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Will Layman
About Will Layman
Will Layman is a writer, teacher and musician living in the Washington, DC area. He is a co-editor of OpiumMagazine.com and a regular contributor to YankeePotRoast.org, McSweeney's Internet Tendency and several other web publications. His jazz journalism has appeared in print in Radio and Records and elsewhere on the web.
Will plays jazz in the DC area and is a veteran of several DC rock bands, including Avant Gaardvark. His CD Twisted features the song "The Way You Love Me Blues", a runner-up in the jazz category in the 2000 John Lennon International Songwriting contest. Married with two kids, Will named his son (what else?) Miles.
Features
PopMatters Picks: The Best Music of 2007
[11.Dec.07] :. In spite of the perception of jazz as an increasingly niche market, the year's best show a style of music that remains ever youthful in its exploration of new territories, expanding its diversity and range of expression.
PopMatters Picks: The Best Music of 2007
Music
[14.Aug.07] :. The jazz guitarist -- with Wilco, his trios, or anyone else -- opens up a conversation about how to keep this music living.
Recent features
Music
[27.Jun.07] :. With the release of Mago, an album of duets with bandmate John Medeski, Billy Martin continues to pursue a personal vision of music without many boundaries, a pop-jazz-avant-garde combination that barely acknowledges the market while still sounding irresistible.
Recent features
Music
[16.Apr.07] :. A self-aware songwriter, Adam Schlesinger still finds a way inside everyone else's head. PopMatters talks to the ingenius popsters about their new album and more.
Recent features
PopMatters Picks: The Best Music of 2006
[11.Dec.06] :. Will Layman's list of the year's best jazz records, a hearty baker's dozen, includes iconoclasts, eccentrics, avant-gardists, and some downright swingers.
PopMatters Picks: The Best Music of 2006
Columns
Jazz Today
[17.Apr.08] :. With two of the US' major "smooth jazz" radio stations defunct to the fickleness of format change, the time to mourn the cheesy sub-genre is now. But what made Smooth Jazz not really jazz at all?
Recent columns
Jazz Today
[11.Mar.08] :. Saxophonist Charles Lloyd enjoyed periods of critical acclaim, popular celebration, eccentric withdrawal, and general trivialization. He was easy to ignore if you came of jazz fan age after 1970, and that's a shame.
Recent columns
Jazz Today
[31.Jan.08] :. It's never too late to get hip to a good thing. I've finally opened my ears to '20s-era Bix Biederbecke.
Recent columns
Jazz Today
[3.Jan.08] :. Paul Bley seems to be that rare jazz musician who has made a romance with the avant-garde seem easy on the ears.
Recent columns
Jazz Today
[15.Nov.07] :. Jazz and its fans have grown all too serious. The genre could use a clown prince or two.
Recent columns
Reviews
Music
[8.May.08] :. The Russian-born jazz trumpeter makes a deeply felt and beautiful record that sits on the soft edge of the tradition.
Recent Music reviews
Music
[7.May.08] :. A seamless fusion of Jewish music and Afro-Cuban groove, this project from a Canadian trumpeter and a Cuban pianist is real "world music".
Recent Music reviews
Music
[2.May.08] :. The venerable piano/vibes duo revisits its most vital recording, cloaking it in classical filigree and nostalgia
Recent Music reviews
Music
[22.Apr.08] :. The protean trumpeter records a bold quintet date in his native New Orleans, reinventing himself as a mature, romantic modernist.
Recent Music reviews
PopMatters Pick
 Music
[9.Apr.08] :. The fourth of the trumpeter's ingenious transformations of Jewish music, this gorgeous mass of guitars, horns and drums fuses Bitches Brew to the synagogue.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[28.Jan.08] :. The eclectic pianist/songwriter delivers a treat -- ten perfectly crafted pop songs that recall his best work or maybe are his best work.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[14.Dec.07] :. A fired-up quartet of architectural jazz-funk fills the legendary jazz basement with sonic silver.
