All Authors >

JON GARELICK

Latest Articles

Getting it live

Noah Preminger, Fernando Huergo, the John Coltrane Memorial Concert, and the BeanTown Jazz Festival
Noah Preminger — bearded, shaggy-haired, 23 years old — plays tenor saxophone like a man at least twice his age while remaining completely of the moment.

By: JON GARELICK | September 23, 2008

Patricia Barber | The Cole Porter Mix

Blue Note
On this Porter “mix,” pianist/singer/songwriter Barber pulls back just a bit from the audacious ambition of 2006’s Mythologies (based on Ovid, no less).

By: JON GARELICK | September 16, 2008

Autumn leaves

A cornucopia of jazz
One of the great harbingers of fall jazz for the past seven years has been the Beantown Jazz Festival.

By: JON GARELICK | September 08, 2008

Life lessons

Danilo Pérez gets into the moment
At 42, the pianist and composer Danilo Pérez is everywhere.

By: JON GARELICK | September 08, 2008

State of the art

Newport's Jazz ID check
You could find just about any kind of jazz you wanted on the three stages at the JVC Jazz Festival in Newport last weekend.

By: JON GARELICK | August 14, 2008

Aaron Parks

Invisible Cinema | Blue Note
He likes the shape of pop tunes, their dynamics, their unfolding dramas. He names Radiohead as an influence.

By: JON GARELICK | August 12, 2008

Cinematic

Empirical go to the movies, plus the Hot 8
Talking with Nathaniel Facey, the alto-saxophonist in the London band Empirical, you find it difficult at first to pin down where and how the quintet developed their unusual compositional style.

By: JON GARELICK | July 28, 2008

Islander

Julie Hecht’s self-help
There’s still time to spend some of your summer with Julie Hecht.

By: JON GARELICK | July 22, 2008

Life of Don

Mad Men ’s dark nostalgia
Mad Men continues to take us back to a time we think we know.

By: JON GARELICK | July 22, 2008

Cambodian dance party!

Dengue Fever + Pistolera at the Museum of Fine Arts, July 9, 2008
Dengue Fever’s charms are so extreme that at first they might strike you as incongruous — like a chocolate-covered lobster.

By: JON GARELICK | July 15, 2008

Hybrid rhythmic engine

Nation Beat is a gas
Fusions are the lifeblood of music, but too often they come with a whiff of high-concept gimmickry.

By: JON GARELICK | July 15, 2008

Eric Hofbauer and the Infared Band

Myth Understanding | Creative Nation Music
What’s likely to hit you first is Hofbauer’s flair for bluesy, riffing AABA melodies.

By: JON GARELICK | July 01, 2008

Sharp accents

Forro in the Dark and Marta Topferova talk the talk
Boston has its own vital scene of pan-American jazz and folk (hey, Mili Bermejo, Alex Alvear, Sergio Brandão, and everyone at Ryles on Wednesday nights!).

By: JON GARELICK | June 30, 2008

School days

Fred Woodard’s post-grad life, plus ‘KGBG’ at the Lily Pad
Fred Woodard graduated from Berklee in 1983 — and that’s when he really started to go to school.

By: JON GARELICK | June 17, 2008

Cassandra Wilson | Loverly

Blue Note
Blue Note

By: JON GARELICK | June 09, 2008

Split personality

Jenny Scheinman gets herself together
Jenny Scheinman is such an unassuming, modest musician that it’s easy to underestimate the radicalness of her two new CDs, Jenny Scheinman and Crossing the Field .

By: JON GARELICK | June 02, 2008

Saxophone Summit

Seraphic Light | Telarc
Despite the name, this has never been a mere supergroup blowing session.

By: JON GARELICK | May 27, 2008

Breaking through

Esperanza Spalding steps up her game
In the overall retail picture, jazz accounts for about three percent of sales, and a “hit” CD is anything that exceeds 10,000 copies.

By: JON GARELICK | May 19, 2008

Pete Robbins

Do the Hate Laugh Shimmy | Fresh Sounds New Talent
Alto-saxophonist Robbins’s writing on these 10 originals never settles for theme-solos-theme variations.

By: JON GARELICK | May 12, 2008

Crescent City health report

The New Orleans Jazz + Heritage Festival buoys a wounded community
“Is much better! The tourists is coming back !” That was our cab driver from Louis Armstrong Airport into New Orleans — a transplanted Haitian from Jefferson Parish.

By: JON GARELICK | May 06, 2008

Week in the knees

Jazz Week kicks out the jams, plus Bley and Zorn
“Jazz Week,” which runs April 26–May 4, tends to appropriate all events to its needs — if you’re playing, say, your regularly scheduled gig at Matt Murphy’s Pub this week, you’re part of Jazz Week.

By: JON GARELICK | April 28, 2008