Honestly, folks, the best thing jazz fans can do this week is help the good people at Melody Records unload their inventory so they can walk away from their venerable store with something to show for it. Even when the city was flush with record retailers, Melody was far and away the best for jazz, [...]
Friday, Sep. 30
With certain musical innovations, we can look back and can see it was just a matter of time before someone thought of that; others are so outside-the-box that they still startle us and make us say, "Wow. Where the hell did that come from?" Gary Burton's decision to beef up his vibraphone playing [...]
In preparing this week's Jazz Setlist, I dropped a line to guitarist Rodney Richardson, the co-leader and co-mastermind (with trumpeter Joe Herrera) behind Sunday Jazz Lounge at Twins Jazz. Since March, the weekly program presented Herrera and Richarson's quartet along with a solo opener, who usually later joined the quartet onstage. "Who's the soloist this [...]
Friday, June 30
Janine Gilbert-Carter has a gigantic voice. There's no better word, and it must be written (and said) in italics: Gigantic. Moreover, it's overflowing with soul; let there be no question that Gilbert-Carter has her roots in gospel, having sung in the church since her childhood in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. The intensity of [...]
Thursday, April 21
A month shy of her 24th birthday, DC's Andrea Wood has a smallish, wiry frame that can't possibly contain the robust, supple voice she exhibits on her debut CD, Dhyana. Her range is uncanny: She's got flawless rhythm (in terms of the beat and the Portuguese syllables she enunciates) on the bossa tune [...]
Bohemian Caverns is really bringing out the big guns in its 85th year. This weekend—the first in April, aka Jazz Appreciation Month—will bring two more new features. One is permanent; the other's future is to be determined.
Saturday kicks off a new weekly series of jam sessions beginning at midnight. Longtime Caverns patrons will recall [...]
Thursday, March 24
You could be forgiven if his nearly 20-year association with Jay Leno made you think Kevin Eubanks was a mediocre hack, too—forgiven, but you wouldn't be correct. Before he Jaywalked, guitarist Eubanks (the second of three musical brothers from Philadelphia) was a member of the M-Base Collective, the Brooklyn-based pool of musicians who [...]
In case you've forgotten, there are two ongoing weekly concert series at U Street's Twins Jazz this month: the Sunday Jazz Lounge on (duh) Sunday nights and the Washington Women in Jazz Festival on Wednesday Nights. Both have particularly fine installments this week, featuring, incidentally, the two sides of a married musical couple.
Sunday Jazz Lounge
If [...]
Friday, March 11
As performance venues go, the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street NE is clearly one of the coolest in town. Aside from its retro-hip look (which is enough to guarantee it some cred), it's got a dance studio on the premises and theater space for hosting concerts, plays, dance recitals, and hi-def [...]
Thursday, March 3
Of all John Coltrane's protegees–which to some extent includes every tenor saxophonist who came after him– Pharoah Sanders is the strongest and most important. A member of Trane's last band, the wild and free one, Sanders elaborated on his mentor's unspoken spiritual commitment and sometimes made it spoken, as in his best-known composition [...]
