Rolling Jazz 2025

JBL's 2/1 release:

Informed by the rhythms and textures of hip-hop and funk while remaining rooted in jazz, ‘Apple Cores’ was recorded with James Brandon Lewis’s longtime collaborators Chad Taylor (drums/mbira) and Josh Werner (bass/guitar). The recording was a collective compositional process that happened over the course of two intense, entirely improvised sessions.

Today from ‘Apple Cores,’ the trio shares “Prince Eugene,” a hazy ballad that combines a dub-reggae bassline and drums with a Zimbabwean mbira as Lewis’ saxophone sings and guides us through the tune’s heavy yet minimal groove. Listen to it below.

The album takes its name and intention from the column that poet and jazz theorist Amiri Baraka wrote for DownBeat in the 1960s. “I was first exposed to Amiri Baraka at Howard University [also Baraka’s alma mater],” says Lewis. “Blues People [Baraka’s groundbreaking 1963 study of Black American music], was required reading. I’m always in constant dialogue with his work.”

In addition to Baraka, the influence of another jazz giant looms mightily over Apple Cores: trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist, Don Cherry. In a testament to Cherry’s influence over the music that the trio is playing, Lewis designed each song title as a cryptogram of sorts, making subtle references to Cherry’s life and music.

“The record itself is a nod to Amiri but mainly a nod to Don Cherry, using Amiri as a branch to really get the conversation going,” Lewis explains. “It’s not a tribute in the sense that we’re playing Don Cherry compositions, but that the music is commenting on his musical curiosity.”

Next month Lewis embarks on a European tour alongside The Messthetics with shows in Dublin and throughout the UK. A hometown album release show has also been announced in Brooklyn, NY at Public Records on March 6 and following that show his trio returns to Europe in April and May with dates in Austria, Spain the Netherlands and more to celebrate the release of ‘Apple Cores’. All upcoming dates are listed below.

TOUR DATES
February 7 – Dublin, Ireland @ Grand Social
February 8 – Belfast, United Kingdom @ The Black Box
February 10 - Glasgow, United Kingdom @ Nice N Sleazy
February 11 – Manchester, United Kingdom @ Yes
February 12 – Birmingham, United Kingdom @ The Hare And Hounds
February 13 – Nottingham, United Kingdom @ Boat Club
February 14 – Bristol, United Kingdom @ The Lantern
February 15 – Lewes, United Kingdom @ Lewes Con Club
February 16 – London, United Kingdom @ 100 Club
March 3 – Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon
March 6 – Brooklyn, NY @ Public Records
March 7 – Chicago, IL @ Constellation
April 26 – Paris, France @ Maison de la Radio Studio 104
April 27 – Cologne, Germany @ Stadtgarten
April 28 – Brno, Czech Republic @ Cabare des Peches
April 29 – Vienna, Austria @ Porgy & Bess
April 30 – San Sebastian, Spain @ Victoria Eugenia Club
May 2 – Barcelona, Spain @ El Molino
May 3 – London, UK @ Vortex
May 7 – Tilburg, Netherlands @ Paradox
May 8 – Liege, Belgium @ Jazz A Liege Festival

Some good stuff coming out in the next couple of months:

Sun & Rain (3/4 of Little Women, minus Darius Jones, plus a new saxophonist) - Waterfall
Isaiah Collier/William Parker/William Hooker - The Ancients
Burnt Sugar - If You Can't Dazzle Them With Your Brilliance Then Baffle Them With Your Blisluth Vol 2 (live album)
James Brandon Lewis - Apple Cores
Sullivan Fortner - Southern Nights
Steve Lehman Trio + Mark Turner - The Music Of Anthony Braxton
Sylvie Courvoisier/Mary Halvorson - Bone Bells
Jeong Lim Yang - Synchronicity
Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad - Jazz Is Dead 22: Ebo Taylor
Alabaster DePlume - A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole
Billy Hart Quartet (w/Mark Turner, Ethan Iverson) - Just

https://tr.ee/j1i6095ik0

Been seeing jazz musicians post this fundraiser for the Los Angeles based Mauoin family ( including longtime jazz player Bennie Maupin) who have been impacted by the LA fires

Bennie Maupin was already suffering health (and cognitive) issues the last few years, I heard.

