At its best, improvised music is in the moment, created out of necessity, reflecting the times in which it was created. I’ve found that there are particularly delectable moments with this music when you are in a room where you feel that the music itself is being born right out of the collective feeling in
This is an interview I conducted with Eli Wallace and Drew Wesely about the series they have been co-curating in Brooklyn. The next show is tonight at Mirror Woods at 8 pm! 1) What are the artistic elements that you are attempting to draw together with the Invocation series? DW: The idea for Invocation came
Winter Jazzfest Marathon finally comes to Brooklyn, as we all knew it eventually would. Not unlike the “Half-Marathon” added to last year’s schedule, this extended marathon date, a week after the melee of Jazzfest’s Manhattan-below-14th-street weekend, gives 8 hours of creative music options throughout several venues around North Brooklyn. The pared down number of venues
Hugh Masekela’s Live in Lesotho is a great album of celebratory music intertwined with a beautiful story of homecomings of Miriam Makeba and himself. The region of southern Africa has deep meaning to me, so while I won’t go into super detail about the history of the record, I will talk about my relationship with
So you survived one jazz marathon, and you’re reminded by the wet wristband still on your arm after showering that there’s at least one more marathon to go. The second night of the Winter Jazzfest Marathon is full of, perhaps, even more difficult decisions, which is to say it has scheduled so many intriguing and
Winter Jazzfest is upon us, finally fulfilling the promise of a true “winter squall” that New York’s weather alert system so dramatically texted you about. Though it started days ago with some of its higher profile satellite events, real heads know the heart of the festival isn’t in manageable one-show-per-night events, but rather in the
Los Angeles-based alto saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi is set to release another record, this time on the Thin Wrist label. For this release, Shiroishi delved into the personal and political terrain of concentration camps both as they relate to his family history and in the current cycle of immigrant and minority oppression, in what feels nothing
Editorial based on interviews written and conducted by Eline Marx Patricia Nicholson is an artist and the founder and director of the free jazz organization Arts for Art (AFA). In 2016, I was interning at Arts for Art and taking one-on-one dance classes with Patricia when William Parker suggested I interview her in the perspective
Percussionist Flin van Hemmen has been a catalyst for many things happening in New York since he arrived in 2007. He has released two records under his own name, Drums of Days in 2016, and just in September he followed with Casting Spells & the Coves, both on Neither/Nor Records. He has also been a central figure
Guest Reviewer: John Pietaro Composer: Benjamin Barson, Librettist: Ruth Margraff (Nejma Nefertiti, tracks 7-8) From its opening notes, US composer-baritone saxophonist Ben Barson’s suite for this “epic jazz opera” speaks of the revolutionary politics from which it is derived. With a firm grasp on the canon of liberation music before him, Barson (a student of
