#ambrose-akinmusire

#ambrose-akinmusire

Well, I don't think with blues I could get around it. It was in my house since I can remember, you know. My mother's from Monroe, Louisiana. My dad is from somewhere in Texas. And between the both of them, it was a lot of blues in the house. I had a stepdad, too, who was even more into blues. So I couldn't get away from it. And I loved it from the first time I heard it.

Fujiwara's hustling brushes set up a churning guitar hook on the title track that sounds infectiously like a kind of highlife bebop, before Reid's superb pizzicato cello solo takes off with Halvorson comping the tune in the background. Her own seamlessly skimming improvisation is then followed by a spontaneous counter-melodic dance between the two of them.

The architect of the bestselling jazz album of all time, 1959's Kind of Blue, trumpeter Miles Davis is a towering figure in the history of the genre. Possessed of a piercing tone, innate melodic sensibility and a singularly uncompromising approach on the bandstand, Davis spent his five-decade career presiding over numerous stylistic shifts: bebop to cool jazz, modal jazz, electronic fusion, jazz funk and even hip-hop.

Michel Portal, a French pioneer of European modern jazz and a prolific writer of film music, has died aged 90, his agent said on Sunday. A multi-instrumentalist at home with the clarinet, saxophone, Argentine bandoneon and Hungarian taragot, Portal died on Thursday, said Marion Piras, one of his representatives. His 1965 album, Free Jazz, was considered a landmark in Europe's efforts to end American domination of the genre.

At the turn of the 1960s, when free jazz was making its initial seismic impact, multi-instrumentalist Phil Cohran-he later added the name Kelan-was living in Chicago and playing trumpet for Sun Ra's Arkestra. He contributed to crucial recordings by the band during his tenure, including We Travel the Space Ways, but Cohran was a restless autodidact who never stuck with any one project for long.

Flipping through the jazz section on a visit to his local record store a few years ago, artist Kye Potter found a battered tape by American pianist and composer Jessica Williams. It looked every bit the quintessential DIY release. The labels had come off the tape, he says. It was home-dubbed, with photocopied notes, a little bit of highlighter to accentuate the artwork, and released on her own label, Ear Art.

Even if you're just a casual jazz fan, you probably recognize "Take the A Train," Duke Ellington's swinging theme song. Or you've heard the melancholy ballad "Lush Life" sung by Nat King Cole, by Linda Ronstadt during her Great American Songbook era, or by Lady Gaga on the album she recorded with Tony Bennett. Both of those - and many other tunes - were written by a gay man, musician, composer, and arranger Billy Strayhorn.