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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…