Boston Globe, June 14, 2009 NEW YORK – It’s a cold, drizzly spring afternoon in Times Square, but in the hotel suite overlooking the dull hurry of tourists and umbrellas, Pat Metheny looks as if he’s just stepped in out of the blazing sunshine, in shorts and a T-shirt, tousled hair crawling out from under […]

Boston Globe, October 24, 2008 NEW YORK – “If this isn’t the best trio in the world,” jazz pianist Keith Jarrett announced last Saturday night to a packed Carnegie Hall audience that was clearly already on board with his premise, “then I don’t care what anyone wants me to eat – I’ll eat it.” The […]

Boston Globe, October 17, 2008 NEW YORK – They’re called the Wee Trio, but there’s nothing small about these three guys straight from the eclectic Brooklyn scene. Not their music, a free-spirited brew that works in Nirvana and Sufjan Stevens covers beside Thelonious Monk classics. And not their personality: From the Wee ones, who visit […]

Boston Globe, September 21, 2008 In January 2007, a tragic two-day stretch saw the passing of two immense and influential figures in jazz. First, Alice Coltrane – widow of John Coltrane and a major pianist and composer in her own right – died from liver cancer. The next day, tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker succumbed, at […]

Boston Globe, September 12, 2008 Consider a conversation with bassist Dave Holland a chance to check in with the state of jazz today. And consider a performance by a Holland-led group, such as the sextet he brings to Regattabar for a three-night stand starting Thursday, as synoptic a take on the music as you can […]

Boston Globe, September 5, 2008 School couldn’t end fast enough for Noah Preminger. At 22, the tenor saxophonist and brand-new New England Conservatory grad has the filled-out look and assured manner of one quite a few years older – like that one preternaturally mature kid who seems to stand out in every class. And his […]

Boston Globe, August 29, 2008 Jazz is saturated with hot talent fresh out of music schools. That’s not a bad problem to have – it certainly proves to any doubters the music’s continued appeal – but it makes it especially refreshing when a distinctive new presence on the scene belongs to a true autodidact. Characters […]

Boston Globe, August 8, 2008 Were it not for certain wrenching circumstances, it might sound like a run of absurd good fortune: A young woman from Philadelphia, an amateur musician with career aspirations elsewhere, writes and sings a few songs for personal use. Reluctantly she shares the recordings with a friend who, unbeknownst to her, […]

Boston Globe, May 18, 2008 A ritual of summer takes on a jazz flavoring this year, as perhaps the season’s most anticipated reunion tour is the one featuring the classic lineup of Return to Forever, one of the most iconic jazz units of the ’70s. The four-man electric band led by pianist Chick Corea was […]

Boston Globe, May 16, 2008 NEW YORK – When he was about 12 years old, Pete Robbins knew he wanted to learn a wind instrument so he could play in his school band. And he worried that his original choice, the clarinet, simply wasn’t cool. So his father – a nonmusician but an avid jazz […]

Boston Globe, April 11, 2008 As the passage of time inexorably thins the ranks of living jazz masters who were present at the birth of bebop, so too risk fading the memories of that key moment in the shaping of what would eventually become known as “America’s classical music.” In the 1940s and early 1950s, […]

Boston Globe, March 14, 2008 One of the most interesting recent albums to beam back from the frontier where jazz, rock, electronica, and free improvisation intersect was David Torn’s “Prezens.” It’s a digitally enhanced quartet led by a guitarist-producer whose career has taken on the most abstract projects as well as some of the most […]

Boston Globe, February 24, 2008 In the Japanese tradition, the ronin is the masterless samurai. The consummate free agent, he rejects conventional authority and moves through the world with defiance and dignity. In jazz today, Ronin designates something no less rigorous and idiosyncratic. It’s the name that Swiss pianist Nik Bartsch chose for his quintet, […]

Boston Globe, February 8, 2008 Improvised music never happens in a vacuum. It’s the product of an encounter, when musicians listen and respond together in a way that none could have achieved alone. The deeper the encounter, the more fully present the players, the greater the liberties they can take with conventions and still produce […]

Boston Globe, January 25, 2008 When John Coltrane passed away in 1967, he was just a few years into the spiritual quest that his later albums document, with titles like “Om” and “Interstellar Space,” and the liberation they reflect from conventions of jazz form and expression. Coltrane was only 40 at his death, and no […]

Boston Globe, December 21, 2007 Of all the great expressive traditions in jazz, the male vocal is one that has had difficulty maintaining its position in the music’s evolving marketplace. The shortage of prominent male singers is especially pronounced when it comes to African-American voices. For all the reinvigoration of jazz today, few if any […]

Boston Globe, September 28, 2007 NEW YORK—Few life stories in jazz have been as fulfilling as that of George Wein, the pianist and promoter who virtually invented the jazz festival at Newport in 1954 and went on to become the music’s most iconic and influential impresario. Now, two years since the death of Joyce Alexander […]