Bill Barron (1927-1989) was an important and brilliant saxophonist (tenor, mostly), composer, scholar, and educator whose work deserves much wider attention. I’m not sure what the universe had in mind in this regard, but I’ve had the privilege of teaching for years now in the Music Department at Wesleyan University, where he taught from the…

Happy birthday to Terry Gibbs! While many jazz musicians make it to “elder” status, it’s not often we get to celebrate the centennial of a musician who’s still with us, so we are extra fortunate to still have this great vibraphonist, composer, bandleader, and indominable spirit. In a weird sense, his extraordinary longevity and comically-impressive…

Safe passage to the great saxophonist, composer, and gentleman Benny Golson, who has moved to the next realm after a highly consequential 95 years on this planet. Truly jazz royalty, he would be a proverbial hall-of-famer just on the strength of his powerful tenor saxophone mastery OR his intricate writing and arranging, and the full…

Happy centennial to Earl “Bud” Powell, born on September 27, 1924. He was one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century, full stop. That he is not universally recognized as such is the product of a few things, I think. One is society’s limited embrace of jazz music in general (such that most folks…

I have been a fan of drummer Donald Edwards for quite a while, and I’m thrilled that I’ll get to play some of his music with him for Resonant Motion’s upcoming Jazz Up Close event on September 14. While he is rightly known as one of the most grooving and versatile drummers on the jazz…

As a teenager in the fall of 1991, I started visiting the Hartt School of Music (and eventually the Artists’ Collective) to play sessions with my new friend Jimmy Greene, and there were two young Jackie McLean disciples about whom folks there spoke with particular reverence: saxophonist Abraham Burton and drummer Eric McPherson (a.k.a. “E-Mac”)….

Today marks the 100th birth anniversary of the important yet underappreciated trumpeter Kenny Dorham, a major figure in bridging the gap from bebop to hard bop to more modern sounds as well as incorporating Afro-Cuban and Brazilian sounds into straight-ahead jazz. His compositions are a crucial part of the jazz canon (if I had a…

Like much of the jazz community, I’m at a loss upon hearing of the sudden passing of Russell Malone. A beacon of joy on and off the bandstand, he was also one of the baddest guitarists of any generation, able to play with remarkable sensitivity and support yet equally able to rip it up on…

Today would have been Ahmad Jamal’s 94th birthday, and by coincidence I was talking with students about him – his conceptual and pianistic brilliance, yes, and also the way he defied multiple sorts of career trajectory that would typically get someone identified as “historically significant” in the annals of jazz. He didn’t follow the “sideman…