see old movies at the Thalia on West 95th Street, just a few steps off of Broadway. One day, Uncle Steve took us to see the film Rhapsody in Blue. It had a huge impact on me and I became a fan of Gershwin and his composition from then on. I had never heard anything like it – it was love at first listen.



As years passed, Rhapsody in Blue became ingrained in so many of us Manhattanites; somehow it seemed to symbolize our grand city. As I went on to learn the banjo and launch a career in the music world, I found myself coming back to Rhapsody again and again over the years. I was always moved by it and gradually became quite curious about it, especially regarding the piano part; I wished I could play it on my instrument.



Fast forwarding now to much later in life: I found myself with an unexpected amount of time on my hands during pandemic, and I once again began daydreaming about that piano part in Rhapsody. Was any of it playable on the banjo?

Read the Full Story on Belafleck.com

Béla Fleck on TKA

via TAKE6.com

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital® is proud to announce the addition of 10X GRAMMY® award winning group TAKE 6 to Music Gives to St. Jude’s Kids, which provides a platform for music enthusiasts to connect their passion for music to the mission of St. Jude to continue leading the way the world understands, treats, and defeats childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases.

TAKE 6 (Claude McKnight, Mark Kibble, Joel Kibble, Dave Thomas, Alvin Chea and Khristian Dentley) will incorporate St. Jude and its mission in their shows and events, donating proceeds from ticket sales, and by encouraging fans to support the mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital: Finding cures. Saving children.®

As parents themselves, TAKE 6 greatly appreciates and admires the work of St. Jude. TAKE 6 will be featured during Music Gives audio events and will participate in St. Jude Celebration of Hope in January 2024, which brings together music industry supporters, audio partners, media, celebrities, and content creators in support of this mission.

Read the Full Article on TAKE6.com

TAKE 6 on TKA

via NPR Music

NPR Music recently unveiled its selection of the 50 best albums of the year, and Meshell Ndegeocello‘s The Omnichord Real Book was chosen, earning the special crown — a distinction bestowed upon only a dozen albums to signify NPR’s highest recommendation.

The Omnichord Real Book opens with a nod to Ndegeocello’s bass roots on “Georgia Ave,” a major artery in Washington, D.C., and legendary in go-go, a genre she started playing as a teenager. Its lyrics, “Wake up, return, balance, align,” vamp over an omnichord-generated, trancelike beat, with hints of nostalgia weaving effortlessly across progressive musical ideas. The subsequent 17 songs also tap into Ndegeocello’s expansive musical background of over 30 years, each track a sensuous, stand-alone adventure, but better together as a collective work. 

Read the Full Article on NPR Music

Meshell Ndegeocello on TKA

via Downbeat

In some ways, it’s hard to believe that ARTEMIS is only 6 years old. Not just for the group’s rapid ascent into the jazz firmament, but for its players’ cool-headed resilience in the face of tectonic change. First, there was the sudden spotlight of the 2018 Newport Jazz Festival and subsequent major-label record deal. Then the social justice movement and the jazz world’s reckoning with its inequitable treatment of female musicians. And the global pandemic shutdown, just as the then-septet readied its debut album for release. Throughout all of this, the group continued to steadily build an admired presence with the listening public. DownBeat readers noticed: This year they voted Artemis the Jazz Group of the Year.

In other ways, however, Artemis’ success is neither surprising nor unexpected. As individual artists, the group’s core members have long graced all manner of concert stages and recordings: Artemis musical director/pianist Renee Rosnes has released more than 20 albums as a leader and racked up multiple Juno Award nominations and wins. Trumpeter Ingrid Jensen has led almost a dozen albums, garnered one Juno, and is a first call for bandleaders like Maria Schneider, Terri Lyne Carrington and Darcy James Argue.

Read the Full Article on Downbeat

Complete Results of 88th Downbeat Readers Poll

Artemis on TKA

via London Jazz News

‘What kind of magic is this?’ That was the question in this listener’s mind half way through the epic Charles Lloyd Trio set at the Barbican. After a moment of pin drop silence, Lloyd raises his sax and wispy phrases and keening, fluttering runs trace out the barest outlines of a chant-like melody. Rumbles, scrapes, scattered chords; was that piano or guitar? Both? Then somehow, there’s a discernible momentum, an evocative melody and groove condense, there’s even a waft of gospel. Where did it come from? It was alchemy, aural alchemy.

In pianist Gerald Clayton and guitarist Marvin Sewell, Lloyd has partners who are at the top of their game with distinctive and evolved sounds of their own. The artistry in this trio performance was in blending and collective expression. Lloyd though was the still presence at the centre, He’s spent decades conjuring magic from ensembles like this. This trio is the latest in a ‘trio of trios’ recorded by Blue Note. The Ocean Trio was recorded live, but no recording quite prepares one for a live performance like this. A Lloyd ‘gig’ can gradually become more like an audience or encounter than a concert and this was one such occasion.

Read Full Article on London Jazz News

Charles Lloyd on TKA

via London Jazz News

“Too much beauty can be distracting.”

Well, that’s easy for Cécile McLorin Salvant to say (as she did to Jess Gillam on Radio 3’s This Classical Life, about the exigencies of virtuosity) but when you’re faced with another evening of her exquisite voice and Sullivan Fortner’s piano mastery, distract away, I say…

There was much beauty on offer last night, the pleasures of this superduo compounded with a superb rhythm section driven by another duo of Savannah Harris on drums & Weedie Braimah on djembe, congas etc, while Yasushi Nakamura’s double bass underpinned all with a generous sound and some dramatic soloing.

Compere Kevin Le Gendre warned us of the diva’s “amazing lime green shoes” but she must have changed, for she appeared in an equally amazing pair of stacked copper clogs and layers of colour, topped with a beautiful yellow African print jacket, reminiscent of the cover of 2018’s The Window. Braimah was almost her match while the more modestly attired Fortner sat in quiet command, a smiling wizard at the piano.

Read Full Article on London Jazz News

Cécile McLorin Salvant on TKA