Jazz will sprout no matter where or when and even when there is a cultural stigma associated with becoming a musician. The Zimbabwe-born Drumkoon (now living in Denmark) is a self-taught sax player who prefers to listen to his muse against a backdrop of the natural acoustics in his daily travels to new cities. Not constrained by any of the “shoulds” of contemporary Western composition techniques, he has learned about melody, pacing, dynamics, and rhythm (enter the handpan and other percussion instruments he also plays) and applies these lessons to express what’s in his heart through his alto ..read more

A glistening coat of moonlight sits atop new music from Erik Palmberg’s quartet. The light comes from their new song “Silver Moon” in the upcoming (as yet unnamed) album slated for 2024. Each instrumentalist has a say in this thoughtful and lyrical offering that expresses their musical ideas while blending seamlessly with one another. Palmberg paints on trumpet with excellent articulation and emotion, his volume and pace swelling and waning to match the mood of the piece. Lovely morsels here. Another song that will appear on the new album is “French Flavour,” whose haunting melody on trumpet i ..read more

It takes stamina and commitment—plus a huge dollop of love for music—to post daily on jazz. Michael Westmore, by day a scientist, has recently released Volume 1 and 2 in his series, Jazz Quarterly. With the huge amount of content he produces on his blog at https://jazzdaily.blog/, there will surely be future volumes here. We open Volume 1 with a chapter on the backstory of Miles Davis’s iconic  Kind of Blue (the song and the album). The book meanders very satisfyingly throughout jazz history and the contemporary state of jazz, often presenting short-order biographical essays, opinions on ..read more

Author Mark Shaiken Welcome to a dark and thrilling ride into the underbelly of running a (fictitious) jazz club courtesy of author Mark Shaiken in his book Automatic Stay (1609 Press LLC, 2022), which is volume 3 in his four-part 3J Legal Thriller series. Kansas City clubs, like many businesses, have been hard-hit since the pandemic. Keeping afloat is no small effort, and now six venues, owned by a husband and wife team, are in for the fight of their lives as an unnamed campaign to take them down via social media is underway. Enter the protagonist, 3J (intrepid attorney Josephina Jillian Jone ..read more

In 2022, which marked the fiftieth anniversary of my father Irving Schiffer’s passing, my brother and I thought we’d do a tribute to our dad by starting a Wikipedia page. My father was notable for a TV screenplay that had some big star power back in the 1950s, and he’d also painted a bit during his short lifetime. Little did we realize the depth and breadth of his creative output. This month, I released my tenth book, Knowing Irv: The Life and Art of Irving Schiffer—a collection of all the paintings I could find, his short stories, trade magazine articles, photos, a full (unpublished) manuscr ..read more

A new high-energy song is out and kills it with airtight harmonies and intricate saxwork. Called “Abdominales,” the song is the first of six tracks of the upcoming Volume 2 for drummer-songwriter Agustin Strizzi. He leads a quintet and the players stand out individually and at the same time are synced like rivers meeting, crashing, and meshing together. Volume 1 includes tracks like the lush and super-duper funky “Porno Groove” (the Rhodes helps give it that lusty vibe), then there’s a soothing beat with “Skyfall” from 2017, the charming 2006 title “El Sol” and  the delicate, thoughtful ..read more

Martin Connolly is a photographer who has a very unique relationship to jazz that is entwined with his memories of his brother, some of the titans of jazz, and the founder of a jazz magazine in Ireland. Kind of Green: Jazz Legends from ’86 to ’90 through an Irish Lens (Snowchild Press, Ireland, 2023) [release date: October 9, 2023] takes us to a very particular period (1986 to 1990) with never-before-seen photos of performances by Dizzy Gillespie, John McLaughlin, Mike Stern, Michael Brecker, John Scofield and so many more at events like the North Sea Jazz Festival, Victoria Palace (UK) and th ..read more

This crackling noir contribution from mystery author Matt Cost weaves 1920s Brooklyn with gangsters, speakeasies, jazz and literature. In Velma Gone Awry: A Brooklyn 8 Ballo Mystery (Encircle Publications, April 2023), a man walks into a private eye and…well, you only think you’ve heard this one before. With writing so crisp it leaves crumbs, the author has a flair for capturing not just the obvious about the era but drops you hard in the middle of it (what we paid for everyday things back then, how Brooklyn was a manufacturing hub in its own right, the warring street gangs). Here, Cost serves ..read more

An enlightening account of a marriage born in music, The Rhythm of Unity (Redwood Publishing, 2023) braids the lives of Dorothy Longo, a classically trained pianist, with that of husband Mike Longo, jazz pianist and composer, possibly best known for his work with Dizzy Gillespie. From the breakneck pace of performing and the flurry of constant traveling to the lags while looking for gigs, the book gives fly-on-the-wall descriptions of the fun and the hard times. Also included is the authors’ journey into the Bahá’i’ Faith. This book expertly weaves the perspectives of husband and wife and illu ..read more

The debut CD from tenor sax and clarinet player/composer Ari Silberman called Beneath the Canopy is a treat of originality mixed with a handful of covers deliciously done. The eleven tracks flow like a river, sometimes gathering speed, sometimes holding back. Harmonies that bend your mind just a little evoke that early Songbook sound (“Hummingbird”) or maybe it’s a jaunty bop tale (“Waitin’”) where the piano hands over the journey to Silberman’s smooth and rich solo. A sigh of a song (in stellar vocalist  Erin Bentlage’s incredible hands), “If the Moon Turns Green” contrasts with the spic ..read more