I was just about to post the same thing. Nasheet Waits shared the same link, writing: "Please give to Bennie Maupin. A true treasure that has lost his home and instruments. Literally everything. Kindly give so he can feel the love. Peace."

https://hullworks.net/jazzpoll/24/totals-new.php

Francis Davis Tom Hull Jazz critics poll

https://hullworks.net/jazzpoll/24/critics.php

Names and links to each critic's ballot for 2024

did everyone see this? i feel like everyone should see this. its good for you. in a good way. maybe everyone has seen it already.

Baden-Baden Free Jazz Meeting 1970

Isaiah Collier/William Parker/William Hooker - The Ancients, just got my copy this morning, Collier I was not really familiar with aside from hearing the name but he has no problem hanging with Parker & Hooker, who are as you can imagine outstanding, just a really great set

This is a really cool record of live duo improv + electronics, from some folks I know well -
https://shiftingparadigmrecords.bandcamp.com/album/full-potential

My latest Stereogum column just went up. I reviewed the Collier/Parker/Hooker album and nine other equally excellent records covering a wide spectrum of sounds (everything from an Andrew Hill big band to the PainKiller reunion disc), and interviewed trumpeter Jason Palmer:

https://www.stereogum.com/2293704/introducing-jason-palmer/columns/ugly-beauty/

^ I always LOVE your column. Thank you for the great music you've introduced me to (as someone who has little knowledge about jazz)!

https://mapledeathrecords.bandcamp.com/album/flowers-are-blooming-in-antarctica

loving this laura agnusdei album "flowers are blooming in antarctica" - dubby jazz with electronics

Whoever is doing the quality control over at Division 81 records is super sloppy and it's starting to annoy me. Last year I ordered two Isaiah Collier albums (Cosmic Transmissions & The Almighty), but they initially only sent me the first one and I had to email a couple times to get the second one. Then a few months ago, I ordered the new one (The World is On Fire) and they sent me another copy of The Almighty and have yet to respond to my emails.

Love that NA, it fits right in with the dub wormhole I'm currently in.

it's so good. i am not a "jazz guy" but i feel like every year there's one album in this vein that i click with.

The Collier/Hooker/Parker is fantastic. The bit in the final set where Collier plays a megaphone like its the sax, complete with multiphonics and timely blasts of the klaxon, is a trip.

The new Ambrose Akinmusire is out today and it's a stunner. https://daily.bandcamp.com/album-of-the-day/ambrose-akinmusire-honey-from-a-winter-stone-review

I love Akinmusire in more conventional settings (his quartet/quintet, the trio with Bill Frisell and Herlin Riley) but I really didn't like Origami Harvest, and this new one is being linked to that one, so I'll probably pass.

whoa the Agnusdei album is sounding amazing

Oh shit, I was wondering when his next one would be out. Owl Song was probably my AOTY, but his music had never really clicked with me before that.

Listening to a Susan Alcorn/José Lencastre/Hernâni Faustino album from 2023, Manifesto. Really beautiful stuff; steel guitar, alto or tenor sax depending on the track, upright bass. On Clean Feed.

https://cleanfeedrecords.bandcamp.com/album/manifesto

Definitely worth hearing the Akinmusire as it pulls off the jazz/hip-hop/contemporary classical thing with more sophistication and fluidity than Origami Harvest (which was still really interesting). The Mivos String Quartet are very much part of the whole ensemble. There's a lot of fluidity in the arrangements and no sense they're tacked on. The drumming is fantastic - more FlyLo than 90s boom bap.

Saw that Alcorn trio in Lisbon in 2023. Really gorgeous music. There were bits where she made the pedal steel sound like banjo or zither. An amazing artist. Really gutted at the news of her passing.

