Jazz

London-born alto saxophonist Joshua Jaswon was so appalled by Brexit that he moved to Berlin to pursue his ambitions as band leader and composer. In 2020 he delivered Silent Sea, a moving commentary on ecology and populism, played with gusto by his pan-European eight-piece and incorporating poems from a collection by the Scottish poet Jackie Kay. Polar Waters follows a similar course, being centred on oceanic themes, its music entwined with assorted modern poems given voice by the brilliant Dutch singer Anna Serierse.It’s…

Jazz Musician Bill Lee Passes Away, His Filmmaker Son Spike Lee Remembers His Father Through An Instagram Post (Photo Credit: Bang Showbiz) Bill Lee has died at the age of 94. The jazz musician passed away on Wednesday (24.05.23) at his home in Brooklyn, New York and his death was announced by his film director son Spike Lee in a post on social media. The ‘Malcolm X’ director captioned the Instagram post: “This Morning May 24th My Father Made His Transition… Also Must Give Love To Our Sista TINA TURNER Who Left Us…

Bill Lee, a jazz bassist who played with Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Aretha Franklin and Duke Ellington, who was also the father of filmmaker Spike Lee, died at his Brooklyn home Wednesday morning. He was 94.Spike Lee confirmed his father’s death via Instagram, sharing a series of black-and-white portraits taken by younger brother David Charles Lee.Bill Lee composed scores for several of Spike Lee’s early films, including “She’s Gotta Have It” (1986), “School Daze” (1988), “Do The Right Thing” (1989) and “Mo’…

Your phone’s ringtone can be a great way to express who you are and what you like. Well, if you’re a Pixel owner who likes jazz, then Google has something down the line that you might really enjoy. According to 9To5Google, Google will launch a new ringtone called Kenny Gingtone that’s inspired by the great Kenny G. This ringtone is launching with the Pixel 7a. This is Google’s latest premium mid-range phone, and it’s a very capable device. You can read our full review of the Pixel 7a here. If you’re looking to buy it,…

The entertaining dance between jazz and hip-hop is now in its third decade, from the likes of Public Enemy and A Tribe Called Quest hijacking Blue Note samples to the fuller embrace of Guru’s Jazzmatazz. Kassa Overall embodies both traditions: a drummer who has played with the late Geri Allen and the creator of 2019’s Go Get Ice Cream and Listen to Jazz and 2020’s I Think I’m Good, albums that melded beats, raps and instrumentation in startling fashion, while talking tough about big pharma and the US prison system.Animals…

Over the last 60 years, keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith has made an artform out of countering some of jazz music’s loudest heavyweights with a soft, sensuous sound. His is the gently radiating electric piano or undulating organ backing bandmates including Miles Davis, as well as the the hard-blowing free-jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and energetic multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk.As a bandleader since the 1970s, Smith has explored spiritual themes with dancefloor grooves and free-flowing improvisations,…

Gretchen Parlato’s previous album, 2021’s Flor, saw her widely acclaimed as the outstanding jazz voice of the times. After several years when her career was put on hold for motherhood, Flor was a remarkable comeback, an alluring mix of Brazilian samba and chamber cello, with Parlato’s featherlight vocals skipping between Bach and Bowie’s posthumous No Plan. Lean In is less musically adventurous but equally winning, a partnership with the well-travelled Benin guitarist Lionel Loueke, best known for his work with Herbie…

The musical story of Harry Belafonte is really a story of 20th-century popular music, and how it draws on influences from multiple places and people, circulating throughout the Caribbean, over to the US and back again. Belafonte was an American of Jamaican descent but he came of age before the development of reggae, so he was influenced by other Caribbean genres popular at the time: Jamaica’s mento – a style of folk music – and calypso, which originates from Trinidad and Tobago.Even though Belafonte’s most popular album…

In 1988, the Vogue photographer and occasional film-maker Bruce Weber made Let’s Get Lost, a lingeringly homoerotic but revealing documentary homage to “the white Miles”, jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. Like Clint Eastwood’s Charlie Parker biopic Bird and Bertrand Tavernier’s Round Midnight (also released in the jazz-fashionable late 80s), it was a serious film about the music itself, even if the movie business’s conviction that improvisational genius, addiction and mental turmoil were natural bedfellows wasn’t far away.Blue…

Ahmad Jamal, the influential jazz pianist, composer and band leader, has died at the age of 92.His daughter, Sumayah Jamal, confirmed to the New York Times that the cause of death was prostate cancer.Embarking on a professional music career from the age of 14, over seven decades Jamal forged a unique sound that leapt over genre boundaries. Minimalism, classical, modernism, pop: Ahmad was sometimes likened to Thelonious Monk in terms of his ability to innovate and influence other musicians: his piano would be sampled by…