Giovanni Russonello
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Best Jazz Albums of 2023
The year’s most thrilling albums were made by artists pushing beyond borders, teaming with new collaborators and making bold statements of their own.
5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Jazz Flute
The flute is one of the more overlooked instruments in jazz, but it’s been making an impact on improvised music for more than 50 years....
Laufey’s Old-Time Pop Is Smooth. Its Relationship to Jazz Is Spikier.
The 24-year-old multi-instrumentalist found fame on TikTok with her nostalgic songs. But her dedication to her followers may be holding her music back.
Jahari Stampley Wins the Herbie Hancock Jazz Competition
Jahari Stampley, a 23-year-old pianist from Chicago, won the prize as the genre’s premier coronation ceremony for young talent was held for the first time...
5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Sarah Vaughan
All it might take is a second and a half of hearing her sing to make your spine tingle or your heart drop. Opera singers,...
How Pharoah Sanders Beckoned the Gods on the Intimate ‘Pharoah’
The three-song 1976 recording arrives in a new boxed set at what seems a perfect moment to deepen our appreciation for the saxophonist’s role in...
Ambrose Akinmusire Learned to Let Go (With Help From Joni Mitchell)
The trumpeter will release “Owl Song,” a spare new album, this fall as he takes on a new role as artistic director of the Herbie...
Terence Blanchard, Pushing Jazz Forward From a New Perch
The trumpeter and composer follows the premiere of two Met operas with an appointment as executive artistic director of SFJazz in San Francisco and a...
Jaimie Branch Adds to a Brilliant Legacy With Fly or Die’s Final LP
The trumpeter, who died a year ago at 39, recorded “Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War))” with her quartet in...
5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Miles Davis’s Electric Period
Navigate the trumpeter’s snaky, endless grooves with picks from Flying Lotus, Cindy Blackman Santana and Terence Blanchard, among other musicians, writers and critics.