Aw, that's very sad about Alcorn. An acquaintance of mine wrote a piece for her, he talked a lot about her on a podcast recently.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFgF1gTg_i8/?igsh=YmN2ZG51dm50MGFr

Yeah sad to learn that. I found out about her through a great country album by Zane Campbell that she played on

I love Akinmusire in more conventional settings (his quartet/quintet, the trio with Bill Frisell and Herlin Riley) but I really didn't like Origami Harvest, and this new one is being linked to that one, so I'll probably pass.

Same. Was excited about this until I read the description. Still rooting for this guy, though. He's a great player.

Side note: It's incredible how hard it is to get hands on a physical copy of A Rift In Decorum: Live At The Village Vanguard.

try discogs

it's kind of jarring that Ambrose's pianist collaborator is called Sam Harris

i want to cover the Village Vanguard record and call it A Dilf in Your Rectum

sensational article from ethan iverson that takes the Live At Slugs record as a kind of jumping off point to talk about, frankly the entire history of mid-20th century jazz, and how the Slugs was a kind of ground zero for the evolution of hard swinging jazz that pushed the boundaries but didn't follow the fusion or free jazz trajectories -

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/slugs-jazz-ethan-iverson/

Nice little sidebar listener's guide here: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/slugs-jazz-albums-list/

ty, excellent article

I really enjoyed reading that too, but part of my enjoyment was being somewhat bemused by its thesis: that this idiom is overlooked. When I started getting into jazz in the mid-00s, it was through buying reissued CDs and early-mid 60s Blue Notes were so abundant and relatively cheap that the era was wildly over-represented in my knowledge of jazz history for a while. I totally get that my experience is an outlier consequence of the 00s music industry, but it's funny to see a list of "overlooked" records that I own half of (and have close alternates for most of the rest).

Same here.

Same, and it might be my favorite music of all.

Haven't read the article but I liked this post where he talks about omitting Art Blake's Free for All (one of my favorites for the sense of abandon and unexpectedly driving all the meters into the red).

https://iverson.substack.com/p/tt-479-a-night-in-tunisia-and-free

Also love this anecdote from him interviewing 'Tain' Watts about Blakey -

"Art could just do anything. He probably just heard cats doing it and he would just do stuff to show people he could do it. I remember taking a van ride with him to Atlantic City. We were in the van and we’re riding and he’s like, Yes, Jeff. Polyrhythms, you know, it’s no big deal, polyrhythm. You do six over here and you do five with your foot like this. And he was just doing it! You just do that and then you can play in between, you know, playing three over here. He’s just like a natural virtuoso blues musician or whatever. "

I didn't know where to put the new Damon Locks album on International Anthem. This is not jazz but spoken word/poetry although it is jazz in a way. Nevermind don't sleep on it, the first album of the year contestor has arrived. Poetry for our algorithmic times.

"I am late, yet time has lost all meaning"

"the networks create connections and monetize reactions"

"- meaninglessness, it's not concrete; it is ephemeral. at the same time, trackable and traceable"

https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/track/click

New percussion trio album from Joe Chambers (82!), Chad Taylor, and Kevin Diehl -
https://eremiterecords.bandcamp.com/album/onilu

That first preview track is beguiling, it's in 13 but sometimes it's in 12 and I haven't yet worked out the cycle, or maybe I'm just not getting it.

I wrote about tenor saxophonist Don Byas in this week's BA newsletter. I found him to be a fascinating transitional figure who bridged the gap between the swing and bebop eras, and who left the US for Europe at the height of his success, never to return.

There's a 4 1/2 hour playlist of tracks from the Strata-East label up on streaming services today. It serves as a preview of a big digital reissue campaign covering almost their whole catalog, which will happen in April. Here's a Tidal link, because fuck Spotify.

https://tidal.com/browse/album/411629336?u

Also, my latest Stereogum column is up. I interviewed pianist Sullivan Fortner.

