News & Updates — out-jazz

Canadian pianist, arranger, composer, bandleader, Gil Evans was the first call arranger time and time again with Miles Davis and later developed an obsession with Jimi Hendrix. Born in Toronto but moving around mining towns until the family settled in California, he saw Duke Ellington play in '27 and got the orchestration bug. He also took influence from Kurt Weill and Spanish & Brazilian music. He moved to NYC in the '40s with a gig arranging for Claude Thornhill.  In the late '40s his apartment hosted incubator sessions with Miles, Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan, George Russell and others to develop...

Happy birthday to the award-winning poet & spoken word performer Jayne Cortez. Her rhythmic and (anti)militant ways with words are captivating and inspiring. I see her as part of the take-no-shit, fire-as-spit population of radical and rhythmic poets of deep articulation like Amiri Baraka, Gil Scott-Heron, Nikki Giovanni, Last Poets, Suheir Hammad, Chuck D, Welfare Poets and others aligned with social justice, black power and fearless expression. She has written several books and made a bunch of records with funk & free-jazz musical backing, often times with Denardo Coleman (her son with Ornette Coleman) and associates called the Firespitters. She...

She was the lady who swings the band. Mary Lou Williams may be not be considered a major jazz star but her contributions as a pianist, arranger, composer, teacher, radio host and historian are immense. She has been a professional since she was a little girl in Pittsburgh and was playing with Duke Ellington's Washingtonians at 13. She married saxophonist John Williams in 1927 and formed a band with him in Memphis before they both joined Andy Kirk's Twelve Clouds of Joy in Oklahoma City in '29, with whom Mary Lou made her first recordings as the band's pianist, composer...

"The Legendary Hasaan" Ibn Ali may be an obscure name in jazz but his notoriety in his local Philadelphia scene is not lost on the musicians of the time and place, not the least of which would be the Philly-reared saxophonists John Coltrane and Odean Pope, as well as fellow pianist McCoy Tyner. Max Roach, Clifford Brown, Henry Grimes, Miles Davis, JJ Johnson, Benny Golson have all played with him and Coltrane counted him as a big influence. To those that have heard him, his quick and unconventional rhythmic style and sense of harmony put him in a category with...

The Afro-Danish reedsman John Tchicai was one of the unique talents on the international out-jazz scene after the "October Revolution" of 1964. Born in Copenhagen (and of Congolese descent), he played violin as a child and switched to reeds as a teenager. He was pro by the late '50s traveling around Europe before setting off for NYC in '62. He hooked up with groups of major statement, such as New York Contemporary Five (with Don Cherry and Archie Shepp) and the New York Art Quartet. He participated in the behemoth free jazz recordings New York Eye & Ear Control (with...