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JON GARELICK
Jon Garelick is associate arts editor of the
Boston Phoenix, where he has been on staff since becoming music editor in 1990. Jon writes the column “Giant Steps” -- which is mostly about jazz -- as well as pieces about TV, art, theater, and other subjects. He has also written for the
New York Times and
New York Times Book Review,
Rolling Stone,
Jazziz, the
Boston Globe, and other publications. He has won two ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards -- in 1993 and 2003 -- for his writing about music.
Latest Articles
Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux sing jazz's many strains
Full-length written histories of jazz can be a slog. Especially since "the story of jazz" (as critic Marshall Stearns titled his 1956 tome) only gets longer and more complicated. Personally, on these prose-narrative trips along the New Orleans–New York axis of musical development, I usually bog down somewhere outside Chicago.
Self-released (2009)
Boston singer-songwriter Miss Tess has always had the pipes and the taste to carry off her various ventures into country, blues, and multi-hued swing, but Darling, Oh Darling underlines her overall sound.
Hammer and String
Having played in projects from jam bands to jazz and as a singer-songwriter accompanist, keyboardist Erik Deutsch led an acoustic jazz album for his debut.
Ran Blake's Pawnbroker, Sofia Koutsovitis's pan-American roots
Film noir has been a running theme in composer/pianist Ran Blake's work since the beginning of his career — his very first album, The Newest Sound Around (RCA, 1962), with singer Jeanne Lee, began with David Raskin's theme to Otto Preminger's Laura .
Darius Jones, Kurt Rosenwinkel, and Ben Goldberg’s Go Home
To call Darius Jones’s music avant-garde seems almost beside the point. In its way, it’s older than old — it’s ancient.
Pi (2009)
Henry Threadgill has been reinventing his language — and by extension the jazz language — for at least 30 years, beginning with the trio Air in the 1970s.
Jeremy Udden’s rocky jazz path
In his Village Voice review of Jeremy Udden’s Plainville (Fresh Sound New Talent), Jim Macnie recalled how a friend of his tried to file it as “jazz for Wilco fans.” As Macnie explained, that’s not the whole story with Udden or Plainville , but it’s not a bad starting point.
DafnisonMusic (2009)
Prieto is one of the supermen drummers of contemporary jazz — Cuban-born, fluent in all idioms, a multitude of patterns flowing through him and into his hands and feet at any given point.
Amanda Carr and Gretchen Parlato do it their way
If fans plan shrewdly next Thursday (October 15), they can hear jazz singing at its best in two completely different styles.
Linda Oh Trio (2009)
Chinese-Australian bassist Linda Oh (now living in NYC) favors a spare setting on this debut: trumpet, bass, and drums.
Terri Lyne Carrington gives the BeanTown Jazz Fest the blues
Terri Lyne Carrington gives the BeanTown Jazz Fest the blues
Earthsound is for real
Yes, this Boston jazz trio incorporates the sounds of seals, tree frogs, and crickets. Yes, one of them is a working ecologist. Here's why you shouldn't hold that against them.
NEC and Berklee set the jazz stage
Several of this fall's promising jazz performances are clustered around the week of October 18. That marks the 40th-anniversary celebration of the jazz-studies program at New England Conservatory, which, created by Gunther Schuller, established NEC as one of the international twin beacons of jazz education in Boston along with Berklee College of Music.
Julian Lage's talent isn't just in his fingers
"I like using songs to change the environment — to get the listener's ear to be a little skewed."
NJCO/Planet Arts (2009)
Sometimes even the fanciest jazz virtuosity can sound routine, if for no other reason than that we've heard it all before.
Dr. John and the Neville Brothers, live at the House of Blues on August 28, 2009
Even long-time fans probably didn't expect the generous, inspiring show Dr. John and the Neville Brothers delivered as part of a "Mardi Gras Mambo" tour stop at the House of Blues last Friday.
Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys, live at the M FA, September 26, 2009
Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys — named for their home town in southwest Louisiana — play music for dancing.
Florencia Gonzalez gets ugly . Plus, Dave Holland is sitting pretty.
In the city where Florencia Gonzalez grew up — the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo — every neighborhood has its own candombe group. These are drum outfits that might meet on a Sunday afternoon, a Wednesday night, or particular holidays, depending on neighborhood tradition.
Newport Jazz comes back with a bang
The biggest news made by the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals the past two weekends was that they happened at all.
Palmetto (2009)
Whatever else is going on in jazz — fractured meters, indie-pop fusions — it's always good to hear a couple of horns burning through the changes over swing cymbals and a hard-walking bass groove.