RIP Larry Appelbaum whom I first met at the University of Maryland radio Station WMUC where Larry was a jazz dj. He moved on to the Library of Congress where he found a previously unavailable Thelonious Monk tape (and got some acclaim for this) , programmed jazz movies and concerts for the Washington dc area public and did so much more there at the LOC. He also dj'd at WPFW for years (his show was called "The Sound of Surprise") and wrote for Jazz Times and others. He programmed concerts with Transparent Productions in DC for awhile too. He had a stroke some years back and did his best since that time. He frequently honored musicians and other artists on Facebook with posts, and also shared photos he had taken himself over the years with jazz musicians and jazz scholars. I knew him and will miss him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilWKTJtn-YM

That YouTube is Larry Appelbaum explaining finding the Monk w/ Coltrane tape and more at the LOc

https://larryappelbaum.wordpress.com/2016/01/26/jazztimes-radio-article-interview/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR36XACrw6RV4yf8m_Rd4Sbt9P5fyCpjtojDAi1gFO-kIFoAVW8HGonoMzw_aem_5pvGXRjVgQd9M4wcjubtjQ

I really like the new Billy Hart ECM album (Ethan Iverson, Mark Turner, Ben Street)

I'm really enjoy Billy Hart's Just too--am going through a bit of a Mark Turner listening phase, on a related note, which started in earnest with the Kurt Rosenwinkel Next Step Live archival release last year, and continues now with Just, as well as the new Steve Lehman on Pi (The Music of Anthony Braxton) and Turner's own new solo album on Jakob Bro's Loveland Music (We Raise Them To Lift Their Heads)

Agree about Turner; the Hart, Lehman, and Rosenwinkel albums are all really good (and I am not a Rosenwinkel fan), as is his playing on Jason Palmer's new one and his own record with the group The Fury (Turner, guitarist Lage Lund, Matt Brewer on bass and Tyshawn Sorey on drums). He's supposedly got a quartet record coming out on ECM later this year, too, with Palmer, Joe Martin on bass and Jonathan Pinson on drums.

https://mapledeathrecords.bandcamp.com/album/flowers-are-blooming-in-antarctica

loving this laura agnusdei album "flowers are blooming in antarctica" - dubby jazz with electronics

this album is awesome.

flowers are blooming is awesome, thank you. It's dense, yet so vibrant. It sparkled for me at 1am last night

113 critics responded (177 had responded to the 2024 end of year poll). Link above includes much more than below top 10

. Steve Lehman Trio + Mark Turner, The Music of Anthony Braxton (Pi) 61.8 (35)
2. Mary Halvorson, About Ghosts (Nonesuch) 52.4 (28)
3. Nels Cline, Consentrik Quartet (Blue Note) 38.1 (25)
4. Ambrose Akinmusire, Honey From a Winter Stone (Nonesuch) 46.1 (24)
5. James Brandon Lewis Quartet, Abstraction Is Deliverance (Intakt) 45.9 (24)
6. Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson, Bone Bells (Pyroclastic) 37 (24)
7. Branford Marsalis Quartet, Belonging (Blue Note) 42.4 (21)
8. Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith, Defiant Life (ECM) 34.2 (20)
9. Amina Claudine Myers, Solace of the Mind (Red Hook) 30.7 (18)
10. Ivo Perelman & Matthew Shipp String Trio, Armageddon Flower (TAO Forms) 29.7 (18)

I'm going through Al Foster's 00's albums as a leader, and they are all absolute bangers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx0ULnrBBLs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv40lSekioU

This was posted from Mary Halvorson's social media accounts:

Please join us on Wednesday, July 30th for a memorial celebrating the life and memory of Susan Alcorn, a wonderful human and truly one of the great improvisers and players I've had the pleasure of working with.
This event will be at the Zürcher Gallery, Susan's favorite venue in NYC, and feature many of her friends and collaborators.

We miss you, Susan.

Info here.

And I just noticed that Alcorn actually played at that very same venue on January 21 of this year, just ten days before she passed away.

That's a nice place. I saw Nduduzo Makhathini play there a few years ago.

ahmed show cancelled, can’t find an announcement anywhere except in the ticket app

but no reason :(

Shit. Hope it’s not health issues or our fascist government.

I mean, the group's name is Ahmed, best to play it safe and not come.

