via Billboard Continuing its mission to honor “jazz and blues … one musician at a time,” the Jazz Foundation of America (JFA) celebrated the legacies of longtime industry executive Clarence Avant, tenor saxophonist Charles Lloyd and pianist-producer-composer Dave Grusin at its annual fundraiser on June 25. The combination…
via NPR Music Realness is a root position in The Omnichord Real Book, Meshell Ndegeocello’s expansive yet interior new album. That doesn’t make it the default. “I’ve been saying things I don’t believe,” Ndegeocello sings softly at one point, in a rueful…
via Garden & Gun Magazine Bobby Rush is one of the last men standing from a defining era of the blues. A Louisiana native who grew up picking cotton, he left for Chicago in the early ’50s to pay his…
Cécile McLorin Salvant, three-time Grammy Award winning singer, visual artist, and composer visits Amoeba Music in San Fransisco, taking part in the legendary video series where artists share music that’s important to their creativity, sound, and identity. Salvant is well…
via Pitchfork The Omnichord was developed in Japan in the 1980s as a musician’s electronic accompaniment, incorporating a drum machine with rhythm and tempo controls, a set number of playable chords, and a “futuristic” touch-sensitive synthesizer ribbon. And while it…
In 14th-century French mythology, Mélusine was half-woman/half-snake who was betrayed by her lover, turned into a dragon, and flew away. Mélusine is half French chanson/half idiosyncratic art song, which in its course reveals its own soaring majesty. With three Grammys…
World-spanning saxophonist, composer-improviser and band leader Charles Lloyd is hailed for his Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Career highlights of Memphis-born Lloyd, now 85, start with his barnstorming in post-War blues bands; taking part in Los Angeles’s 1950s’ modernist scene; recording Forest Flower, a best-selling…
Acclaimed GRAMMY-winning multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO makes her Blue Note Records debut with The Omnichord Real Book, a visionary, expansive, and deeply jazz-influenced album that marks the start of a new chapter in her trailblazing career. Following her 2018 covers album Ventriloquism,…
via Paste Magazine The best singers can fashion a different voice for each song—adjusting attack, attitude and texture to inhabit a tune from start to finish. Cécile McLorin Salvant goes beyond that; she often creates a different voice for each…
Tune in Friday, April 21 to hear Lizz Wright on NPR’s Mountain Stage. Mountain Stage Lizz Wright on TKA