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Will Layman
Image: Will Layman

Will Layman is a writer, teacher and musician living in the Washington, DC area.  He is a contributor to National Public Radio and frequently appears as a guest on WNYC’s “Soundcheck” as a jazz critic. He plays both funk and jazz in the bars and clubs in and near the nation’s capital. His fiction and humor appear in print and online.


Features

Monday, February 4 2013

The Permanence of Pops: Louis Armstrong and American Music

The recently released early recordings of Louis Armstrong remind us that no one made a more complete contribution to art in the 20th century.


Wednesday, January 16 2013

"Very Self-Conscious About Everything": An Interview with A.C. Newman

New Pornographers frontman and solo artist Carl "A.C." Newman talks about his failure to be a real rock star and how an almost painful self-consciousness creates his work.


Thursday, December 13 2012

The Best Jazz of 2012

Jazz today remains the music that stays alive through a remarkable alchemy. On this list, traditions that go back to the jazz roots co-exist with modern pop tunes, and the avant-garde edges of the music blend in fluid ease with tonal beauty.


Monday, December 10 2012

Taking Five with the Late Dave Brubeck

At just 14 years old, hearing "Take Five" leap off the vinyl initiated us boys into all the things that would soon come to matter: abandon and sex, ecstasy and intelligence, serious ideas and sensual pleasure in one package.


Wednesday, August 15 2012

Derek Trucks on the Tedeschi Trucks Band: “A Working Man’s Band”

PopMatters interviews guitarist Derek Trucks about his new live album and recent tour with the Tedeschi Trucks Band and what it's like to collaborate with his wife -- and many other brilliant musicians -- every night on the road.


Columns

Wednesday, May 15 2013

David Sanborn May Not Be Cool -- But He's Sure Copied a Lot

David Sanborn may be the most imitated man in instrumental music. His ripe rasp on alto saxophone has been aped a thousand times over. Yet he's gotten little respect in true jazz circles.


Wednesday, April 17 2013

Ode to the Return of the Clarinet

Why did you leave jazz, O Clarinet? Did you ask too much of us, or did we ask to much of you? Either way, you've returned with a sleek, expressive vengeance!


Thursday, March 28 2013

Wynton Marsalis’ 'Blood on the Fields', Still Genius

Is anything ever as wonderful as it seemed when you first fell in love with it? Some things are. Some things become even sweeter over time.


Thursday, February 21 2013

'Why Jazz Happened' Makes Its Points Like a Snazzy Lawyer in the Courtroom: Zip, Zam, Zot

New Orleans to swing, swing to bop, bop to cool, cool to hard bop, hard bop to free jazz—"jazz style periods" are so often presented like this. But jazz's transformation often shifted independently of cultural happenings, and those shifts were far from linear.


Wednesday, January 30 2013

Saxophonist Jon Irabagon Takes Us By Storm

Suddenly saxophonist Jon Irabagon is everywhere: releasing his own music, starring as a sideman on wildly varying projects, constantly showing us that jazz can be whatever we want it to be.


Double Standards [17.Jul.08]
Bass Reflections [17.Oct.07]

Reviews

Tuesday, May 7 2013

Steve Coleman and Five Elements: Functional Arrhythmias

A lean and intriguing set of tunes from the usually frustrating but often brilliant saxophonist.


Thursday, April 11 2013

Keith Jarrett: Hymns/Spheres

A double-disc set that finds the jazz pianist jamming on a baroque organ in the 1970s (when else?).


Thursday, March 28 2013

Mostly Other People Do the Killing: Slippery Rock

The antic jazz quartet, back on the job: fun and loose and flying.


Friday, March 15 2013

Charles Lloyd / Jason Moran: Hagar’s Song

A saxophone-piano duet between the 75-year-old mystic and his recent partner. Beautiful.


Monday, March 11 2013

John Hollenbeck: Songs I Like a Lot

Pop songs radically reconfigured by the one-of-a-kind John Hollenbeck -- a shimmering triumph with an oddball touch.


Keith Jarrett: Rio [29.Nov.11]
Keren Ann: 101 [23.Mar.11]
Vijay Iyer: Solo [20.Oct.10]
Commonwealth [23.Jul.08]
Fieldwork: Door [14.Jul.08]
Cuong Vu: Vu-tet [18.Apr.08]
Joe Jackson: Rain [28.Jan.08]
Tahiti 80: Fosbury [29.Jan.07]
Richard Bona: Tiki [14.Dec.06]
KEM: Album II [17.May.05]

Blogs

Wednesday, December 14 2011

Bubbling Under the 75 Best Albums of 2011: Tedeschi Trucks Band

This week we presented our Best 75 Albums of 2011. Here are several more just bubbling under the top 75...


Sunday, December 13 2009

The Apples in Stereo: #1 Hits Explosion

The Apples in Stereo - #1 Hits Explosion - Yep Roc [$13.98]


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