My new Stereogum column is up; I interviewed saxophonist Nicole Glover and reviewed a bunch of new records, and if you want to hear Pat Thomas, Luke Stewart and Trae Crudup covering Eddie Murphy's "Party All The Time," that's included, too!

Hey I person so glad to see the Soviet Jazz stuff get listed. Are you going to release the Sergey Kuryokhin box set as well?

Down the road, definitely. I've got an assload of Russian Leo titles loaded up for the next several months.

Trae Crudup is a great drummer both with Luke Stewart and I bet doing Eddie Murphy too ( I haven’t read the Stereogum column yet). There was a period when he was living in DC that he used to show Instagram lives of himself playing drums alongside a hiphop DJ spinning records. His playing was so funky .

Luke and Trae used to be James Brandon Lewis's rhythm section; I saw them with Anthony Pirog on guitar, on the same bill with Harriet Tubman, back in 2017 or so. Hung out with Greg Tate at that gig, actually.

My friend briefly played drums for Janel and Anthony

TIL that Wynton Marsalis, who is 63, is married to a 38-year-old Scottish violinist and they have a one-year-old daughter.

"Benedetti initially met Marsalis when she was 17"

oof

Sheila Jordan is in hospice care and in dire need of financial help to continue her care due to the limits of Medicare coverage.

Did not know, scary:

Medicare only provides 10 hours of Home Hospice Care Aide services per week. Per WEEK!

Sadly not a surprise. The late Leon Lederman, a Nobel prize winning physicist, sold his Nobel Prize in anticipation of this outcome should he be short on funds. Like Jordan, he worked into his old age and yet if hadn't won a Nobel Prize (or had something of equivalent and immense monetary value to sell), he probably would've resorted to a similar GoFundMe campaign.

Fixed link.

I know from family and personal experience that Medicare Advantage plans, at least ours, incl. visiting nurses, though limited in no. of visits per week---you can hire a sitter via related services, worth it to get a break---and it covered extra for my Mom's hospice nurse---but Original Medicare has much more limited---sounds like what Jordan has, shudder.

Original Medicare is much more limited when it comes to that kind of option, I meant (and if she's on Medicaid, oh man). But looks like the gofundme is going pretty well so far.

Sorry to hear about your mother dow. These situations can be really tough.

Thanks, all that was several years ago---but yeah, even with benefits, it's tough.

Been listening to some of Charnett Moffett's (RIP) albums - his final solo upright album is absolutely incredible. Prior albums (like the Art of Improvisation and Music from Our Soul) are often a mix of really cool 4th world material (lots of Indian and middle-eastern influences?), sick uptempo burnout swing, and fusion with semi-cheesy textures.

It's now reported that Sheila Jordan has passed:

"I’ve had disappointments in life like anyone else but if things didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to I feel they still turned out for the best. I try to have a positive attitude. You know I didn’t start singing full time until I was 58 years old. I had a day job for years to support my daughter but when I was let go, that’s when I decided I would try to work full time as a singer and teacher." The great "vocal shaman" Sheila Jordan has left us. She didn't try to sing full-time, she did it, and lived to the grand age of 96. Requiescat in pace.

Ugh. RIP.

She had such a great attitude, such great energy. I used to think to myself "I'll have what she's having."

Remembering standing there talking briefly to her at Mezzrow once but not wanting to say too much for various reasons, partly since she was older and I didn't want her to catch anything from me in case I had a cold or something.

