When a jazz icon has a handful of words to say about a storied and stellar career, you listen. Especially if it’s the inimitable Sonny Rollins. I first heard him on 1978’s “Don’t Stop the Carnival” and was nothing short of stunned. Recorded live at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall, it was the first... Continue Reading →
There are ways to cover songs that take the material to new places, infusing a new climate altogether. Sax player Carlo Muscat has gathered tunes by some of the biggest names in jazz (Coltrane, Mobley, Rollins, Shorter) and pressed them gently but firmly into a new form. The result is Diversion, released November 2021. The... Continue Reading →
Record executive Zev Feldman has a decades-long career in marketing, sales, production, management, talent promotion and acquisition. His ability to ferret out the gems in a complicated and always-changing world of music sets him apart as a kind of “news hound” for the next big thing, whether it’s an emerging artist or rediscovered reels from... Continue Reading →
A Jazzman’s Tale about trumpet player Charles Freeman Lee is a heady mélange of a book that starts off with the unique perspective of a screenplay. Part one delves deeply into the gritty life of a jazz musician whose gigging takes him from the Midwest to New York and New Jersey. It segues into a... Continue Reading →
This past August, Huck Magazine did a piece about the connection between skateboarding and creativity. It turns out that not only is there a sense of resilience in common (“they fall off, they get back on”), there is also the idea of improv, self-reliance, honing a craft. Add to this that the skater culture is... Continue Reading →
This story accompanies an earlier one about Sonny Rollins. With assertive purples, blues, pinks, reds and oranges, illustrator Gaurab Thakali interprets cultural figures and societal issues. Some of his illustrations catch the collective attention of social media. One has exploded into iconic status. A modest, shy artist, the UK’s Gaurab Thakali has re-imagined Sonny Rollins... Continue Reading →
Film documentarian Robert Mugge has always been captivated by the stories of music, particularly those of Al Green, Ruben Blades, the legendary 2010 rhythm and blues cruise, and the post-Katrina musicians of New Orleans. In 1986, he produced a now iconic film about Sonny Rollins titled “Saxophone Colossus.” At the date of this writing, after... Continue Reading →
"The New Yorker" by Gaurab Thakali with permission Jeff Caltabiano is a jazz devotee who continually immerses himself in its world, learning about the history, people and music of it. He’s the founder of an initiative to name the Williamsburg Bridge after one of the most accomplished and respected of tenor sax masters, Sonny Rollins,... Continue Reading →
Debbie Burke - jazz author 
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