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WICN’s October Artist of the Month For forty years now, Pat Metheny has been the emblem and the model for one particular vision of jazz creativity. It’s fresh and light, visionary, radio friendly, and unabashedly tech-savvy—in a way that not all jazz is comfortable with. Metheny is an unusual entry in the roster of jazz […]
WICN Artist of the Month: September 2020 Trombone Shorty. Is he, or is he ain’t a Jazz man? Many Jazz traditionalists might have something to say about that. Ask any music critic or millennial to name their favorite Jazz performers, and Trombone Shorty is often on the list. Could a child who formed his own […]
It’s difficult to represent the importance of Charlie Parker on the development of Jazz in a brief overview. To give his musical impact the weight it deserves, we would have to review Parker’s music for a couple of hours every single day—alongside a balanced diet of 90 minutes of Duke Ellington, an hour of Louis […]
Jazz fans sometimes have trouble connecting with the outside world on the matter of music, even with friends. Who is Eric Dolphy? Why can’t she just sing the melody? How do you follow this music? There’s seemingly no common ground to meet on. Jimmy Smith is often the solution to that problem: in among the […]
In 2020, we see Chick Corea as a Jazz veteran and a survivor. Shortly we’ll celebrate the 60th anniversary of his first recordings, and we’ve already enjoyed more than fifty years of Corea compositions as an author in the new standard songbook in Jazz. Chick’s story started just down the road in Chelsea MA, where […]
Across the last 40 years, Cuban trumpeter Arturo Sandoval has grown to be one of the great trumpet heroes of our time. Sandoval represents the bravura high-pressure, high-intensity, high-note tradition of Dizzy Gillespie—a virtuosic style that’s at its best when fueled by the high level of Sandoval’s creativity. This month you’ll hear him prance and […]
If a Mt. Rushmore existed for Jazz vocalists , who would be enshrined there? Surely the likenesses of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Anita O’Day. Many would also place our April Artist of the Month, Carmen McRae, there among the best and most influential singers that Jazz has ever encountered. Let’s consider why. Carmen McRae […]
March 11:The Dan Moretti Quartet Saxophonist, composer, recording artist, and professor, Dan Moretti’s musical career has spanned the last 30 years. His musical influences range from jazz and classical to funk and Latin jazz. He has toured the globe. Moretti “offers a robust sound that illuminates the compositions…..They add a dimension to the sound that […]
If there was a recognizable new face to emerge from the Jazz ranks in the early 2000s, it would be that of one Norah Jones—a legitimate celebrity indeed, and also immediately recognizable just by the sound of her voice in any context. Her superstardom gives us a new perspective on the relationship of Jazz and […]
For many of us, the formative saxophone solos of our early listening years didn’t come from Jazz records. They were played by Clarence Clemons with the Boss’s E Street Band; Phil Woods on a Billy Joel record; Sam Butera with Louis Prima and Keely Smith, or any of thousands of others, on records from the […]