I never saw her perform until very late in life, and it was very moving how she'd completely acknowledge that this could be the last time we'd all be seeing her. I was able to catch one more show at Jazz at Lincoln Center back in October when she was inducted into the Hall of Fame, and when I talked to her briefly afterwards, she couldn't have been more humble. IIRC, she said she was shocked when she heard she was getting inducted. When I said, "really?" she explained there were a lot of deserving people that hadn't been inducted yet, implying they should've come first, and she proceeded to name a dozen artists in quick succession. She then winked and gave me a smile when I said goodbye and headed towards the doors. A genuinely sweet woman, and of course a great jazz vocalist, I'm very happy she was able to experience that recognition and live out a pretty full career with the extra mileage she got over most mortals.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/arts/music/sheila-jordan-dead.html

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19m8pyq17N/

And from Nate Chinen after talking with Harvie S:

Earlier this evening I called bassist Harvie S, who has been a key Sheila Jordan compatriot for some 50 years, to secure confirmation for the NPR obit. “She was living at the Actors Home for two months, because it was paid for by insurance,” he told me. “She had to go back to her apartment, because then it got very expensive to stay there.” But as he hastened to add, the return to her home, on West 18th Street in Chelsea, was in the end a welcome development for Jordan. “She really wanted to be in her apartment,” he said. “She had that apartment since the ‘50s. Charlie Parker was in that apartment. Clifford Brown, Paul Chambers, Charles Mingus were all there.”

Last gig was apparently six months ago on Valentine's Day at the Green Mill. (The venue was also the biggest donor in her GoFundMe campaign.)

Great about the apartment! It was a great thing too for my Mom to be at home all that time, what a difference it can make. Also that she was gigging that late! And always pointing out that it might be the last time, no doubt making it as good as she could. Thanks for all those posts yall.

My latest Stereogum column is up. I interviewed Rob Mazurek (via Zoom) and Chad Taylor (via email) of Chicago Underground Duo, still called that even though Rob lives in Marfa, Texas and Chad in Pittsburgh. Also wrote up a bunch of excellent records.

Just got the Mosaic box Pharoah Sanders: The Complete Theresa Recordings in the mail; will be writing about that for Burning Ambulance in a couple of weeks.

Seeing Nicole Mitchell right now on a panel of Virginia-based composers.

a strange and sometimes unpleasantly written article, but nevertheless may be of interest. includes links to various Pat Thomas-involved recordings around Bandcamp

https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/pat-thomas-albums-guide

xxxxxpost speaking of Sheila, quite a splendid hour with her in 2023, recently re-broadcast--Christian McBride picked all the best tracks (that I can think of), given time limits:
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/14/nx-s1-5502396/remembering-sheila-jordan-a-voice-that-defined-bebops-spirit

Not the writer's fault, but the headline is unfortunate. Nothing chaotic about Pat Thomas. He's an extremely disciplined musician and while he has wide ranging interests, there's a logic and rigour to it all. Really great to see him getting some wider coverage though. Sufi Women, the latest of his IRCAM Timestretch albums, is fantastic.
Good selection, to which I'd add X-Ray Hex Tet, Shifa, Bley School and the glorious live recording of Black Top with Elaine Mitchener, William Parker and Hamid Drake.

xp Excellent playlist - a good curated compilation would've been an excellent idea back in the day but I imagine the numerous labels involved discouraged anyone from considering it.

I went to see the John Patitucci Trio the other night, mostly because of Brian Blade, and they had a tenor player I had never heard of before, Nicole Glover. Holy fuck, I was blown away. Have been listening to her two most recent records since then and both are incredible. I think she's a generational type player.

Would love to see that band, and will check out her trio records. Also Jon Cowherd has a trio record with Patitucci & Blade from 2022, can't remember if I've listened to that before but I'm going to now.

My recent intro to Nicole Glover (a fantastic interview podcast in general IMO): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hre9i9-VK8w

Three hours????

I know it seems crazy (haven't listened to that one) but I'm currently listening to PH's 3.5 hour interview with drummer Kush Abadey and it flies by, really thoughtful & chill musician talk.

Haha, I listened to a bit of that - pretty heady/technical but interesting. I've been thinking about the whole tone scale a lot since then, maybe I'll finish it later.

Need to check out that Cowherd record too, Blade is one of my guys. Also need to listen to the Spirit Fall record that they were promoting (but which has Potter instead of Glover).

I interviewed Nicole Glover for Stereogum last month. Her most recent album really is great, and I'm thinking about trying to rope her into a project for my label next year (concept: "bebop over blast beats").

"concept: "bebop over blast beats""

I'm sold.