Will Layman is a writer, teacher and musician living in the Washington, DC area. He has been a contributor to National Public Radio and WNYC's "Soundcheck" as a jazz critic. He plays rock, funk, and jazz in the bars and clubs in and near the nation's capital. His fiction and humor appear in print and online.
During the new-year season of best-of-the-year lists, I find myself looking backward—even at a year as difficult as 2020. Time was dilated—I thought I had too much of it but, as usual, there was too little for all the great music.
Baltimore's wizard of the pedal steel guitar, Susan Alcorn, offers a creative blend of Americana, jazz, and ethereal improvisation on Pedernal.
New COVID-era recordings from saxophonists Chris Potter and Ben Wendel recall pioneering work by the brilliant composer Wayne Shorter.
Legendary pianist Bill Evans with a trio not often recorded with Eddie Gomez on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums live in London's famed club.
Here are six of the key jazz trends of the last 20 years, defined by 20 of the best 2020 recordings that made us see, again, why this music is in midst of such a thrilling patch of creativity.
Compass Confusion is the long-awaited sequel to Craig Taborn's groundbreaking 2004 recording that mixed jazz, electronica, and new music composition. What once sounded like the future still sounds fresh.
Don't sleep on this magical, flowing music, even if it purposely courts a dreamy mood. The jazz cornetist and composer gets four other distinctive players to come quietly together for a greater good.
"New jazz" drummer Dan Weiss has composed varied landscapes for a band that use doom metal textures and delve into electronica, but just as often use acoustic piano and organic drumming to make complexity sound luscious.
Two Bremen concerts by groups led by bassist and composer Charles Mingus in 1964 and 1975 remind us of the longevity and vitality of his brilliance.
Classically trained pianist Holly Bowling is releasing her latest recording of Grateful Dead songs in a few weeks. PopMatters catches up with the virtuoso to discuss the intersection of jazz and rock with classical technique.
The third (and final?) collaboration between a brilliant jazz composer/arranger, the Frankfurt Radio Big Band, vocalists Kate McGarry and Theo Bleckman, and the post-1950 American pop song. So great that it shivers with joy.
A Blue Note supergroup happens to be made up of women, exclusively. Artemis is an inconsistent outing, but it dazzles just often enough.
Grammy-winning jazz composer Maria Schneider released Data Lords partly as a reaction to her outrage that streaming music services are harvesting the data of listeners even as they pay musicians so little that creativity is at risk. She speaks with us about the project.
The new jazz gets a treatment from a thrilling 18-piece big band playing compositions by saxophonists Angela Morris and Anna Webber on Both Are True.
There is so much wonderful creative music these days that even an apartment-bound critic misses too much of it. Here is jazz from the last 18 months that shouldn't be missed.
West Coast pianist Denny Zeitlin creates a classic and adventurous live set with his long-standing trio featuring Buster Williams and Matt Wilson on Live at Mezzrow.
Jazz drummer Jeff Cosgrove leads brilliant organ player John Medeski and multi-reed master Jeff Lederer through a revelatory recording of songs by William Parker and some just-as-good originals.
A nimble jazz power trio of drums, tenor sax, and piano, the Chad Taylor Trio is free and fun, funky and fiery on The Daily Biological.
Jazz trombonist Nick Finzer shines with his compositions on this mainstream jazz sextet release, Cast of Characters.
Improvising and brass shaking from three trombones plus tuba equal a whole lotta fun on Joe Fiedler's Live in Graz.
Jazz guitarist Steve Cardenas' Blue Has a Range sports modern but vintage jazz guitar at the center of a gorgeously balanced group of composer and players.
Joshua Redman's 1994 quartet of young jazz lions reunites as contemporary masters on RoundAgain.
Micah Thomas' Tide is the debut of a young jazz pianist who is comfortable and fluent in a "new mainstream": abstraction as well as tonality, freedom as well as technical complexity.
On the release of his latest, Hero Trio, saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa records his first session of covers, playing jazz standards and hip-pop with a fabulous trio featuring bassist François Moutin and drummer Rudy Royston.
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