Recent Music reviews
PopMatters Pick
 Music
[11.Dec.07] :. An American jazz singer ventures to Mali and achieves an African/jazz meld of the first order.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[1.Nov.07] :. The iconoclastic bassist/singer/songwriter returns with her most complete, accessible and daring recording in a decade.
Recent Music reviews
PopMatters Pick
 Music
[5.Oct.07] :. Some of the finest small-group swing ever, accompanying the finest body of vocal performances in jazz history.
Recent Music reviews
PopMatters Pick
 Music
[4.Oct.07] :. The great jazz pianist, with Wayne Shorter at his elbow and a list of sympathetic guest singers, makes a stunning Joni Mitchell tribute.
Recent Music reviews
PopMatters Pick
 Music
[19.Sep.07] :. A gorgeous feat of sonic story-telling from a songwriter deserving much wider recognition.
Recent Music reviews
PopMatters Pick
 Music
[28.Aug.07] :. Lovett cements his status as one of our best and offers further proof that popular American songcraft is a thriving art. This seamless album is one for the ages.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[22.Aug.07] :. Jazz "fusion" for this exact moment -- electric, bold, funked-out, loose-as-a-goose terrific
Recent Music reviews
PopMatters Pick
 Music
[15.Aug.07] :. The New Orleans trumpeter's lyrical meditation on disaster.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[20.Jul.07] :. A truly great band at a definitive moment in the music's history -- and never heard before.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[19.Jul.07] :. Fully integrated electro-acoustic jazz from a journeyman pianist -- a revelation.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 DVDs
[3.May.07] :. The never-forgotten '70s soap send-up emerges for the first time for home viewing -- a welcome reminder of a certain kind of glory day
Recent DVD reviews
PopMatters Pick
 Music
[12.Apr.07] :. A genuinely new sound for a jazz trio -- swing plus hip-hop brings something powerfully new.
Recent Music reviews
PopMatters Pick
 Music
[9.Mar.07] :. Jazz at the top of its modern game -- Latin, tight, tasty, and modern.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[11.Dec.06] :. Tenor-bass-drums play every which way jazz can go in a session to match the best of 2006.
Recent Music reviews
PopMatters Pick
 Music
[20.Oct.06] :. Three discs of old-time bliss -- one of the greats at his greatest.
Recent Music reviews
PopMatters Pick
 Music
[16.Aug.06] :. A hairy nine-piece romp from the '20s to the '90s -- living proof that great American music has no categories.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[11.Aug.06] :. Chamber jazz of the highest order, for quartet (trumpet, bassoon, cello, piano) -- a perfect mix of composition and improvisation
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[30.Jun.06] :. Four discs of the greatest American music there is. Feast.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[3.Feb.06] :. The first true full-length studio album from the legendary leader of The Kinks is spectacular.
Recent Music reviews
PopMatters Pick
 Music
[29.Nov.05] :. Spectacular hip-hop from A to Z, a collection of depth and wonder from Philly's hometown heroes -- beats, rhymes and riffs to end the discussion of how 'musical' rap really is.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[25.Oct.05] :. A blast of blues-drenched soul -- when has that ever hurt a person?"
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[14.Oct.05] :. One of the most idiosyncratic and powerful voices in pop sums it all up.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[28.Jul.05] :. A selection of 14 tracks from The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings, which is to say a thin slice of one of the sweetest cakes that was ever baked.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[17.Jun.05] :. The third release from Shorter's acoustic quartet catches the band at its live best. In three new originals and a diverse selection of classical, film, and older music, the group plays with almost unparalleled democracy and drive. Wayne is back. Boy is he.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[27.May.05] :. The greatest trumpeter simply didn't make a single great album. By default, then, this compilation is it: your must-have set for the brilliant bebop master.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[11.May.05] :. This experiment in fusing bluegrass with jazz is the exception -- it really works. When even the dreaded heavy-hitter guest vocalists don't wreck things, you know you're onto something special. Alison Brown, banjo at the ready, is coming to get you.
Recent Music reviews
Featured Article
 Music
[11.May.05] :. The South African composer and pianist is properly celebrated in two collections that give him the retrospective treatment and remix treatment that his captivating music deserves. Spectacular.
Recent Music reviews
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