jazz | The Smart Set

The Holy Spirit of Alice Coltrane

A.D. Amorosi — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 15:22:00 +0000

Alice Coltrane has been lionized for her light and her loving devotion to God and the spirits since her first collaborations (on albums with Terry Gibbs and her husband, John Coltrane), and her earliest band-leader albums on “Impulse!” such as 1971’s “Journey in Satchidananda” and “Universal Consciousness.” With her newest work, however, the posthumously released […]

The post The Holy Spirit of Alice Coltrane first appeared on The Smart Set.

Sondheim. Now.

A.D. Amorosi — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 12:30:00 +0000

“Everything depends upon execution; having just a vision is no solution.” Stephen Sondheim Heading into 2024, one of the most noticeable things about the ties that unite the live theater-scape, from the Great White Way through to touring houses around the country, is how it is happily riddled with all that is Stephen Sondheim. Beyond […]

The post Sondheim. Now. first appeared on The Smart Set.

Miles and Me

Matthew Duffus — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 14:35:18 +0000

I’m embarrassed to admit that as a middle school trumpet player, I didn’t think much of Miles Davis. Living in the music desert of western Maryland, I had access to chain stores, disc jockeys, and Camelot, but they carried whatever was popular, not necessarily what was good. Both were more likely to sell Kenny G […]

The post Miles and Me first appeared on The Smart Set.

Post-Bop Bop Man

Colin Fleming — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 11:16:00 +0000

Let’s play a game of trumpet without any of us having to play trumpet, shall we? Favorite trumpet player as a trumpet player: Who you got? That line of inquiry, when it comes to trumpeters, can be a revealing device. I would expect that a lot of people opt for Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, or […]

The post Post-Bop Bop Man first appeared on The Smart Set.

100 Years of Charles Mingus

Matt Hanson — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:30:00 +0000

At the beginning of his unruly autobiography Beneath the Underdog, Charles Mingus explains himself to an unnamed psychiatrist: “In other words, I am three. One man stands forever in the middle, unconcerned, unmoved, watching, waiting to be allowed to express what he sees to the other two. The second man is like a frightened animal that […]

The post 100 Years of Charles Mingus first appeared on The Smart Set.

Color Coded

Colin Fleming — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 12:30:00 +0000

Certain jazz musicians play — and compose — as if they are card-carrying members of the elements. We feel like they will always exist, because it sounds like they always have. They are bedrock in their rhythms, the sky in their melodies. Pianist Freddie Redd, who died on St. Patrick’s Day 2021, could seem elemental […]

The post Color Coded first appeared on The Smart Set.

Born to Be Cool

Matthew Duffus — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 12:30:00 +0000

Imagine a smoky Italian jazz club. A young man in a dark suit leans over a microphone, completely absorbed by a ballad’s lyrics, even as his delivery — a soft, inflectionless tenor — belies the emotion roiling beneath the surface. It’s a classic, “My Funny Valentine,” sung in the inimitable Chet Baker style. But it’s […]

The post Born to Be Cool first appeared on The Smart Set.

Riffing the Prose

Colin Fleming — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 11:30:00 +0000

When I first began writing seriously, with an eye for an audience, dangling toes into professional writing waters, I had a few, somewhat, silly ideas. One was the notion that by writing nothing but record reviews, you might impact the world. The idea was one I had turned loose from remarks Greil Marcus made about the late […]

The post Riffing the Prose first appeared on The Smart Set.

Bodies and Souls, Sophisticated Ladies, and Plucked Strings

Colin Fleming — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 11:30:00 +0000

I think we all have moments where we wonder what it was like to be our favorite musicians, hearing what they heard, thinking their thoughts, seeing what played out before their eyes, feeling the full embrace of those “aha occasions” when the course of music history was forever altered. This is something I do quite […]

The post Bodies and Souls, Sophisticated Ladies, and Plucked Strings first appeared on The Smart Set.

Blue Clusters

Colin Fleming — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 14:50:59 +0000

If the Fates of Jazz oversaw an accounting service that charted advanced metrics like the album the most people had first fallen in love with, it’s a safe assumption that Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue would be at the top of the graphic. The LP was released 60 years ago on August 17, 1959, and it did not take long for it […]

The post Blue Clusters first appeared on The Smart Set.