Larry Blumenfeld
Arturo O’Farrill — who leads the Grammy-winning Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra and who founded its umbrella nonprofit organization, the Afro-Latin Jazz Alliance — was recently named an artist in residence at the Harlem School of the Arts. That’s fitting. Latin...
The cops keep knocking on the door of the brownstone in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, New York, that is home to Bill Lee, the 84-year-old bassist and composer, and father of filmmaker Spike Lee. As reported by Corey Kilgannon in Saturday’s New York...
Every so often a person who neither plays an instrument nor sings, neither composes nor leads a band, makes an impact on the jazz world that captures the music’s essence and enhances its meaning. Jean Bach’s 1994 film, “A Great Day in Harlem,” transformed a...
Alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón begins his new CD with a version of “Oye Como Va,” a tune most listeners know through Carlos Santana’s wildly popular 1970 hit, though it was composed and first recorded by Tito Puente in 1963. Zenón’s version lasts nearly 15...
According to a recent Washington Post article by Adam Bernstein, this year’s Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival will be the last produced by Washington DC's Kennedy Center to focus exclusively on female headliners. Next year, it will be rechristened the...
NEW ORLEANS — Around midnight, as Saturday turned to Sunday in New Orleans, Dee Dee Bridgewater removed the feathered wig she’d been wearing to reveal a shaved head. By then, she was well into an 18-minute version of “God Bless the Child.” She sang soft and...
NEW ORLEANS — “We’ve got a pretty good crowd,” tenor saxophonist Kidd Jordan said from the stage of the jazz tent at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on Thursday. “Let’s see how many of you are left at the end.” He offered a bit of...
An East Village walkup. The space was cramped but somehow serene and tightly organized: a wall of LPs, another of DVDs, shelf upon shelf of books, including one complete wall of titles relating to Judaica and another on visual arts. A blackboard hung with...
Nearly 30 years after the picture shown here was taken — of “New Yor-Uba: A Musical Celebration of Cuba in America” at Manhattan’s Public Theater, on December 12, 1983 — pianist Michele Rosewoman is, at last, as I write, gathering a fresh incarnation of her...
“Well, we feel for several pulses.”That was my revelatory moment, gained from an acupuncturist checking my vital signs. Without delving too deeply into the differences between Eastern and Western medicine, the realization was comforting: Like the music I...
