Just as the previous generation of jazz critics fell in love with Sarah Vaughan, I was smitten by Cassandra Wilson twelve bars into the opening track of her 1993 Blue Note debut, Blue Light Til ...

His remarkably facile fingerstyle-and-thumb six-string approach caused Eubanks to be touted in the early 80s as “the next Wes Mongtomery.” Several impressive albums over the next two decades showed promise, notably 1982’s The Guitarist and ...

Garrison Fewell is a veteran guitarist who’s worked in the Boston area for decades. He comes out of a standard modern jazz guitar approach, but his work with the Variable Density Sound Orchestra shows just ...

Except for a few unobtrusive overdubs, Silent Movies is a solo jazz guitar record that casts a quiet but powerful spell. The tempos are slow, the playing sparse, the mood somber. The “compulsory distortion, rude ...

Black Dub’s self-titled debut album imaginatively combines 60s-style psychedelic guitar riffs with reggae-tinged blues, female soul singing, and gospel music. With Daniel Lanois on guitar, Trixie Whitley on lead vocals and keyboard, Brian Blade on ...

Tchaikovsky and Dvorak are in the same boat in one way—you’d think they only wrote three symphonies, but numbered them 4, 5, and 6 in Tchaikovsky’s case, and 7, 8, and 9 in Dvorak’s. While ...

In the 1960s, Jerry Garcia joined up with Sandy Rothman and David Nelson to play bluegrass and old-time music. Twenty- some years later, the trio reunited; along with John Kahn, Kenny Kosek, and David Kemper ...

The buzz around the debut of Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen is well-earned. A lot of what makes the quartet special is found on the first track, the hard- charging Solivan original, “Driftin’ Apart.” The ...

Coming off White Sugar, one of the most promising blues debuts of recent years, Joanne Shaw Taylor’s Diamonds In the Dirt is proof anew that far from being moribund the genre is in fact being ...

Sufjan Stevens fans tend to cut their hero a lot of slack. After all, his last full-length album of new material was Illinois—a towering blend of rock structures, classical composition techniques, and poetic lyrics. His ...

This richly rewarding four-CD, one- DVD set with 60-page booklet traces Hendrix’s rise from sideman with the Isley Brothers, Little Richard, and King Curtis, to rock-guitar god. The tracks, recorded between 1964 and 1970, are ...

Percy Sledge scored a major hit in 1966 with his heartfelt reading of the country- soul ballad “When A Man Loves A Woman,” which spent two months on the Top 10, becoming an iconic song ...

One response to the increasingly difficult problem of marketing recorded music is the production of high-quality LPs in limited-run sets that specifically target collectors. Some of the best jazz coming out today falls into this ...

Bassist-composer-arranger-producer Marcus Miller reveals the full scope of his talents on this live outing recorded in 2008 on the French Riviera. Joined by the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic, turntablist DJ Logic, singer Raul Midon, and trumpeter Roy ...

Bird Songs, Lovano’s 22nd recording for Blue Note, is his paean to bebop icon Charlie Parker. But it’s also a tribute to the sax greats who influenced Bird, like Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, as ...